Boycott Time Magazine

I'm all for various points of view being expressed, including hard hitting and tough.

As far as I'm concerned, however, this goes beyond the pale.

This presidential election has not lacked for clowns, and in a circus Herman Cain fits right in. But as the Black clown, Cain’s foot-in-mouth moments mostly involve insulting the Black community. This could be to establish his independence from the community in order to earn his bona fides with the GOP electorate or a way of appeasing the white conservatives he’s courting. Or it could be that his foot and his mouth are magnetized. Whatever the reason, as a Black person, the Hermanator experience has been as distasteful as rancid, spoiled, stinky, curdled milk.

Cain is a clown. You see it in the way he constantly mollifies white audiences with self-effacing, racialized comedy that borders on minstrelsy (referring to himself as “black-walnut ice cream” or suggesting that the Secret Service call him “Cornbread”). You see it in his stunning gaps in knowledge and understanding of foreign policy and domestic affairs. He says if you don’t have a job, don’t blame Wall Street, because it’s your fault, which in a crippling recession with historically high unemployment numbers means he’s either frighteningly blind or offensively ignorant. This is not a man of serious intellect or realistic solutions or admirable character. This is a buffoon.

If something with similar insults had been written about Barack Obama when he was campaigning, it would have been a cold day in Hell before a magazine like Time would publish it.  And - rightly so.

Publish a column that criticizes the man, his beliefs and his actions, if you wish.  But something like this is not deserving of a spot in any contemporary publication that deems itself to be respectable journalism.

Clearly, therefore, Time has exited responsibility and all that comes with it.

Comments

[Donald Mamula]

Time labels their "Ideas" section with this line: "Essential Insights. Great Debates. Informed Opinions." Seems like they have none of those.

[Peg]

Gee, Don. Putting this in the "Primal Bigotry. Infantile Insults. Ignorant Idiocy" section surely would have been more apt.

[Flu-Bird]

TIME once carried big time article on veganism,they push this evolution nonsense they have insulted the vets of WW II with their iwo jima parody pushing this GO GREEN poppycock and they grossed us out with their repulsive front cover of that iceman they certianly deserve to go bankrupt