Progressive Action New Hampshire

Oh noes! Say it isn’t so! Wealthy mega-corporations get caught enabling racist, Republican wingnuts who apparently for some reason feel compelled to stir fear and loathing for voting in the hearts of poor people in particularly contentious regions of the country.  No way! Isn’t capitalism like totally made to work with democracy? Read on my child.

The national move by Republicans all across the country on voter ID laws, efforts by the hapless James O’Keefe and company to prove something that doesn’t exist, just apparently isn’t enough to keep the hordes of unwashed home.  In two Midwestern states of Ohio and Wisconsin, according to Huffington Post, a local Ohio television news station and The Inquisitor,  low income and mostly minority occupied neighborhoods in Cleveland, Columbus and Milwaukee.

Pressured by local news organizations and a Cleveland Democratic politician to reveal who hired Clea Channel Outdoors to put up the billboards, Clear Channel instead decided to immediately remove the advertisements and put in their place conciliatory signs reading, “Voting is a Right not a Crime”.  Apparently the funding for the original advertisements came from a family owned trust account.

So let’s make this clear; it was so important for Clear Channel to leave the individual or group responsible for financing what they do not dispute was a clear attempt to intimidate poor and minority voters, in the ‘clear’ that they jumped up to literally cover their tracks by making nice, removing the offending speech and replacing it with a more positive message.

Nothing screams guilt more than furtive and quick efforts to hide from the light.  In a display of frighteningly obvious racism and classism, one can pretty much assume that Clear Channel and the geniuses who devised the signage scheme, figured no one would notice.   Because of course, in their racist minds, no one in minority and poor communities have the smarts to speak up or even notice when the dominant social group attempts to intimidate them.

From the gangland stereotypes of vicious thugs (black men in white middle class parlance) roaming the streets of poor neighborhoods selling crack to sex-hungry welfare cheating ‘hoes’ (any poor woman but usually targeting black women) to the picture cast constantly by conservative groups of vicious ballot busting gangster roaming around in low income neighborhoods rounding up mysterious political groupies paid to repeatedly enter their names on registration lists — so they can get Democrats in power to increase their welfare dependency…

What?  Yeah and if you, kind reader require ‘proof’ or exact quotes of the above, then you first should get out in the sun because living under rock not only is dangerous for your physical health, but ignorance doesn’t do much for your brain cells either.  Then proceed to get over your stupid self and get in the community because nothing cures ignorance better than some exposure to the light of truth.

Fantasies that could only be dreamed up in the heads of people who have no more familiarity with inner city neighborhoods than they do the surface of the moon. Fantasies dreamed up in the racist and classist minds of middle class white folks living in cul-de-sac neighborhoods stuffed with angry little white boys bouncing to rap music and dreaming of being the mean, overly virile black man of their racist imaginations.  Until they grow up a little more and learn to abandon their rebel ways and get ready for college, where they can then make sure everything stays in the lines and the vicious black and brown folks remain where they belong.  Hence the insightful, well heeled garbage that funded these billboards and the media giant that is more than happy to oblige the funder’s wishes.

What none of the articles bother to mention, is that this Outdoor Clear Channel is but just one portion of the media giant Clear Channel which owns nearly the entire US radio market and related concert/advertising venue interests and uses its behemoth power to bully its broadcasters and of course, also fool the public into believing that local radio stations really still exist.

So once again, with these billboards, the invisible wealthy trust that paid for the intimidating ads and the advertising agency more than happy to offer their services, we have proof positive that plutocracy does not equal democracy.  But yes, as Clear Channel and other media conglomerates would say, why look here, nothing to see.  Look! Look! Its Beyonce fighting with Jay-Z, its Brad Pitt walking with Angelina Jolie! Isn’t that far more interesting?  Yes, don’t you feel better now?