by Frank James
The fallout from comments about Sen. Barack Obama made by billionaire Robert Johnson of Black Entertainment Television fame on behalf of Sen. Hillary Clinton continues today.
Former President Bill Clinton put distance between himself and Johnson’s remarks as he made the rounds of black morning radio shows.
The New York Sun politics blog reported on the former president’s appearance on Roland Martin’s show on WVON-AM in Chicago. (Martin also appears frequently on CNN.)
The interviewer, Roland Martin of WVON-AM in Chicago, played Mr. Johnson’s statement Sunday in which he praised the Clintons for having “been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues since Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood – and I won’t say what he was doing, but he said it in the book…” Mr. Martin sounded incredulous about Mr. Johnson’s subsequent denial, in a statement issued by the Clinton campaign, that he was referring to drug use by Mr. Obama. “When you listen to that tone and the inflection, he was not talking about community organizing. It seems to me very clear what he was implying,” Mr. Martin said.
“Ironically, this is the first time I’ve heard it, what you just said,” Mr. Clinton said. “I listened to it on the tape and I think we have to take him at his word…”
Even in Obama Country, which is where the WVON audience resides, it’s surprising it took more than an hour for a caller to come to the former president’s defense since the affections of the same audience used to belong nearly completely to Clinton.
Anyway, being the smart politician he is, it appears the former president realized there was little upside to defending Johnson, so he stopped.
It’s curious the Clinton campaign thought that Johnson would be an asset in South Carolina where the Democratic presidential campaigns are wooing black votes.
Johnson has been a deeply controversial figure among African Americans for years because of the sex, drug and violence drenched hip-hop music videos that contributed to his BET fortune.
Aaron McGruder, the cartoonist behind the successful strip “The Boondocks” that was turned into a TV show on the Cartoon Network, launched a lengthy crusade in his strip against Johnson and BET.
As recently as Saturday night, just hours before Johnson made his comments, the Washington Post reported on an awards gala in Washington, DC at which the various African Americans received awards at the first annual “BET Honors.”
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As the Post reported, there was a protest outside the Warner Theater where the glitzy event was held:
While we’re having fun, we should point out that “The Boondocks” creator Aaron McGruder was not honored.
McGruder, over the years, had his pint-size comic-strip characters ridicule BET for its programming content, most notably for its penchant for profit-pushing thuggish rap videos. We didn’t spot him behind the police barricades across 14th Street in the crowd of a couple of hundred protesters. A group called Enough Is Enough, headed by the Rev. Delman L. Coates, led the charge, saying the show was an expensive fig leaf to mask the corporation’s sins of exploitation.
Signs in the crowd: “I Am Not a Pimp.” And “I Am Not a Gangster.”
The Clinton campaign was clearly trying to fire up the black vote in South Carolina. But they didn’t count on firing it up quite the way they have.