Post
Part of what we're seeing is the long-foretold victory of Lee Atwater's covert racism strategy. Forty years later and journalists still have no ability to accurately describe a racist who doesn't use the n-word in public.
W.E.D.em Boyz
@leftistwonk.bsky.social
· 3d
Again this should inspire wall-to-wall media coverage for months. The crowning achievement of the Civil Rights Movement is dead. Black people just lost all of their remaining political power in the South. This is a monumental moment in American history that simply isn't being treated as such.
3:44 AM · May 8, 2026
“You cain’t call ‘em racists ‘cause you don’t know what’s in their hearts” is such a bullshit standard, especially when their words and actions leave no doubt.
The standard shouldn't be "being racist" but "doing racism." Maybe they are racist, maybe they are just greedy, maybe it's just negligence? In the end, it doesn't really matter.
Atwater of course, but I think we’re also seeing the long tail of Ailes.
We’re now fifty years into a project where the only journalists with any appreciable national audience are selected at least in part by being themselves non n-word racist enough to be Very Serious and not “activists.”
Can they even do that? I mean I think trump himself could drop the n word on a stage in front of a thousand people and we’d get headlines like “controversy stirs after ‘racially charged’ White House statement”
"LBJ used that word all the time, and he's a liberal hero"
I have no faith that journalists wouldn’t quietly pretend they never heard it if a lot of these racists did.
well also now almost all journo's owners are the racists and doing all this on purpose.
I don't think they understand that the parameters of US society has permanently changed. They can do this in dark red states but they're not gonna be able to hide from doing it everywhere else. They were too busy sniffing their own asses to realize everybody else could smell it too.
I honestly think they have the ability, but years of the right crying "liberal media" at any coverage that is not completely flattering to them has made the media believe it is unfair to call an obvious racist a racist.
Call out their behavior. If someone slaps another across the face and says it's a caress, I think we can categorize it as assault.
If the result of the law is racist actions, then de facto it is racism.
Watch MSNow! Melissa Marie and Mark Elias were on yesterday with Nicole Wallace and holy smokes. The steam was rising. They are accurately describing the racism.
Atwater repented; good for his immortal soul but too late for practical purposes.
Apparently, he never cracked the tape his bible. From Wikipedia:
"Ed, when we were cleaning up his things afterwards, the Bible was still wrapped in the cellophane and had never been taken out of the package, which just told you everything there was. He was spinning right to the end."
A lot of journalists are either actively ok with this, or working for some billionaire that is enthusiastic about this
The strategy wouldn't be possible without people with a lot of money buying every piece of media there is and making it possible