FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
I'm Farai Chideya, and this is NEWS & NOTES.
Our bevy of bloggers takes on politics and more, specifically, what did Jesse Jackson say about the next generation of young black politicians and what would Jesus do about BET?
With us, we've got Gina McCauley, her blog is called What About Our Daughters. And Duane Brayboy writes the blog Black Informant.
Hey folks.
Mr. DUANE BRAYBOY (Blogger): Hey.
Ms. GINA McCAULEY (Blogger, What About Our Daughters): Hey, Farai. Happy new year.
CHIDEYA: Yes, thank you. How you doing?
Ms. McCAULEY: I'm great.
CHIDEYA: So, earlier in the show, we heard from California Congresswoman Maxine Waters and she endorsed Hillary Clinton for president. So black Congress people have been split over who to endorse. Gina, you first. Were you surprised by Maxine Water's endorsement?
Ms. McCAULEY: Actually, I'm not. My impression is that the African-American women in the caucus, at least publically, the ones who have been most vocal have come out in favor of Hillary Clinton. In fact, I think most of the Hillary Clinton supporters in the caucus have been quite vocal with their support.
So I wasn't surprised that she came out and that - I brought this up and this is something that I've talked about on the blog and on the Afrosphere Google group, is questioning whether or not Senator Barack Obama did enough to amass support within the traditional African-American political establishment before he rang in because Hillary Clinton - I think the difference between them that I've said before is that Hillary Clinton has allies and Barack Obama has fans. And…
CHIDEYA: Mm-hmm.
Ms. McCAULEY: …Hillary Clinton's allies will go out there. Not only will they fight for her, they will fight instead of her, because their political lives, I think in their minds are tied to her. And so you see the fervor that John Lewis and Charlie Rangel and some of the other CBC members have come out with in defense of Hillary Clinton that. So a certain extent, Barack Obama doesn't have the same depth on his bench, but it South Carolina, he didn't need it. So…
CHIDEYA: Well, Duane, there was one of the bloggers we've had on skeptical brother wrote this headline. Maxine Waters sells out to Hillary Clinton. Is that assume that endorsing anyone but the black men is a sellout, which is something we've talk a lot bout including our trip to South Carolina and people say, no, what you should decide on the issues, but what people say and what people think are often two different things.
Mr. BRAYBOY: Yeah, I agree and I think what Gina - I think Gina actually hit the nail on the head there. I think, Gina, you have something on your site yesterday, saying - I can't - I do know…
Ms. McCAULEY: They - yeah.
Mr. BRAYBOY: …note any on Web site. But, you know, basically, they call her dumb.
Ms. McCAULEY: You won't say it.
Mr. BRAYBOY: What was the woman's name again? I'm going blank here.
Ms. McCAULEY: Dr. Maya Angelou.
Mr. BRAYBOY: Called her a ho, because she's…
Ms. McCAULEY: A ho.
Mr. BRAYBOY: …because she chose Hillary over Barack. And that's the kind of mindset, unfortunately that you have out there, you know. I just…
CHIDEYA: So you're talking about one of the people who posted on the blog?
Ms. McCAULEY: No, no, no. There's a popular gossip…
Mr. BRAYBOY: Yes. And this was the actual person…
Ms. McCAULEY: There's a popular…
Mr. BRAYBOY: Go ahead, Gina.
Ms. McCAULEY: There's a popular gossip blog that any African-American who's come out on behalf of Hillary Clinton, from Magic Johnson to Charlie Rangel, anybody he's labeled them a sellout, and the women had been labeled hos. And he has, our he, or they have a series of post called Ho sit-down. And yesterday, someone e-mailed me and I went to this site, and there's a picture of the 80-something year-old Maya Angelou, you can see the ravages of the stroke that I think she's had. And over her name is ho, sit down. And there are probably a thousand comments people are very angry.
I have a post on What About Our Daughters about it. You can see a screen capture of it in What About our Daughters back in November. I started to address this whole idea that a vote for Barack Obama is somehow and indication of racial loyalty.
My argument has been always have been, that African-Americans should be able to vote for whoever they think is in their best interest without it being an indication of their racial loyalty and the idea that the loyalty of African-American women who are raising almost 70 percent of African-American children alone, that their loyalty would be questioned, is ridiculous. And we ought to be able to disagree without people being labeled sellouts. But it's gotten ridiculous online for them to labeled Dr. Maya Angelo a Ho, because she came out and support a Hillary Clinton - it blows my mind.
Mr. BRAYBOY: Yeah, I was hoping.
Ms. McCAULEY: You can go read the post and post about it on What about Our Daughter and contact the sponsors who are appearing side by side with this picture of the 80-something year old Maya Angelo, being labeled a Ho because she endorsed Hillary Clinton.
CHIDEYA: All right. Gina, I want to make sure we touched on a topic that you know a lot about. You spoke with Jesse Jackson exclusively for essence.com. Where were you guys physically in the world and what did you talk about?
Ms. McCAULEY: Oh, my goodness. I thought he - they said he was in Indiana. Jesse Jackson was in New Delhi, India, for the 60th anniversary of the assassination of Gandhi and I live here in Austin and we were connected through his scheduler. And we talked about a lot of stuff. You can read on essence.com, it's a pretty, you know, I think lengthy by magazine standards interview. But we talked about his current passion which is subprime lending, student loans. We talked a lot about that.
But I mainly wanted his view on the South Carolina race. So we talked about what the numbers meant as far as - of looking down the road in November. But I asked him a lot of questions that we as black bloggers have been discussing amongst ourselves, or actually brawling amongst ourselves about for the past three or four months. One of the big things that a lot of black bloggers have said, a lot of Barack Obama's supporters have said, is that they absolutely will not vote for Hillary Clinton because of the way that the Clinton machine has, in their opinion, treated the Obama campaign.
And I asked him that question and he didn't even pause when he responded. He was like, well, then I guess you're - they don't end up with some white-winged Republicans in the White House that have been stacked(ph) in the Supreme Court. One of the things that impressed me about Reverend Jackson is that questions that I've had, like for months, that commenters and bloggers could not answer, would not answer, he was able to provide the answer without pausing in a lengthy in-depth answer. And a lot of people have e-mailed me saying, we didn't know he was intelligent and thoughtful. Well, I was like, yeah, he is.
(Soundbite of laughter)
CHIDEYA: Well, Gina, I'm going to have to move on. We got one last topic, very little time. I'm going to go to you first, Duane.
In November, we talked about the Enough Is Enough campaign, about the protesters going out to the home of the CEO of Black Entertainment Television, BET. Now, there's another wrinkle, how black preachers stack up. Gina's blog has been vocal about this campaign. And do you think that black preachers who have now written a letter of support about BET - some of them - are out of line?
Mr. BRAYBOY: I guess I'm really mixed about this. This is something I've written about quite extensively on my site as well. And I take a different approach to that. And I'm like this pretty much. If you don't like the program, then turn to something that you like, you know. I've been in several conversations with people who regularly bash BET and most of them can't even tell me what exactly is on BET. They still have the mindset that BET is 90 percent or 100 percent booty-shaking videos when it's actually only 20 percent.
Now the bottom line is this, I think the whole - this is my opinion - I think that the whole anti-BET movement is very elitist. And the reason why I say that is because the anti-BET movement is no more represents all the black America than BET. Now why do I say this? Because like it or not, there is a demographic out there of black folks that do watch the videos in question on a regular basis. Now in short, if you're - basically what you're doing is that you're shoving your taste down their throats. In this movement…
CHIDEYA: I'm going to have to interrupt you just to give Gina a little teeny, and Gina, teeny taste. You think this is whack, question mark?
Ms. McCAULEY: Oh, I think it's - the only reason that these clergy were contacted by BET is to counteract the direct action by a minister in Maryland who's been given them a hard time for a few months. And also, there's a problem with BET's sponsoring a religious conference that these ministers who have signed this letter. And so you could go to What About Out Daughters, the whole thing is about to blow up or you could read the history of it. But I think it's inappropriate for them to play a part in an orchestrated campaign by Viacom to give the impression that men and women of faith are divided on the issue of BET.
CHIDEYA: All right.
Ms. McCAULEY: That's the only reason, yeah.
CHIDEYA: We have to wrap it up there. I want to thank you both.
Gina McCauley of "What About Our Daughters" from KUT in Austin, Texas and Duane Brayboy of Black Informant at KUCI in Irvine, California.
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