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Home > 'Nizza,' 'Behatch': The Time CNN's Jake Tapper Casually Mocked Black
Culture for Cheap Laughs
'Nizza,' 'Behatch': The Time CNN's Jake Tapper Casually Mocked Black Culture
for Cheap Laughs
By Max Blumenthal [1] / AlterNet [2]
September 20, 2017, 11:41 PM GMT
CNN host Jake Tapper has cultivated an image as the consummate centrist of
the Trump era, winning reams of positive publicity by bashing the president
at every opportunity while serving as a megaphone for the American national
security state [3] and its favorite voices on Capitol Hill. Tapper rose to
mainstream prominence from the progressive online news site, Salon.com [4],
where he covered the 2000 presidential campaign.
His former boss, Salon founder and ex-editor-in-chief David Talbot,
described him as an aggressive careerist who not only attacked right-wingers
like Trump, but who "showed signs of that irritating liberal media
establishment penchant for what I call 'policing the Left.'"
On July 18 this year, Tapper put his left-punching gloves on andtook to
Twitter [5] to launch an unprovoked dog whistle attack on the Women's March,
a protest movement that has drawn millions to anti-Trump events. Tapper's
beef stemmed from the Women's March honoring the birthday of radical black
feminist and fugitive from US prosecution Assata Shakur on its official
Twitter account. In the same tweet, Tapper jabbed Palestinian-American
activist Linda Sarsour, a constant target of alt-right vitriol [6], and
Chicago's Dyke March, which was under heavy attack [7] from the Israel lobby
for ejecting pro-Israel marchers from a rally for bearing flags resembling
those of the state of Israel.
"Shakur is a cop-killer fugitive in Cuba," Tapper complained [8]. "This,
ugly sentiments from @lsarsour & @dykemarchchi ...Any progressives out there
condemning this?" (The CNN host's broadside has been retweeted over 7500
times by now.)
When several Twitter users protested that Shakur's guilt was established [9]
only by a racially and politically biased prosecution, Tapper simply linked
back [10] to the FBI's online rap sheet, replying, "nope." (The FBI is
offering a $1 million reward for Shakur, who was found guilty of first
degree murder).
A Twitter battle soon ensued between Tapper and Sarsour, with Sarsour
accusing Tapper of "join[ing] the ranks of the alt-right" to attack her
online. After an exchange of pleasantries, Tapper pointed to [11] Sarsour's
diatribe against Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the veteran anti-Muslim activist and
serial fabricator, as an example [12] of "a certain extremism and ugliness
among progressive leaders." (Tapper recently promoted an op-ed [13]
co-authored by Hirsi Ali, who has said [14] progressive change was possibly
only if "Islam was defeated," in which she attacked progressives for their
insufficient admiration of her and her ideological fellow travelers).
Tapper's attacks on Sarsour and the Women's March earned him promotion from
right-wing outlets like the Daily Caller [15] and theWashington Times [16],
while the neoconservative Daily Beast published a lengthy defense [17] of
Tapper by Emily Shire, a self-identified Zionist and antagonist [18] of
Palestinian feminists.
Most recently, the right-wing Jerusalem Post designated Tapper [19] as one
of "the world's 50 most influential Jews," citing his attack on Sarsour as
one of the acts that earned him a spot on its list.
From a public relations standpoint, the dust-up worked out perfectly for the
CNN host who instigated it. Having been hammered by Trump supporters for
months, Tapper managed to foment a Twitter war with elements of the left,
and emerged basking in the admiration of conservatives. In the end, he
consolidated the status he sought as a man of the center.
But Tapper's centrism can hardly be confused with objectivity, particularly
on the issue of race in America, a subject he scarcely ever engages on his
primetime show, "The Lead." Having signaled through his attack on the
Women's March his hostility to radical women of color, Tapper also
inadvertently highlighted the paucity of female contributors of color on his
show, which typically functions as an uncritical forum for fellow white male
militarists like Rep's Adam Kinzinger [20], Adam Schiff [21], and Sen. John
McCain [22] to advance America's imperial ambitions around the globe.
A graduate of Dartmouth University from the affluent suburbs of
Philadelphia, Tapper is a perfect product of the Beltway's clubby media
culture, where Very Serious People [23] pontificate smugly about the many
crises tearing at the country's social fabric, blithely unaware of their own
deep-seated prejudices and unalloyed privilege.
Back in 2003, when Tapper was working as the White House correspondent for
ABC News, he put his own racial cluelessness on display in what seemed like
an attempt to ingratiate himself with the all-white editorial boards of the
The New Republic and The New York Times.
In what appeared to be a piece of parody [24] for Salon, Tapper attempted to
impersonate a gangsta rapper, freely rattling off terms like "nizza,"
"behatch," "H to the izz-O" and "ho-ing out," while slapping nicknames on
stuffy pundits like Peter Beinart - "P-Biddy" - and Leon Wieseltier - "L.W.
Cool-L" - that were adapted from the pantheon of hip-hop icons.
I asked Talbot, the former CEO and founder of Salon, how content like
Tapper's "Gangbanging in media land" ever saw the light of day. Talbot was
shocked when he read the piece.
"I have absolutely no recollection of that column Jake [Tapper] wrote,"
Talbot remarked to me. "Are you sure it's not Fake News? He was no longer on
staff, and I'm not sure who edited it. If Salon really published it, reading
it now, I find it weird, unfunny and racist."
Above: The header of Jake Tapper's centrist rap parody
A historically anti-black magazine and the "n" word
In the February 1, 2003 column [24], Tapper attempted to dramatize a battle
between the then-neoconservative New Republic magazine and the New York
Times editorial board over the invasion of Iraq. Tapper cast the drab
centrist outlets in the roles of The Source and XXL, rival hip-hop magazines
dueling it out in "nasty, over-the-top gangsta editorial slams," and placed
himself in the role of rap narrator.
"The TNR crew had been known for drive-bys for years. Franzen, Moody,
whatever young nizza was livin' lizzarge, L.W. Cool-L and his posse would
sidewhow in their P-ride and turn the Charlie Rose green room into a killin'
field," Tapper wrote in one passage.
More disturbing than the ambitious journo's play on the "n" word was his use
of it to refer to the all-white editorial staff of a magazine that had
dedicated an entire issue to arguing [25] over whether blacks were
genetically inferior, which ascribed [26] the problems of black America to
socially degenerate welfare mothers, and whose then-owner, Marty Peretz,
would go on to declare [27] that "Muslim life is cheap." Indeed, Tapper had
resorted to a racial caricature to amuse his media pals and ingratiate
himself with colleagues at a magazine that had spent the better part of the
20th century establishing a legacy of racism.
As Jeet Heer noted [28] in his post-mortem for the old, racially hostile TNR
following the magazine's 2015 purchase by Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes,
"Throughout the first two decades [of TNR's existence], white writers would
throw around the n-word with the casual aplomb of characters in a Quentin
Tarantino movie."
But hardly anyone at the TNR or any other caucasian media haven had
attempted anything like Tapper's rap word salad. The ambitious young Tapper
apparently thought he had composed a Hamilton-level masterpiece of nerdcore.
What he produced, however, was an unmitigated editorial disaster that put
his own cultural obliviousness and tastlessness on bold display.
As Tapper's mock rap battle reached its peak, satire descended into
self-parody:
"How you wanna carry it, nomsayin'?" he asked. "I mean, what's with these
homies dissin' my Perle? Why do the Old Gray Lady gotta front?"
"Bee-hatch," sneered Snoop-Kitty.
From the doorway strode the impressive silhouette of senior editor Li'l
Cottle in full bling-bling.
"What up, shortie?" asked Snoop-Kitty, her beehatch.
But Li'l Cottle was serious serious. "Bust an Op-Ed in its ass, yo."
There is, of course, a long tradition of affluent white boys earning the
respect of their peers in hip-hop by demonstrating creativity and total
dedication to the craft. Tapper does not appear to be among them.
Today, the CNN host's connection to rap culture appears to be limited to
bumping Outkast's "Rosa Parks" from his car while staring across the Tidal
Basin [29] at the memorial to founding father and noted slave rapist Thomas
Jefferson.
Slamming black "race-baiting hucksters," defending "our sister" Fox News
Since arriving on the Beltway media scene, Tapper has regularly exhibited
what his former boss, Talbot, described as a tendency to police the left. In
a 2002 piece [30] for Salon, for instance, Tapper hyped up the new class of
neoliberal, corporate-friendly black politicians led by then-Newark mayoral
candidate Cory Booker, while complaining that "[t]he usual race-baiting
hucksters, like Rev. Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton" were tearing down
Booker by accusing him of helping "whitey to get his meathooks into Newark."
Tapper overflowed with contempt [31] after viewing Oliver Stone's 2003
sympathetic documentary on Cuba's Fidel Castro, "Comandante." Branding Stone
a dupe for a "barbaric Third World superstar," Tapper lambasted the
filmmaker for failing to devote more time to Castro's "tyrannical reign" - a
task that has been sufficiently covered over the decades by American
mainstream media and Cold War-era propaganda. In making his case for regime
change in Cuba, Tapper described Cuba's popular 1959 revolution against a
US-backed right-wing dictatorship simply as a "bloody coup" - language he
has never used to refer to the US-orchestrated coup in Honduras in 2009 or
the NATO-led destruction of Libya.
In the early months of the Obama era, as Fox News sponsored [32] partisan
Tea Party rallies and promoted conspiracy theories that the president was a
secret Muslim [33] and not an American citizen [34], Tapper hammered Obama's
press secretary, Robert Gibbs, for the administration's designation of the
right-wing outlet Fox News as "not a news organization."
"It's escaped none of our notice that the White House has decided in the
last few weeks to declare one of our sister organizations 'not a news
organization' and to tell the rest of us not to treat them like a news
organization," Tapper protested [35] from the White House press gallery,
wondering openly how Fox was any different from ABC News, his own employer
at the time. The exchange momentarily made Tapper a hero [36] of right-wing
blogs and elicited hearty praise from Rush Limbaugh.
During the Trump era, Tapper has won fawning reviews from glossy style
magazines like GQ [37] and Vogue [38] as the president's most dogged
adversary in cable news. Meanwhile, he has sought to insulate himself from
right-wing criticism by reminding Republicans of his full-throated defense
of Fox news, while selecting soft targets on the left for social media
attacks.
With his carefully calculated centrism, the fumbling one-time rap parodist
has successfully cast himself as a very serious person.
Max Blumenthal is a senior editor of the Grayzone Project at AlterNet, and
the award-winning author of Goliath [39], Republican Gomorrah [40], and The
51 Day War [41]. He is the co-host of the podcast, Moderate Rebels [42].
Follow him on Twitter at @MaxBlumenthal [43].
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Source URL:
http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/nizza-behatch-time-cnns-jake-tapper
-casually-mocked-black-culture-cheap-laughs
Links:
[1] http://www.alternet.org/authors/max-blumenthal
[2] http://alternet.org
[3]
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[4] http://salon.com
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[6] http://www.alternet.org/world/linda-sarsour-resistance-hero
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[8]
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&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fdailycaller.com%2F2017%2F07%2F18%2Flinda-sarsour-s
ays-jake-tapper-is-a-white-nationalist%2F
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[13] https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/877878224683847680
[14]
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[21] http://mondoweiss.net/2017/07/shockwaves-progressive-community/
[22]
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threat/
[23] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Very_Serious_People
[24] http://www.salon.com/2003/02/01/purple_raines/
[25]
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curve-excerpt
[26]
https://www.google.co.kr/search?q=new+republic+welfare+cover&rlz=1C5CHFA
_enUS690US690&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjzq_fFjaL
WAhUMEbwKHQKIDLAQ_AUICigB&biw=1362&bih=697#imgrc=lU97G2eTWGLQpM:
[27] http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Peretz-t.html?mcubz=0
[28] https://newrepublic.com/article/120884/new-republics-legacy-race
[29] https://twitter.com/jaketapper/status/884445287443509249
[30] http://www.salon.com/2002/06/18/davis_19/
[31] http://www.salon.com/2003/02/08/stone_11/
[32]
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[33]
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-006314
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oted-trumps-birtherism/213152
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[36]
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[37] https://www.gq.com/story/jake-tapper-cnn-profile
[38] https://www.vogue.com/article/cnn-jake-tapper-interview
[39]
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[40] http://republicangomorrah.com/
[41] https://www.amazon.com/51-Day-War-Ruin-Resistance/dp/156858511X
[42] http://moderaterebelsradio.com/
[43] http://twitter.com/maxblumenthal
[44] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on 'Nizza,'
'Behatch': The Time CNN's Jake Tapper Casually Mocked Black
Culture for Cheap
Laughs&body=URL:http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/nizza-behatch-time-
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[45] http://www.alternet.org/
[46] http://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B
