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George H.W. Bush Coverage Still Left Holes

by richard02237

Critics Say Media Were Spun on Panama, Iraq

Iraqi-American Andy Shallal: ‘Very, Very Horrific’

Carole Simpson: Race Did Not Matter Much

Allison Davis: Passing the Peace

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Panama, Dec. 21, 1989: Author Michael Parenti said, "The performance of the mainstream news media in the coverage of Panama has been just about total collaboration with the administration. Not a critical perspective. Not a second thought." (Credit: Morland/Department of Defense)
Panama, Dec. 21, 1989: Author Michael Parenti said later, “The performance of the mainstream news media in the coverage of Panama has been just about total collaboration with the administration. Not a critical perspective. Not a second thought.” (Credit: Morland/Department of Defense)

Critics Say Media Were Spun on Panama, Iraq

The day the nation learned that George H.W. Bush had died late Nov. 30 at age 94, news media accounts were heavy on the tributes and light on the cold-eyed analysis. Ten days later, the media have caught up. The 41st president, they determined, was a decent and personable man, but his policies were not always so benign.

As Peter Baker wrote a week ago in the New York Times, “The tributes to former President George Bush in recent days have focused on his essential decency and civility, and his embrace of others, including even his onetime opponents. But the ‘last gentleman,’ as he has been called, was not always so gentle.”

Reporters have come forward to testify to Bush’s personal warmth and friendliness. Former ABC News anchor Carole Simpson; Kevin Merida, editor-in-chief of the Undefeated, and Allison Davis, then an NBC News journalist covering the 1988 presidential campaign, have recalled going to church with Bush or, in Merida’s case, jogging with him.

There have been moving stories about Bush defying his Texas constituents and supporting the Fair Housing Act of 1968 after visiting African American and Mexican American troops in Vietnam, determining that they should not have to face housing discrimination when they returned.

“41’s” appointments of Colin Powell as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Louis Sullivan as secretary of Health and Human Services, both African Americans, have been noted favorably. So has his signing of the Americans With Disabilities Act, and less favorably, his slow response to the AIDS crisis, the Supreme Court nomination of Clarence Thomas and his pardon of Iran-Contra figures.

At least as consequential, however, were Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1989, the first Gulf War in 1991, and the groundwork laid for the Republican Party’s rightward, dog-whistle politics by Bush’s embrace of the Willie Horton ad in his 1988 campaign.

These issues are significant for what they tell us about today’s political environment and the continuing battle between the press and government for reliable information. Many reports lauded Bush’s skills on the international stage in the aftermath of the Cold War, but skilled in how many ways?

Eugene Scott wrote Dec. 3 in the Washington Post, “The coming days will be spent recalling fondly a time when a president could not turn to social media to attack Americans protesting racism on the football field or when presidents rebuked white supremacists with a harshness that seemed sincere.

“But that does not mean that Bush’s presidency was without the accusations of racism that led so many black Americans to look at the GOP negatively then and perhaps even more so today. And for many of those black Americans, understanding why so many within their community look at Trump’s party negatively starts with looking to GOP leaders of the past. . . .”

Peter Beinart of the Atlantic was even more direct. “Race is crucial to any comparison of George H. W. Bush to the presidents who have succeeded him,” he wrote on Dec.2. “Yes, Bush was a personally decent man who respected the norms of his office. But so was Obama. It wasn’t only Bush’s personal respectability that made his presidency less rancorous.

“It was his racial respectability, the fact that he personified a racial hierarchy that has since been unsettled by demographic change. Since Bush, two forms of presidential legitimacy — democratic and racial — have diverged. One group of Americans has spent the last two decades seething about white presidents who didn’t win the popular vote. Another has spent the last decade seething about a black president whose very Americanism they did not accept.

“Why are voter fraud and voter suppression bigger topics today than when Bush was president? Because it has become harder for white Americans to elect presidents unless they either keep people of color from voting or reject their votes as illegitimate. In 2020, the white share of the American electorate is predicted to drop to 67 percent. That, more than any other single factor, is why America is unlikely to elect a president who enjoys the same uncontested legitimacy as George H. W. Bush anytime soon.”

NewsOne reported on Dec. 1, “As of early Saturday morning, ‘Willie Horton’ was a top trending topic on Twitter, showing that news of Bush’s death was evoking not-so-fond memories of the 53-second ad intended to send white voters flocking to the polls to vote for the then-vice president in theoretical exchange for protection from the alleged hoards of Black criminals.”

Horton says the media and the politicians didn’t even get his name right. ” ‘I’m not this picture they paint — dumb nigger. You follow?’ Horton said in [a] 2015 interview with The Marshall Project. ‘I hate to use that word, but that’s the picture they painted. “He’s uneducated, he’s this, he’s that.” I never lived up to that name that they painted with that picture, which was “Willie.” My name is William. No one has ever called me ‘Willie.’ ”


Horton told the Marshall Project, “No one has ever called me Willie.”

David Greenberg, historian and Rutgers University professor, said Friday on NPR’s “Morning Edition, “Too often, I think, Bush put his principles aside and
let this new angrier brand of conservatism take over.”

What deserves more attention is the media’s own role in the terrorism of the Bush era, as described by critics.

For example, Amy Goodman reported Tuesday on her “Democracy Now!” “Last month, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Washington to pay reparations to Panama over what was widely seen as an illegal invasion.”

Goodman played an excerpt from an Oscar-winning documentary, “Panama Deception,” in which progressive author Michael Parenti said, “The performance of the mainstream news media in the coverage of Panama has been just about total collaboration with the administration. Not a critical perspective. Not a second thought.”

Parenti says on his web page: “The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology.”

Greg Grandin, who teaches history at New York University, wrote Tuesday in the Nation, “Bush’s wars in Panama and the Persian Gulf should be remembered for gratuitous killing. On the heels of the fall of the Berlin Wall, his 1989 invasion of Panama established the legal and political foundation (as I’ve written here) for his son’s catastrophic invasion of Iraq in 2003.

“The killing in Panama was on a smaller scale than in the Persian Gulf, but it was still horrific: Human Rights Watch wrote that even conservative estimates of civilian fatalities suggest ‘that the rule of proportionality and the duty to minimize harm to civilians…were not faithfully observed by the invading U.S. forces.’

“That’s an understatement. Civilians were given no notice. The University of Panama’s seismograph marked 442 major explosions in the first 12 hours of the invasion, about one major bomb blast every two minutes. Fires engulfed the mostly wooden homes, destroying about 4,000 residences. Some residents began to call the ravaged Panama City neighborhood of El Chorrillo ‘Guernica’ or ‘little Hiroshima.’ After hostilities ended, bodies were shoveled into mass graves.

” ‘Buried like dogs,’ said the mother of one of the civilian dead.

“This was followed by the Highway of Death in Bush’s Persian Gulf. . . .”

Writing in Newsweek in 2017, Peter Eisner recalled that Bush felt he had to fight media characterizations of him as a “wimp.”

“Bush justified the invasion — code-named Operation Just Cause— on national security grounds. [Gen. Manuel] Noriega, he said, was a drug dealer who had declared war on the United States, threatened the lives of Americans living in Panama and now threatened the security of the Panama Canal. None of that was proved true. . . .

“As Newsday’s Latin America correspondent, I reported from Panama before, during and after the invasion. The United States spent hundreds of millions of dollars to attack a country that offered little resistance. Several miles from the city, billion-dollar stealth bombers hit a Panamanian airfield to stop a tiny air force that had no planes there. Residents of Panama City were at home preparing for Christmas when the American bombs blasted the unlucky neighborhood around Noriega’s military headquarters, igniting fires that killed scores of people. Panama’s police force and army dissolved, criminals broke out of jail, and looters rampaged through the city.

“After less than two weeks, it was over. More than 20 [American] soldiers and three civilians had died, while estimates of Panamanian casualties ranged from 300 to more than 2,000, most of them civilians. Once, during a reporting trip, I saw a charred human torso in a burned-out car and a heap of corpses festering in an open room at the city morgue.

“Later, after U.S. troops attacked a military academy, I saw the brains of young cadets splattered on the walls.

“The American press grudgingly approved of the invasion. ‘Mr. Bush was not obliged to act,’ The New York Times editorialized the morning after, ‘but he was justified in doing so…. The President acted in response to real risks.’ Bush got what he had wanted: Not long afterward, his poll numbers began to rise. . . .”

On “Democracy Now!” co-host Juan Gonzalez told his audience Tuesday that he reported on the invasion then for the Daily News in New York.

“[A]fter much protest, they agreed to send one plane of reporters on the second day,” he said. “And I was reporting for the Daily News back then and participated in that plane flight. We were held. The press was actually held by the military on one of the military bases, until several of us protested and were able to actually break free. We had to escape the American military base to actually be able to go out and cover the war. But most of the press treated this, as you say, illegal invasion as a liberation effort.”

Grandin replied, “Yeah. Well, part of the remedy to overcome the Vietnam syndrome was figuring out how to control the press. There was an analysis that the press had gone off reservation in Vietnam, that they had developed their independent sources, that they weren’t listening to the Pentagon, that they were critically analyzing the war, that a whole generation, a whole cohort, of investigative journalists —Sy Hersh, Michael Herr — cut their teeth in Vietnam and were critical of U.S. foreign policy. That was a problem that needed to be solved. And Panama allowed them to try out different ways. And you experienced it directly when you covered Panama. And they just got better at it, until they got to — until they got to the first Gulf War and the second Gulf War, where the press were kept in embedded coverage and all of that. . . .”

Iraqi-American Andy Shallal: ‘Very, Very Horrific’

Andy Shallal, a prominent Iraqi-American activist and restaurateur in Washington, hosts a talk show on WPFW-FM, part of the Pacifica chain, with economist and columnist Julianne Malveaux. They began their Dec. 3 show, “Business Matters,” also known as “Works in Progress,” with a discussion of George H.W. Bush.

Shallal: “I’m not qualified to talk about somebody’s character. . . . It’s often about policies, right? How do they impact people? And I think he impacted people in a very, very horrific way. I come from Iraq, as many people know, and he set up the whole idea of the WMDs [weapons of mass destruction] and the invasion, the pretext of the invasion.

Andy Shallal
Andy Shallal

“No one should forget that April Glaspie, who was the ambassador to Iraq from the United States, gave the green light to [Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein to go ahead and invade [Kuwait], that we don’t really get involved in Arab-Arab conflicts. And once the invasion happened, there was this big media blitz coming out. In fact, there was a lot of conversation. They hired a P.R. firm, and brought some Kuwaiti dissidents to talk about the horrors that were happening in Kuwait with the invasion from Saddam Hussein.

“It is not to say that Saddam Hussein was a nice guy in any way, shape or form, but the impact of what H.W. Bush did was devastating, killed hundred of thousands of children, depleted uranium issues, all kinds of issues, there was a bombing of civilian shelters, intentional bombing of civilian shelters that caused death and destruction of hundreds of people inside shelters who were just trying to get away from these bombs, but they were experimenting with this new weaponry to try to see whether these weapons can penetrate very deep, deep bunkers.

Malveaux: “I remember that.

Shallal: “So all of that stuff was under H.W. Bush. And we can’t forget that. We can’t just say he was this amazing character. Like I don’t know anything about him. I’ve never met him. I can’t talk about his character. I can talk about the impact his policies had on people, and it’s just awful.

Malveaux: “. . . I do think it’s overwhelming that so many people have good things to say about him personally. Colin Powell talking about his humility.

Shallal: “Well, that’s another one. Colin Powell is not exactly one of my faves. Put it that way.

Malveaux: “But anyway, . . . (mentions that Condoleezza Rice was on television that morning speaking of Bush) you’re right, our culture does not encourage us to speak ill of the dead. But that’s personally. From a policy perspective, there’s plenty to say to indict this president.

Shallal: “I’ll bet you can find a lot of people to say nice things about Trump. . . .”

Citing a 1992 report by Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, Mehdi Hasan reported Dec. 1 for the Intercept,”By January 1992, Beth Osborne Daponte, a demographer with the U.S. Census Bureau, was estimating that Bush’s Gulf War had caused the deaths of 158,000 Iraqis, including 13,000 immediate civilian deaths and 70,000 deaths from the damage done to electricity and sewage treatment plants. Daponte’s numbers contradicted the Bush administration’s, and she was threatened by her superiors with dismissal for releasing ‘false information.’ (Sound familiar?) . . .”

Carole Simpson, top, center, moderates "town hall" presidential debate in 1992 among H. Ross Perot, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.
Carole Simpson, top, center, moderates “town hall” presidential debate in 1992 among candidates H. Ross Perot, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

Carole Simpson: Race Did Not Matter Much

“In all of the glowing tributes I have read about President Bush, I haven’t seen any involving his position on race. Let me do that. I covered him for 8 years when he was Vice President, and his losing campaign against Ronald Reagan. I knew him, his family and staff pretty well.

“He found out I was Episcopalian as he was, and while on the trail in North Carolina, he asked me to go to church with him Sunday morning. It was unspoken but well known that the church was rich and ‘blacks need not apply.’ Republican officials knew the congregants had the big money and they weren’t thrilled I was tagging along. I was the only reporter with George (I got to call him that). We didn’t say anything but we knew we were going to integrate that church.

“Walking in, I heard him tell a Secret Service agent to ‘Look out for Carole.’ We came down the aisle and I could feel the pointed looks. They might have been directed towards Bush, but I felt the stares were aimed at the black woman walking beside him.

“After the service, I stayed close to him as he greeted the crowd and shook hands. His efforts to include me in introductions were met with hostility. But when it was all over, we agreed it was some day. During the time I spent with him, from meeting kids at an inner city school to attending a gospel church to holding starving babies in the Sudan, he showed no difference between blacks and whites. Yes, I know the Willie Horton campaign ad, but it was not his idea.
When I moderated the 1992 presidential debate, I could tell President Bush was performing poorly. He would lose the election. While I didn’t like some of his policies I did like — maybe loved — George and Barbara Bush. I truly believe that to them, race did not matter much, if at all.”

After 24 years, Carole Simpson retired from ABC News in 2006 to become senior leader-in-residence at Emerson College’s School of Communication in Boston. She posted this Dec. 2 on Facebook.

Allison Davis: Passing the Peace

“When I was at NBC News, I was often thrown on the campaign trail. I remember a weekend trip to Iowa before the ’88 election. As a good Episcopalian, I always tried to find a nearby Episcopal church if I was away from home. I did so to get away from the story … to enter a more contemplative place to prepare me for what would be a hectic week.

Allison Davis
Allison Davis

“I found a church not far from our Des Moines hotel and I walked a few blocks to worship there. I went with a colleague and unfortunately, the walk was longer than we thought. We arrived a bit late. The church was crowded. Most every eye was on the two of us as we were seated.

“I glanced around the sanctuary. It was clear that I was the only one of color in that large gothic space. As we were seated, I noticed that the pew directly in front of us was full and I saw how comfortable the group seemed to be with the liturgy; not looking much at the program or prayer book. Like me, they knew much of it by heart. I assumed that they were members of this church.

“Experiencing ‘the peace’ at a church far from your home can tell you a lot about the place. Is this a warm congregation who lives their faith or will ‘the peace’ be an awkward and uncomfortable formality. In almost all the churches I visited while on the road, I was the only Black. When there was a call for visitors to stand, I stood out. I couldn’t hide behind the bible or drop my head into the program. They all knew I was there and that I wasn’t a member. I also knew that this Des Moines church would be no different. There would be no hiding.

“After his sermon, the rector announced ‘the peace of the Lord be with you’ … and we responded accordingly, ‘and also with you’. It was then that the family in the pew directly in front of ours turned around simultaneously to embrace us.

“I was ready to put them to the test. How would they receive me … the only person of color in the place. I figured I’d disarm them right away. I’d put on my best smile, extend my hand and wait to see their reaction.

“Will they be tentative; surprised to see someone who didn’t look like them … or a little too exuberant, wanting to show me just how Christian they were but praying that I wasn’t there to join the flock? I shook the first hand before I lifted my head to see his face.

“It didn’t take me long to realize that I was about to share ‘the peace’ with the presidential candidate and his family. One by one, the Bush family stretched out their hands in peace. They were warm and sincere and though I knew that Sunday would continue to be the most segregated day of the week in that church, we shared something in common that Sunday morning — our faith and the fact that we were all just wanderers finding a place to worship on that morning in the way we had grown accustomed, remembering the generations before us who had practiced this faith.

“Since his death, I’ve read several negative postings reminding us of his politics, why he was a one-term president and why we shouldn’t shower him with any accolades … but today, as his church, as OUR church celebrates his life in faith, I will choose to focus on that Sunday in Iowa when we were more alike than not — people guided by our faith in the house of the Lord. May the peace of the Lord be with you George H.W. Bush.”

Allison Davis, a co-founder of the National Association of Black Journalists, is executive director of Arts Horizons, an arts education organization based in Teaneck, N.J. She posted this Sunday on Facebook.

Additional links, Dec. 16:

 

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