Spin The Media And Race Rhetorical Analysis

November 4, 2008 the date when the whole world fell silent in the anticipation of the result of the 2008 US presidential election. November 4, 2008 the date when Barack Hussein Obama became the first African- American who was elected the president of the United States. This critical analysis examines the article: “The Politics of Cognitive Dissonance: Spin, the Media, and Race (and Ethnicity) in the 2008 US Presidential Election”. The article was published by Marilyn Lashley, who is employed in Howard University, in December 2009. Marilyn Lashley’s main point is, first of all, that even in the contemporary era voters vote not for the candidate with strong attitude on the essential issues but the candidate with whom they have a similar cultural
identity and this is the reason why the number of John McCain’s supporters has exceeded the number of Barack Obama’s supporters. Big parts of the author’s focus are the concepts of “spinning” and cognitive dissonance which have been used by the Republican Party to benefit the Republican candidate. Examples of these techniques such as presenting falsified information about the religion of Barack Obama, accurate time choosing to announce the news, focusing on the race of Barack Obama rather than his stances on important issues are given in the article. However, neither spinning nor the politics of cognitive dissonance prevented Barack Obama from winning the 2008 US presidential election.
The author gives several arguments regarding the pre-election situation during the 2008 US presidential election. The pre-election situation is examined mainly from the perspective of African-Americans which leads to the conclusion that subjectivity presents in the author’s arguments. Marilyn Lashley examines race as a problem, she points out that there is a possibility that white people will not vote for Barack Obama because of him being black, however, race can be viewed as a positive side because black people will vote for Barack Obama. The author does not examine this viewpoint because this would mean that there is a racial discrimination in the voting behavior of African-Americans. Moreover, the author proves her arguments about the existence of racism in the voting behavior of white people with non-credible evidences and refrains from giving clear conclusion to the article as the author avoids looking at the situation broadly and from different perspectives; this makes the objectivity of the author questionable as well.
Throughout the article, the author looks at the pre-election situation from the perspective of African-Americans and avoids inspecting the situation from the viewpoint of European Americans. The word “racism” is defined in the article, although not explicitly, only as the discrimination against black people. Marilyn Lashley provides the readers with examples which show that people are worried that Barack Obama’s race decreases his chances of gaining the victory in the election. However, the term “racism” indeed can be defined differently if we look from another perspective. Racism is not only the discrimination against black people, but also the discrimination against white people. It helps us to investigate the role of race from another aspect which has not been touched by the author of the article and makes the article prone to bias. Race of Barack Obama has also a positive impact on his success because of African-Americans who vote for him due to his race. There is an important theory, the theory of “Black Voter Turnout” which says that during the 2008 US presidential election first time in the history of the United States 65,2% of black people have registered to vote in the election, mainly because of Barack Obama’s race (Tasha et. all 2009, 995-1022). This huge number can also be interpreted as the racism by African-Americans; however the article does not include this point of view and focuses solely on the discrimination against black people. Another essential indication of author’s biasness is that 95% African American voted for Barack Obama and this also was not included in the article. Moreover, from this 95% of the African- Americans, 50% did it because of Barack Obama’s race. Because of the reason that African-Americans make up only 10% of the votes, the results of the elections would not change even if black people voted for John McCain (Laenen 2008). Even though the results of the elections would not change this does not erase the fact that the concept of racism has presented in the voting decision of African-Americans. These two evidences prove that the author neglects extremely crucial evidence of racism in the actions of African- Americans which confirm the subjectivity of the author’s stances.
Moreover, in order to prove the presence of discrimination against black people and not contradict the main ideas of the article, the author does not look at the situation largely and uses non-credible sources.
The author continually returns to the point that the increase number of people vote for the candidate who has the same cultural integrity as they do. That is why one of the author’s arguments is that people are wary of the discrimination towards Barack Obama because of his race. In order to justify this argument, the author provides the comments written by people in the blogs. One of the comments was even written by an anonymous person. These people write that white privilege and discrimination against black people still exist and this benefits the Republican Candidate. First of all, blogs are not the credible and reliable source to use in order to support the arguments. It is difficult to identify the real situation by looking only at two comments that have been given by the author. It is not excluded that there have been people, from the same blogs that the author uses, who on the contrary comments that white privilege does not exist anymore and that race does not play an important role in the election, what matters is the stances of the candidate. This is indeed more logical because Barack Obama eventually has won the elections. Similarly, other people may write that they afraid of the discrimination by black people against white ones, but this would obviously
refute the author’s definition of racism. The fact that the author chooses only the comments where people write about the existence of racism is a vital evidence of author’s biasness.
In addition, the author avoids giving a clear conclusion at the end of her essay, which can be interpreted as the lack of evidences and biasness in the author’s view.
While reading the article it was difficult not to notice the tone which indicated the strong preference of the author for African-Americans. A substantial share of the article focuses on the negative role of race, the politics of cognitive dissonance and spin on the election. However, despite all the arguments that have been provided by the author, Barack Obama wins the election. This circumstance extremely contradicts the thesis statement and supporting claims of the article because it is stated there that there is a huge role of race, spin and cognitive dissonance in the voters’ decision. The winning of the election by Barack Obama leads to the conclusion that, first of all, race of Barack Obama haven’t played a negative role in the election and even though there have been the politics of cognitive dissonance and spin, people vote according to their own analysis. Probably, in order not to refute the author’s own arguments and personal opinion, she has decided not to give a formal conclusion and finishes the article by discussing the benefits Barack Obama’s election bring to the USA and Canada. This can also be considered as the subjectivity of the article, because objective article looks at the situation from different perspectives even if it contradicts the arguments in order not to be
biased. Due to the reason that the author looks at the pre-election situation only from one point of view, from the point of view of African- Americans, we arrive to the result that the arguments in the article are biased. The racism that has been described in the article is the racism from the viewpoint of African-Americans, meaning that the racism in the article is referred as the racial discrimination against black people. However, the racism can be viewed as the racial discrimination against white people as well. The author does not include this essential point in her article which is viewed as biasness. Moreover, the author uses the comments of anonymous people as an evidence to support her arguments which also refers as biasness. In addition, the author refrains from giving clear conclusion to her article which means that she underemphasizes important evidences that contradict the author’s arguments and this, in turn, is also considered as biasness.
Objectivity is the main feature of a good article. Looking at the situation from different point of views even if it contradicts the arguments is essential in order not to seem biased and in order people to trust the author’s arguments. The article that this critical analysis examines, unfortunately, has failed to follow this crucial point which creates a huge number of questions about the objectivity and truthfulness of the arguments that are used in the article.