{"id":2235,"date":"2004-08-02T09:56:39","date_gmt":"2004-08-02T14:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/2235.html"},"modified":"2004-08-02T09:56:39","modified_gmt":"2004-08-02T14:56:39","slug":"bush-embraces-racial-profiling-for-journalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/bush-embraces-racial-profiling-for-journalists\/","title":{"rendered":"Bush embraces racial profiling — for journalists"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the 2000 campaign, Bush said<\/a>, in a rather confusing way, that he’s opposed to racial profiling.<\/p>\n

“One of the problems I have with oftentimes what’s happening in Washington, D.C., there’s too much group thought; there’s too much attempt to lump people in groups and pit one group of people against another. And that leads to disharmony, it leads to the balkanization of America.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What he didn’t mention was that his campaign would embrace the practice<\/a> when it comes to journalists with non-traditional names.<\/p>\n

President Bush’s re-election campaign insisted on knowing the race of an Arizona Daily Star journalist assigned to photograph Vice President Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

A rally organizer for the Bush-Cheney re-election campaign asked Teri Hayt, the Star’s managing editor, to disclose the journalist’s race on Friday. After Hayt refused, the organizer called back and said the journalist probably would be allowed to photograph the vice president.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If there’s a rational explanation for this, I can’t think of it.<\/p>\n

The Daily Star photographer in question is Mamta Popat, who is of Indian ancestry. Apparently, since the campaign didn’t ask for racial information on other Daily Star staffers, including a writer who was on hand for the event, one has to assume BC04 was troubled by the photographer’s name.<\/p>\n

Two decisions were ultimately made in this situation, one good and one bad.
\n
\nThe newspaper clearly made the right call by refusing to cooperate with the campaign’s request.<\/p>\n

“It was such an outrageous request, I was personally insulted,” Hayt said later…. “One has to wonder what they were going to do with that information,” Hayt said. “Because she has Indian ancestry, were they going to deny her access? I don’t know.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s encouraging to see an editor stick up for her staff like this. I wonder if a less skeptical editor would have just gone along with the campaign’s request.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, one really has to wonder what in the world BC04 was thinking.<\/p>\n

Security precautions for such an event are the same used for those who go to the White House — attendees have to provide their name, date of birth and Social Security number. The Secret Service presumably runs a check on each person’s name to see if they have a criminal record and\/or represent a possible threat.<\/p>\n

For some inexplicable reason, the campaign felt it was necessary to add to this list of questions.<\/p>\n

Organizer Christine Walton asked for Popat’s race in telephone conversations with two other Star editors before she spoke to Hayt. They also refused to provide the information. Walton told Hayt that Popat’s race was necessary to allow the Secret Service to distinguish her from someone else who might have the same name.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Huh? That’s the best they can come up with? By that logic, everyone<\/i> should have to provide racial data. But that’s not how the campaign was operating.<\/p>\n

And for that matter, how many Mamta Popats with press credentials from the Arizona Daily Star was the campaign expecting, exactly?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 2000 campaign, Bush said, in a rather confusing way, that he’s opposed to racial profiling. “One of the problems I have with oftentimes what’s happening in Washington, D.C., there’s too much group thought; there’s too much attempt to lump people in groups and pit one group of people against another. And that leads […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2235\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}