Ron Paul, The Media is Waking Up–Better Late Than Never

We are nearly a year out from the next presidential election and there have been about a dozen Republican debates——more than enough time for the 24/7 news cycle and voracious cable news channels to inspect, examine and scour each candidate for every present and former wart. The fascination with the sensational and the media’s compulsion to “inform” the public seems endless.

Four years ago, Tom Brokaw, one of the elder statesmen of the news business, in a post New Hampshire moment of insight admonished his colleagues that “we have too many hours to fill and too little imagination to fill them creatively.”  One might have hoped, after the Brokaw quip, for a little introspection this time around and, perhaps, an interest by the cable mavens to probe beyond the sensational and actually offer insight as to what the candidates are all about. No chance.

The news channels and others in the media have demonstrated a continued interest in the trivial and the sensational, while ignoring the vital. Recent discussions of Gingrich’s marriages, Romney’s stiffness, or Gov. Perry’s gaffes—- might make for great TV and amusing YouTube clips, but they aren’t all that media should be focusing their attention on.

There is no better example of the media’s glossing over the fundamentals to focus on the superficial than the candidacy of Congressman Ron Paul.

Less sensational, and probably videotape-less, is the troubling evidence of racism and insensitivity by Ron Paul that has gone virtually unremarked on and, until this week, largely ignored. When Paul was just a cranky figure decorating the debate stages, one might excuse the lapse. When he appears to be the leader in the Iowa caucuses, the oversight has been inexcusable. 

Congressman Ron Paul, the Republican/libertarian candidate, is treated in the press, and in the countless debates of the Republican candidates, as if he were simply an eccentric uncle. His musings about returning to the gold standard and the evils of the IRS are interludes where the other candidates seem to catch their collective breath and figure out a witty riposte to the questions that he doesn’t respond to. The moderators don’t accord him much attention, though he fully exploits the platform he is onto reach millions of viewers with his bizarre views.

In fact, his quirkiness is seen as endearing by young voters on the right and the left who seem to have bought the media’s portrayal of him as a sage truth teller who doesn’t bend to the vagaries of what’s “in” or “out”.

He is neither a harmless eccentric nor just a bit offbeat; Cong. Paul has a long, well documented track record of racial and religious insensitivity and bigotry that has gone largely unexamined.

As The New Republic observed in 2008, Paul’s newsletters reveal,

“decades’ worth of obsession with conspiracies, sympathy for the right-wing militia movement, and deeply held bigotry against blacks, Jews and gays. In short, they suggest that Ron Paul is not the plain speaking antiwar activist his supporters believe they are backing—-but rather a member in good standing of some of the oldest and ugliest traditions in American politics.”

The instances of outrageous comments in his newsletters over thirty years are virtually endless. For example, the Ron Paul Political Report opined that the 1992 Los Angeles riots, “ended when it came time for the blacks to pick up their welfare checks three days after rioting began;” the media was denounced for believing that “America’s number one need is an unlimited white checking account for underclass blacks;” an article about a racial disturbance in Washington, D.C. was titled “Animals Take Over the D.C. Zoo”; Martin Luther King is accused of having “seduced underage girls and boys”; regarding gays, the newsletter suggested, “homosexuals, not to speak of the rest of society, were far better off when social pressure forced them to hide their activities;” and vis a vis Israel, “it is an aggressive, national socialist state;” a newsletter questioned (whether) the 1993 World Trade Center bombing may have been “a setup by the Israeli Mossad, as a Jewish friend of mine suspects, or was truly retaliation by the Islamic fundamentalists, (it) matters little.”

The quotes from Paul’s newsletters are truly incendiary—-not manufactured slights that one needs to “decode”.  The libertarian magazine Reason, in its on-line website, concluded that through his newsletters, Ron Paul, “became complicit in a strategy of pandering to racists.” With limited exceptions most noteworthy ” title=”The Weekly Standard” target=”_blank”>The Weekly Standard,  ” title=”The Los Angeles Times” target=”_blank”>The Los Angeles Times and