Tarmac Tete-a-Tete: Racial Politics and Double Standards

A dramatic news photo of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer wagging a finger at President Obama has sparked a rhetorical blitzkrieg from media pundits and civil rights activists.

The desert dust-up played out on a Phoenix airport tarmac during the president's visit to the city.  News cameras captured what appeared to be a tense conversation between the president and the governor. However, reporters and their microphones were out of earshot so no third-party account exists.

Yet that hasn't stopped the media from speculating about the spunky GOP governor's purported tongue-lashing of the president.  Even Obama, downplayed the incident when asked about it on ABC's evening news. The president responded with a shrug, "This is not a big deal."

Brewer's version of the tete-a-tete offered some context.  "He (Obama) brought up my book and he was a little tense," she said in a radio interview.  "He said he read (an) excerpt and didn't think I was very cordial.  I said we'd have to agree to disagree.  He was a little thin-skinned and tense, to say the least."

This falls woefully short of the definition of incivility.   But that matters little to those who view every critical pinprick of Obama through the prism of race.

"What she did on that airport tarmac was by any reasonable standard a gross act of disrespect to the president," opined USA Today columnist DeWayne Wickham.  He added that Brewer's actions were just the latest in a string of right-wing inspired displays of utter contempt for the president.

Activist Al Sharpton went even further, calling the incident proof that some people "cannot stand the fact that this is an African-American who is now one of the most powerful individuals on the planet."  The NAACP joined in the chorus, saying the tiff reinforced stereotypes of "whites being superior to blacks."

Brewer was taken aback by the verbal mugging.  She has every right to be miffed, particularly in light of the media's callous attitude toward the disrespectful scorn heaped on Obama's predecessor, President George W. Bush.

Who can forget the infamous shoe-throwing incident in Baghdad in 2008?  An Iraqi journalist hurled a pair of shoes at Bush during a news conference.   The shameful stunt was meant as an insult.   Instead of vilifying the protagonist, the media and Democrats had a field day making light of the rebuff.

The episode became the chatter of late-night television, a viral hit on the Internet and was propagandized by Middle Eastern media to stoke the hatred of the U.S. president and his policy toward Iraqi.  Where was the outcry about this obvious show of disrespect for the country and its leader?

The shoe incident was benign compared to some of the vitriol directed at Bush during his eight years in the White House.  For example, a movie released in 2007 called "Death of a President," chronicled a fictitious assassination of the former President.  It was lauded in the media instead of excoriated.

Protestor Cindy Sheeham confessed in her book "Peace Mom" that she fantasized going back in time to kill the infant George Bush to prevent the Iraq War.  She wasn't the only author to talk about murdering the president.  Nicholson Baker's novella "Checkpoint" features two people discussing assassinating Bush.

Not a single mainstream media outlet raised a peep about the animosity shown toward the president.  Whatever Brewer or the president said or didn't say that day on the Phoenix tarmac, it surely doesn't rise to the level of contempt and derision endured by Bush.

Regrettably, the race-baiters in the media and black community could not pass up the desert dis as an opportunity to raise the specter of prejudice and bigotry.   Americans had better get used to this ugly tactic.  In the upcoming election, disparagement of Obama and his policies likely will be skewered as naked racism.

It's a sad state of affairs because President Obama's election was supposed to transform racial relations in the U.S.  Instead, the media and the president's allies have seized every opportunity to further divide the nation along the lines of color.

That is not what voters had in mind when they elected the country's first African-American president.