Team Obama is so desperate to change the subject from Obamacare that they sent top presidential aide Valerie Jarrett into “The O’Reilly Factor” to talk up Obama’s sudden distraction -- ahem, lifelong campaign to help young black men in rough neighborhoods.
O’Reilly took the conversation in a direction where no one in the PC media has dared to go: Obama’s failure to call out rappers like Jay-Z for their gangsta glamorization. [See video below. MP3 audio here.] The media has only used the Obamas’ friendship with Jay-Z and Beyonce as a measure of their hipness. O’Reilly pushed back, but Jarrett wouldn’t go there on gangsta rap:
O’REILLY: You have to attack the fundamental disease if you want to cure it. Now, I submit to you that you are going to have to get people like Jay-Z, all right, Kanye west, all of these gangsta rappers to knock it off. That's number one.
JARRETT: Well, I think that these boys -- what these boys need, they need is positive role models, which you said --
O’REILLY: Listen to me, listen to me. You got to get to where they live. All right? They idolize these guys with the hats on backwards and the terrible rock -- rap lyrics and the drug and all of that. You gotta get these guys. And I think President Obama can do it. And you got to put them on TV and the net and they have got to say ‘Knock it off. This is wrong.’ You got to get them all. Then you have got to get the president and first lady and every other -- you had Magic Johnson there today. He is a good guy. You have a bunch of these guys and a barrage, barrage, barrage and make it uncomfortable to have a baby out of wedlock. Make it uncomfortable to sell drugs. You’ve got to reverse the peer pressure. Do you see where I'm coming from here?
JARRETT: I see exactly what you are coming from. What we showed today is that there is evidence that there are wonderful programs out there that can inspire these young people. The president is a terrific role model. The room today was full of role models that these young boys can can look up to. And what we have to do is take what's working and take it to scale.
JARRETT: No, no, I'm just telling you that I think there is a lot of ways of approaching this --
O’REILLY: You had Colin Powell in there.
JARRETT: Terrific role model.
O’REILLY: Right, right, but they don't know who he is.
JARRETT: Actually I think they do.
O’REILLY: On the south side of Chicago.
JARRETT: Of course they know who Colin Powell is.
O’REILLY: They may, but he’s over here. No, it's these gangsta rappers, it's the athletes, it's the tattoo guys. You gotta get ‘em in there to tell these kids that you have got to stop the destructive behavior, or you are going to wind up in a morgue or prison.
JARRETT: I think don't underestimate those children. That’s what I would say to you.
O’REILLY: I don't underestimate anybody.
JARRETT: I think when the president of the United States looks at you and he says I believe in you, and I was just like you and you can be just like me, that's the perfect role model.
Jarrett also threw in “the First Lady” as a perfect role model. But these “perfect role models” aren’t brave enough to denounce the nastiest corners of black culture. See Brent Bozell's column from last summer:
Last September [2012], Obama (sort of) shared the stage with Jay-Z and Kanye West at the “Made In America Festival” in Philadelphia. The president appeared in a pre-recorded video to urge the assembled rap fans to vote, and oozed that he loves listening to Jay-Z on his i-Pod. After Obama’s message, West and Jay-Z finished with their hit “[N-words] in Paris.” In that song, Jay-Z raps, “What's 50 grand to a motherf—er like me, can you please remind me?”
Can’t you see Obama’s head bobbing along to that?
Days later, Jay-Z held a $40,000-a-plate fundraiser for Obama at his 40/40 club in Manhattan, which includes a tower of champagne bottles that cost $105,000. The rapper (and the Obama-loving press corps) was very quiet about this shindig. On the same day, Obama appeared on the Letterman show on CBS and lectured Mitt Romney that “if you want to be president, you’ve got to work for everybody, not just for some,” because people want a president who’s “not writing off a big chunk of the country.”
Who precisely is insensitive to black-on-black violence, black dropouts, and stubbornly high black unemployment? But this is the kind of shameless world Obama and his mediating minions make, and we’re supposed to shut up and live with it.
