By Joe Guzzardi
02/05/2010
Normally, after I wrap up several weeks worth of research that leads up to my naming the annual VDARE.COM Worst Immigration Reporter Award [VDWIRA], I turn completely away from the subject of rotten journalism.
During the year, as I read immigration stories and columns, I look for repeat offenders and make a file from which my finalists will be chosen.
Then, long about December, I'll review and evaluate them for awfulness.
Once I make my choice, I’m done. I've had enough. Ask yourself if you would be willing to reread 50 Nina Bernstein New York Times immigration stories within the same two week period.
But something about this year’s winner, CNN’s Soledad O'Brien, interested readers so much that I couldn’t help going back to investigate her Worst Immigration Reporter credentials further.
Prompted by Nicholas Stix’s blog that addressed more O'Brien hypocrisy, I asked myself: is it possible that she fools her entire audience? Is O'Brien only pulling the wool over the eyes of her gullible media peers — or has she conned everyone?
After all, O'Brien is a self-proclaimed Hispanic who doesn’t speak Spanish, a self-labeled black who looks white — and a so-called Irishwoman who only identifies herself as Irish to get laughs when she’s introduced at one of the meaningless award ceremonies she is forever attending.
As far as I could find, O'Brien never goes to the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. She’s never been honored as Grand Marshall. (Yet!).
It struck me odd because, although my roots are Sicilian, I never missed the St. Patrick’s Day parade when I lived in New York.
Looking back on my Manhattan salad days, I recall with great fondness that I owned two Irish Setters and St. Patrick’s Day was an annual highlight for me. I took Paddy and Cassidy to the saloons that lined 86th Street. Because of them, I drank free while they noshed on slivers of corned beef.
But O'Brien, apparently, isn’t interested in these festivities. She’s too busy praising illegal aliens and tooting her own horn.
Given O'Brien’s half-baked and dubious credentials, I would expect ethnic identity groups to reject her as a pariah. Yet the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists list O'Brien as their member while others heap kudos on her.
Because of the corrupt nature of journalism, I’m not surprised that these organizations embrace O'Brien.
However, I’m happy to report that real people are less accepting of her.
Based on feedback from O'Brien’s superficial documentary Black in America, I'd say she has disgusted a significant percentage mainstream African Americans.
Addressing O'Brien’s claim that she’s black, "Black Snob", a blogger on one webzine, zimbio.com, began its criticism by announcing: "She needs to quit."
Black Snob was not urging O'Brien to leave CNN but to quit calling herself black. She picked up on something that jumped out at me when I reviewed O'Brien’s YouTube videos:
"I have watched her with (African Americans) before and never once did she refer to (African Americans) in the first person, as in 'I' or 'We,' or 'we as a people,' etc"
Black Snob noted that there’s a prevailing hostility towards O'Brien for flip-flopping on her "black status" and accused her, properly, of race opportunism.
Another blog, Aunt Jemima’s Revenge, headlined its review of Black in America with this title: "F*** Soledad O'Brien"
"CNN reporter Soledad O'Brien should have her sisterhood card revoked immediately and never returned! She has damaged, betrayed, and disrespected the entire black female community with her negative, short-sighted, half-assed, stereotypical, and repetitive 'investigative reporting' on black women in America.
"Her program Black In America: The Black Woman And The Family is a complete and total fraud! This program did not address the lives and experiences of black women in America at all! It was two hours of the same negative racist and sexist stereotypes that the majority of white America believes about black people, particularly black women."
Comments to Aunt Jemima’s Revenge from blacks included:
"In my blog I referred to this special as 'Why You Should Hate Black Women and Their Children.' If I had the choice of black women being completely ignored by the mainstream news or investigative reports like CNN or MSNBC, I would much rather have black women in America completely ignored."
Another:
"What I love is the fact that CNN and other news sources paint O'Brien as an iconic black women who 'knows what it’s like'. At the same time, she’s the 'Groundbreaking Latina of the Year' in Catalina Magazine. Well, which one is it, Maria de la Soledad O'Brien? Judging from her full name, you'd guess she speaks Spanish. Guess again. And how many black folks in this country are 50 percent Irish? Give me a break. O'Brien doesn’t know what she’s reporting about. Sit the hell down and let a real black American do the talking."
Blacks who support O'Brien are rare. Eventually, I discovered two: Reverend Al Sharpton and California U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters. The occasion was one of the hundreds of incestuous Journalism Awards dinners, this time the 2009 Black News Annual Dinner.
That’s rich! Sharpton is America’s biggest race baiter. And Waters is a member in good standing of the Congressional Black Caucus that taken as a whole works to subvert American workers by promoting Open Borders. Because of Waters' neglect of immigration enforcement, her 35th Congressional District, once solidly black, is now majority illegal alien Hispanic.
If CNN wants a black anchor, why does it use a sometimes-only black reporter like O'Brien who offends African Americans and whites as well? The network has legitimate blacks like Don Lemon and Joe Johns.
For that matter, why did CNN fire Bernard Shaw? A U.S. Marine from 1959-1963 and a political centrist, Shaw’s most famous moment came in 1988 when he grilled presidential candidate Michael Dukakis about his anti-death penalty stance. Analysts pointed to Dukakis' evasive answer as the reason that George H.W. Bush won the election.
Back in 1988, of course, CNN was still a respectable network with rising in viewership. Shaw with his serious, straight forward demeanor made CNN successful.
Today, CNN’s ratings have dropped. O'Brien’s dishonest Black in America led to the dismal failure of Latino in America, in which where she sympathetically profiled pregnant Hispanic teens, obese Latino-American children, and so-called immigrant "hate crime" victims.
A VDARE.COM Puerto Rican reader, Augusto Perez, summed O'Brien up by calling her journalism "intentionally misrepresentative."
CNN executives want to know why network has fallen so far? They should be locked in a room and forced to watch uninterrupted hours of immigration cheerleader Soledad O'Brien.
Joe Guzzardi is a California native who recently fled the state because of over-immigration, over-population and a rapidly deteriorating quality of life. He has moved to Pittsburgh, PA where the air is clean and the growth rate stable. A long-time instructor in English at the Lodi Adult School, Guzzardi has been writing a weekly column since 1988. It currently appears in the Lodi News-Sentinel.
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