Code Pink co-founder Medea Benjamin's repeated and
drug out heckling of President Obama during his drone policy speech is simply the
latest in a disgusting and damaging repeat act that has become almost ritual.
The White House announces a major policy speech by Obama. Then the predictable
happens. Either at the start or midway through his speech, the shouts from the
floor begin. The drone policy speech followed the act's script.
It's true that George W. Bush, Clinton, and Reagan
were at times heckled, and in Bush's case a shoe was tossed at him. But with
Obama the pattern and sheer numbers of times he's been heckled top anything any
former president has received. Counting Benjamin's eruption the president has
been heckled at least ten times. The topper was the infamous "you lie" rant
from Georgia Congressman Joe Wilson during his 2009 State of the Union address.
This pattern of public vilification
and insult of Obama during his speeches was set almost from the start of his
White House tenure when a small knot of black protestors verbally assailed the
president at a Florida stop in 2008 for allegedly not doing enough about
predatory lending. The pattern firmly took hold from there, and it virtually became
open season to disrupt an Obama speech anywhere and at any time. The Tea Party didn't
help matters with its incessant marches and rallies that routinely featured the
vilest, demeaning, and borderline racist depictions of Obama. The relentless
public heckling of Obama also stems from the even more insidious pattern of
pure hate and vilification that spews forth against Obama from a parade
of websites, bloggers, talk show jocks, and more than a few GOP officials with assorted
borderline racist digs and taunts. In
2011, Baylor University researchers tracked more than 20 Facebook page groups
and users and found them filled with racist venom aimed at Obama. There may be
even more of them today.
Obama had the dubious distinction of being the earliest presidential
contender to be assigned Secret Service protection on the 2008 campaign trail.
As the showdown with Republican presidential rival John McCain heated up in the
general election in 2008, the flood of crank, crackpot, and screwball threats
that promised murder and mayhem toward Obama continued to pour in. This
prompted the Secret Service to tighten security and take even more elaborate
measures to ensure his safety.
GOP leaders have on only the rarest of rare
occasions issued any public rebuke of the street side abusive depictions and the
torrent of verbal broadsides against Obama.
But then again why would they. The GOP has far superseded
any insult that a lone heckler could achieve in its self-designated role as
official heckler of Obama. There has not been a moment that has
gone by that top GOP congressional leaders have not called Obama out on some
issue. The framing of their criticism has not been polite, gentlemanly, or exhibited
the traditional courtesy and respect for the office of the presidency. This has
done much to create a climate of distrust, and vilification that has made it
near legitimate even expected that Obama be heckled. The GOP's official
heckling has taken many forms, all mean spirited and petty, rather than purely
the customary expression of opposition to policies that clashing political
parties and their leaders show toward each other. For instance, House Speaker
John Boehner, brashly told Obama in 2011 that he could not deliver his State of
the Union speech on the date that he chose. This was quickly followed by other
GOP leaders who loudly said that they would not even bother to attend Obama's
speech. Obama changed the date.
The subtle and overt
interplay of race, Obama's popularity, and the temptation to some of getting fifteen
seconds of fame, has become an irresistible and combustible mix. A heckler (s)
know that a well-timed shout at Obama is a sure fire guarantee to get massive
media attention.
Obama has taken two high
ground tacts that have in a sense emboldened some individuals to take extreme
license with him. He has steadfastly refused to attribute the official and
unofficial heckling to race or nasty, personal politics. He has also been steadfast
in standing firm when there's a verbal outburst during one of his speeches of
not lashing out at the offender. He noted as Benjamin was screaming her lungs
out even as she was being led away that he would "go off script." He responded
with understanding, congeniality, and indulgence. This took patience and showed
class. She was even handled with kid gloves in being escorted out.
But unfortunately, this
also can serve as a further cue for others to get it in their heads that it's
OK to belittle the president while he's speaking. This sends a tacit signal to
some that Obama is fair game for a face to face public bashing.
He isn't and shouldn't
be. But as the GOP has discovered and sadly far too many others, there's a lot
of mileage in making Obama the most publicly heckled president ever.
Earl Ofari Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His
new ebook is How the NRA Terrorizes
Congress--The NRA's Subversion of the Gun Control Debate ( Amazon ). He is an associate editor of New
America Media. He is a weekly co-host of the Al Sharpton Show on American Urban
Radio Network. He is the host of the weekly Hutchinson Report on KTYM 1460 AM
Radio Los Angeles and KPFK-Radio and the Pacifica Network.
Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter:
http://twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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