Uncle Tom’s Mansion

Armstrong Williams and the Punditocracy

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson 2005

1/11/05

http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/tom.htm

My client, an African American, brought up the topic of Armstrong Williams. "Are you doing an essay on him?"

"Probably" I replied. The fact of the matter was I had about a half dozen things I wanted to write about, and he was on the list, but not the top of the list. I was mulling over what to say about the man, and the payments he received from the Administration, that hadn’t been said thousands of times on hundreds of blogs and newspapers and on dozens of TV networks and radio shows.

"So what are you going to say about him?"

I grinned. "I’ll probably call him an Uncle Tom."

My client raised a finger. "We do not use that term," he declared. My client was fond of the royal "we." I suspected he wasn’t using the pronoun in that particular way this time.

"We don’t?"

"No. For one thing, what he did had nothing to do with his race, and he didn’t just betray black people."

OK, good point. I nodded. "I won’t call him an Uncle Tom then."

"Did you ever read Uncle Tom’s Cabin?"

Years ago, when I was a kid. It may have been in its first printing at that point.

He smiled. "Do you remember exactly how Uncle Tom died?"

As I said, it was quite some time ago. I shook my head.

"He was whipped to death for refusing to betray Eliza to the overseer and the master."

Well, I definitely wasn’t going to call Williams an Uncle Tom, then. Uncle Tom deserved better then that. Somehow, Williams never struck me as the type to sacrifice his life for a poor black girl over the wishes of a rich white man.

I thought about a David Corn piece I read about Williams. Corn appeared on a talk show with Williams, and another conservative pundit, a Latina named Linda Chavez. Chavez had expressed concern that Williams would reinforce the stereotype that right wing pundits of color had sold out their people to the Man.

Of course, Williams didn’t betray just black kids with his embracing of Putsch’s "No Child Left Behind" (or if you prefer, "No Child Left Alive"). He betrayed all kids.

Perhaps he didn’t. Maybe he really believed Putsch when Putsch said he was hoping to help poor kids with his program. Maybe. He claims he did – and that he really, truly supported NCLB.

Except, of course, for the odd fact that the admin paid him a cool $241,000 to support the program. Why pay a stooge to carry your water for you if he’s willing to do it for free? The admin isn’t really noted for giving away large sums of money to non-corporate types.

There’s also the fact that a lot of the journalists who are condemning Williams for taking money to support the admin do the exact same thing. The only difference is that they come right out and tell their audiences that they are in the pay of the {admin, major corporations, Fox News} AND they are ALSO journalists. They think if they are open about that, then it’s cool.

That’s one of the oddities about the morally bankrupt neofascists. They understand the letter of the law, and none of the spirit. Thus they are actually smug about such things as Fox News successfully defending in court its right to lie to the public, or the fact that Ollie North got off on a technicality and thus isn’t really a felon who betrayed his country. At least, not much. Not on his rap sheet. Thus he’s a good man.

In the neofascist mind, if a corporation takes advantage of loopholes in the law to bribe and coerce lawmakers, so long as they are open about the money changing hands, then it’s ok.

The really sad thing about Armstrong Williams isn’t that he got caught. The really sad thing is that the ONLY difference between him and a large number of mainstream journalists and pundits is that he tried to hide the bribe. Maybe the man actually had a slight sense of shame, which would put him well ahead of "news anchors" who are paid $8 million a year to carefully avoid rocking the boat and upsetting their corporate masters. Eight million a year doesn’t get you a great journalist; it just gets you a bought journalist.

In the end, that’s the only thing significant about Williams. He simply wasn’t out front about his corruption, the way much of the punditocracy is.

The admin claims Williams was an isolated case, but Corn says that Williams said he wasn’t the only one getting money under the table. Corn himself admits he has no idea if Williams actually knows of such cases, or is just trying a desperation "everyone does it" defense.

So I’m not going to call Williams an Uncle Tom, or any other name. I’m not going to Make An Example of him so I can inveigh against the hypocrisies and absurdities of the neofascist movement.

I’m just going to note that he’s a pretty typical journalist in America in 2005.