While campaigning for Hillary Clinton at one of her rallies, Robert L. Johnson, the president and founder of Black Entertainment Television, alluded to Barack Obama’s admitted drug use:
“And to me, as an African-American, I am frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood — and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book — when they have been involved.”
For those of you new to the game, in his memoir Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama wrote about how he dabbled in pot and cocaine during high school.
The thing is, BET and Johnson have gotten wealthy beyond measure promoting entertainment stars who are famous for their drug addictions as much as for their talent.
Take Whitney Houston, for example: BET gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001. Rapper DMX was arrested in 2004 on drug charges but that didn’t stop BET from giving him his own reality show. And the BET.com website has a whole page glorifying Ike Turner, who, it was just announced, died of a cocaine overdose.
Johnson, by the way, ranked on the Forbes 400 in 2006 with a net worth of $1 billion.
Johnson admitted under pressure from a journalist that he was referring to Obama’s community service which was also mentioned in the book. But of course, he phrased it very poorly with the hopes of saying it without needing to come out and say it.
Right, because you wouldn’t want to talk openly about somebody’s community service.
Jackson was being vague. I’m trying to find the link - it was on a feminism blog, I think Feministe! or Feministing but for the life of me I can’t find it - that had a follow-up interview with Jackson either admitting or changing his previous statement to mean community service.
“Johnson admitted under pressure from a journalist that he was referring to Obama’s community service which was also mentioned in the book. But of course, he phrased it very poorly with the hopes of saying it without needing to come out and say it.”
If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn I’d like to sell you.
It’s called backpedalling.
This is the closest I could find:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/news/release/view/?id=5165
So if Ross Perot came back the day after his disastrous 1992 “You people” gaffe at an NAACP event, and said he was really referring to white Americans, would you buy it for a second?
Or an even better example: If Trent Lott had come out the day after he appeared to approve of Strom Thurmond’s segregationist “Dixiecrat” past in 2002, and claimed that the bit about “all these problems over all these years” really referred to economic inflation … would anyone have bought that line?
I don’t think even Rush Limbaugh would have been able to stifle his laughter long enough to try.
I guess I was wrong to take things at face value. Live and learn, my bad, and all that.
Because Obama’s passages about his social service have given that book so much attention lately.
In any event, I’d like to play Mad Libs with what Johnson claimed he really meant to show how absurd this excuse is:
“Hillary and Bill Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was [community organizing] in the neighborhood — and I won’t say what [kind of volunteering] he was doing, but he [talked about his commitment to the community] in the book…”