Location: Toronto CanadaWhy I support Barack Obama: The moment of my political awakening came as a teen was in 1960 when Kennedy was president. Not since Bobby Kennedy has a political leader inspired me the way Barack does. Seeing how he has the same impact on millions of others makes me think I can believe in America again, something this old cynic has had trouble doing for 30+ years.
Birth Date: November 3rd
Issues: equality / civil rights; civil liberties / privacy; foreign policy / security; economic fairness / security; environment / conservation; smart energy policy; public infrastructure / transportation; good government / ethics; affordable health care; education
Registered to Vote: Yes
He's a busy guy.
Making a difference
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Activity Index
Details
Activities
| Events Hosted | 1 0 1 | |
| Events Attended | 0 0 0 | |
| Calls made | 0 0 0 | |
| Doors Knocked | 0 0 0 | |
| Number of blog posts | 49 3 32 | |
| Donors to your personal fundraising | 0 0 0 | |
| Amount raised | $0.00 $0.00 $0.00 | |
| Groups Joined | 5 |
All in bold are from his page at Barack Obama's campaign site.
In a perfect world, you'd never have to meet Charley Johnson but, as Denzel says in Philadelphia, we don't live in a perfect world.
Bottom feeder Charley surfaced around the web recently with an article entitled "Palin Is 'Racist, Sexist, Vindictive, And Mean'" which opens:
"So Sambo beat the bitch!"
This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama's win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat's primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.
"It was kind of disgusting," Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the "lower 48" about life near the North Pole.
Then, almost with a sigh, she added, "But that's just Alaska."
Racial and ethnic slurs may be "just Alaska" and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.
First off, there's no reason for Lucille not to use her last name. She's identified as a waitress, as part Aboriginal and as a Lucille. If she really exists, she would have been easy to narrow down. Second off, real reporters don't base a claim on racism on one source. Real reporters ask, "Who else was present?" They get corroboration. Charley Johnson's not a real reporter. He is a Barack supporter.
Palin a racist? If he has evidence, he doesn't supply any and, get honest, "Sambo" isn't really a term a racist Palin's age would use. A racist that age might use any number of other terms if she were a racist but "Sambo" is really something that someone older, say someone who was a teen when JFK was president, would be familiar with. Which is why it's so very hard to take Charley Johnson's scribble seriously.
Another reason is, title aside, he wants to claim that he's outraged by Palin's remark. And where is the outrage? Over the name Barack was called. Setting the title aside, where is any indication that he thinks readers will be offended that Hillary was called a "bitch"?
Johnson's also written a 'follow up' where he explains his 'journalistic' methods and they may fool some people but they aren't journalistic at all.
Johnson's make a very strong charge against Palin in his opening paragraphs. You do not source a charge that huge to one person and certainly not to just one person you've never met. (Johnson reveals he's only spoken to her over the phone, once for ten minutes.) No respectable mainstream outlet would print Johnson's story.
If you're not suspicious that Johnson's putting his own words into other people's mouths, you're not reading closely. He next offers tales of Sarah Palin insulting indigenous people in Alaska yet paragraphs later he's referring "to the governor's igloo". Uh, who's making offensive comments and stereotyping, Johnson?
Despite the fact that news outlets have pulled reporters off other beats and sent them to Alaska to gather information on Palin, no major outlet's reported "racism" or, for that matter, had a conversation with a reporter claiming Palin cost them their job (he or she "now works for an oil company in Anchorage" according to Johnson).
Johnson offers in his 'explanation' that Lucille is in her fifties or sixties and that's supposed to provide something. However, he explains something else about Lucille. She's not just a waitress, she also cleans the home of his friend who hates Palin, the friend he states hooked him up with Lucille. We don't think Lucille exists. However, journalists know that a 'source' who works for a source (who hates someone) is not necessarily telling the truth. Meaning that as Lucille's employer, Johson's friend could have asked his cleaning woman to lie to Johnson for ten minutes and, needing the money, she could have. That's what makes her suspect if she exists. (Again, we don't believe she does.) And no journalist would run with such a charge on the basis of one source especially not someone dependent upon money from a Palin-hater.
We'd further note that "BFF" and "bro" (among other terms Johnson utilizes repeatedly in his writing) really aren't terms we'd associate with a professional journalist who was a teenager when JFK was president.
The story smells and, frankly, so does "Charley Johnson." Having given out Lucille's employment, race/ethnicity and general age, we'd suggest that Lucille has nothing to left to hide because, as Johnson can't stop pointing out, Alaska is such a 'small' state.
Had Charley Johnson just posted it at his own site, that would be one thing. But many outlets have amplified it. It's not only at Black Agenda Report, OpEd News and many other places, it's quoted repeatedly at the official Barack campaign website -- you know, the same one that has the "Fight The Smears" thing going.
