It’s hard to think of anything more disturbing than an American news network making racial attacks on an African American nominee to head the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department because he took on a civil rights case. But what’s even worse is how Fox’s race baiting helped get enough Democratic senators to block the nomination.
I wrote in January about Sean Hannity teaming up with his race-baiting pal, Katie Pavlich, to smear Debo P. Adegbile in a particularly racial way. Their beef? Adegbile participated vigorously in our American justice system by defending Mamia Abu-Jamal. Megyn Kelly, herself an attorney, also vigorously joined in the attacks. Before Kelly made a name for herself by “reassuring” children that “Santa is white,” she established quite a record of baseless racial attacks on Attorney General Eric Holder. So it’s no surprise she’d join the fray here. Fox even gave new credibility to discredited DOJ race-attacker, J. Christian Adams as part of its campaign.
But as troubling as all that is, it’s even worse that six Democratic senators fell for the tactics and blocked Adegbile’s nomination yesterday.
On this morning’s Democracy Now, guest Ryan Haygood, director of the NAACP’s Legal Defense and Educational Fund’s Political Participation Group, got to the heart of the issue:
It’s really hard to overstate what the U.S. Senate did yesterday. In a shameful vote, the Senate essentially decided that being a lawyer disqualifies one from holding a legal position. More specifically, the U.S. Senate essentially held yesterday that serving this country as a public servant in the highest aspirations of the legal tradition and being one of the pre-eminent civil rights litigators in America disqualifies one—here, Debo Adegbile—from serving as the top lawyer in the Civil Rights Division for the Department of Justice.
And what’s striking in watching the debate yesterday on the Senate floor is that none of the discussion was about the merits, the substance of Debo’s qualifications. There’s no disagreement about him being a pre-eminent civil rights attorney whose worldview and experience speak to his qualification for this position. What the Senate lacked yesterday was the political will to do the right thing and give the American people what they deserve in having a person who is eminently qualified, like Debo Adegbile, serve in the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.
In a later exchange, Hayman and co-host Juan Williams revealed the ramifications of Adegbile’s appointment, or lack thereof, as well as those of leaving the position unfilled:
RYAN HAYGOOD: …What’s striking about the Senate’s vote against Debo yesterday is that he was one of the people who took the lead in helping to develop the record that Congress used to reauthorize this core provision of the Voting Rights Act in 2006, and it was Debo Adegbile who twice defended what Congress did before the U.S. Supreme Court, first successfully in the MUD case, and secondly, most recently, when the Supreme Court in Shelby County struck a core provision of the Voting Rights Act. So, the Senate—the U.S. Senate’s vote yesterday was really a vote against its own interests. Last term, the U.S. Supreme Court essentially gave Congress a vote of no confidence when it struck what Congress did by striking a core provision of the Voting Rights Act, and it was Debo who was one of the chief defenders of Congress’s work before the Supreme Court, two times, in some of the most important voting rights cases in our generation.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, isn’t it entirely possible that the real reason behind the attempt to get him out was precisely that he would become, as head of the Civil Rights Division, a main proponent within the federal government of holding up the voting rights of African Americans and other minorities, just at the time when we have these elections coming up?
RYAN HAYGOOD: Sure, I think that’s right. But I also think that there was some interest convergence here. You know, I think it’s significant that Congress essentially was given the vote of no confidence by the Supreme Court and that the Supreme Court essentially said, “Look, your power to legislate around a core—a fundamental right, the right to vote, is being constrained by the Supreme Court decision.” And Congress really had an opportunity to respond by working with Debo, and the Department of Justice under his leadership, to enact new voting rights legislation that would pass and that would restore what was lost in the Shelby County decision.
We don't know exactly how much Fox News' Willie-Horton style coverage played or did not play in the ultimate outcome. We do know that Fox acted more as a stakeholder than a news outlet in the right-wing attacks. Once the nomination was voted down, Fox did a victory dance over its latest black scalp.
The first video below is of the Democracy Now discussion. The second one is Fox’s coverage of Adegbile's defeat, via Media Matters.
Yes, that is exactly my point. I did not mean to suggest that the Democratic senators were brainwashed by Fox, although I do admit that’s what the post seems to say. I can’t know exactly what role Fox played in this situation. But clearly, Fox did its best for the effort.
My post was written a bit hastily on my way out of town for a long weekend. I’ll try to clarify it later today, after I have a chance to catch up a bit more.
As for the no votes, it was pretty clear the Democrats voted no because of Adegbile’s representation of Abu-Jamal. Not outright advocacy of Abu-Jamal’s case but representing him as a lawyer.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/06/us/politics/senate-rejects-obama-nominee-linked-to-abu-jamal-case.html?_r=0
Adegbile was eminently qualified and, IMO, it is not just shameful how this man was smeared but downright un-American.
It’s even more upsetting that any Democrat would go along with this kind of demagoguery.
The point of the NAACP LDF’s involvement here has to do with their consistent position on the Death Penalty. As the statistics continue to show, the Death Penalty has been applied with greatly disproportionate frequency and vehemence against the black community. So the LDF opposes it on principle. Their position on Wesley Cook falls in with that long-held principle. By the time they got to the Cook case, his death sentence had already been thrown out. The LDF’s work was to make sure that it wasn’t reinstated. That’s a big difference from somehow “passionately defending” Cook at trial. Cook was convicted of this murder over 30 years ago, and his guilt wasn’t the subject of the LDF’s briefs. When Cook fired his last batch of attorneys (and he did this many times over the course of decades of appeals), the LDF took over as his attorneys – specifically to insure that he would face a sentence of life behind bars rather than a reinstated death penalty. Faced with this, the Philadelphia DA chose to live with Cook alive behind bars rather than pour more funds into yet another trial situation.
I absolutely agree that Adegbile did nothing wrong. And I’d go farther to say that Adegbile has done exemplary work with the LDF over the years. He was a completely appropriate attorney to be appointed for this position, and it’s shameful that Fox News thinks they can get away with smearing him in this manner. I don’t think President Obama made a mistake in choosing him for appointment – I think it’s more apt to say that Fox News, right wing radio and the GOP have made it their mission in life to attack and frustrate him at every turn. They made it clear from the moment he became a candidate in the first place, and they clarified it multiple times. Adegbile could have had a legal career of helping elderly people across the street, and the right wing would have attacked him for not letting them take care of themselves. They will always find a reason to attack, no matter how ridiculous.
We have no way of knowing the motivations of the Dem Senators who chose to go along with the GOP propaganda here. I doubt it was because they watch Fox News. But we have to acknowledge that the right wing worked hard to establish the premise of the coverage here, as they have done with every single issue over the past 20 years. It doesn’t matter that their premise was false. I think Ellen’s point here is that this is a case where they succeeded in getting their narrative of events far enough into the mainstream to get their way. And we must be aware of when and how they do this, or they’ll get away with it more often.
As I’ve said before, I see the purpose of this website as a corrective to these false narratives that Fox News tries to purvey. For Fox News viewers, there is a completely separate version of history in play – one in which reality is turned on its head and only certain facts are included in the discussion. It’s a philosophy that fixes the facts to a predetermined hypothesis – one that may be comforting to the right wing but which doesn’t have much to do with the real world. We saw the best example of this during the 2012 elections, where Fox News pundits confidently predicted a Romney victory and had fooled even the Romney campaign into thinking they had the election in the bag – while the reality was the opposite.
Fox News is trying to write their version of the history of this presidency, using smears and half-truths and any wisps of smoke they can get their hands around. It’s vitally important to be able to calmly rebut the nonsense with the actual facts, and to show the consistent pattern of hostility Fox News has demonstrated. This is but one example – a small, nasty skirmish victory – and yet it’s important to note how and why it happened. So when the right wingers try to purvey their version of it, anyone with an ounce of education can answer, “Well, that’s not exactly what happened, is it?”
Well that’s one far side of the argument. Actually, I think it was stated, on that Amy Goodman clip that Ellen unfortunately chose to include in her posting, that Adegbile simply signed some papers.
The other extreme was probably best summed up by Slanthead during a brief moment on his radio crapfest (Fri) that I caught, when he stated, twice, that Adegbile was “passionately defending Mumia!”
Maybe the truth lies somewhere in the middle?
But it really makes no difference. Adegbile did nothing wrong. He was doing what lawyers do. Sometimes, they defend (or make arguments for) thoroughly reprehensible criminals.
I think it’s also disappointing that Ellen seems to be making the case that the six senators were influenced by FNC in deciding to vote against the appointment. It’s possible they heard something on Fox, or other right wing media. But it’s also quite likely they were influenced by Officer Faulkner’s family, or police organizations, or other factors we don’t know about.
It may come as a shock to some here, but there are quite a few people — NOT all on the right — who believe Mumia is guilty.
I happen to think this all could have been avoided by Obama if he had simply picked someone else for the position. Can anyone tell me there’s NOT another eminently qualified civil rights attorney, who happens to be black, and who also doesn’t have the unfortunate baggage that Adegbile carries from his association with Mumia, regardless of what that actually entailed? A big mistake by Obama.
And this post is, IMO, a mistake too. Arn’t we always complaining that FNC — and its despicable broadcasters — will blame everything that goes wrong in the world — past, present and way into the future — on Obama?
Isn’t this the same? Is it not blaming the votes of six senators on FNC without knowing their actual motivation?
All of that buttresses the simpler part of the equation – that Fox News is always happy to squelch any proposals coming from President Obama – particularly if they involve black nominees.
Fox News cheered on this situation not because they had any substantive problem with Adegbile, but because they wanted to help thwart yet another nominee of President Obama’s, and a black one at that. It’s that simple.
What? You didn’t know that? Sure enough. Roberts did work on behalf of a death row inmate in Florida (I believe it was the late 1990s) but that wasn’t enough to keep him from serving on the US Supreme Court.
I guess that was okay since Roberts was (A) nominated by Dumbya and (B) a white conservative.