Messin’ With Your Mind - Glenn Beck’s Subliminal Manipulation of Racial Iconography

Recently Fox television’s Glenn Beck and Bill O’Reilly, employing their customary formulaic shtick, engaged in what on surface seemed innocuous, if somewhat mean-spirited, witty banter on a regular segment of O’Reilly’s show called “Beck and Call.” The topic was Beck’s earlier recorded commentary “Rats, Flies, Bees, and Obama, Oh My!” Beck and O’Reilly juxtaposed more recent footage with that of President Obama’s infamous fly-swatting episode from June 2009 – you remember the shot, in which President Obama summarily dispatched a fly in one fell swoop without batting an eye or becoming distracted from his line of thought, then a downward pan to frame a dead fly on the floor of the Oval Office. In the new video, there’s a close-up of another fly landing on the president’s face, followed by a shot of a rat scurrying across the front of the presidential podium, and then, as Beck’s narrative arcs, the camera cuts to an image of bees swarming on the White House lawn. These pictures prompt the obligatory pseudo-journalistic query (as both men feign utter befuddlement): Why has the Obama White House attracted such infestation?

To the casual viewer untrained in anthropology, sociology, symbology, or iconography, Beck’s cavalier amusement with the White House pest-infiltration narrative may appear to be nothing more than a Fox infotainment foray into a human-interest aspect of the Obama administration. But it would be unthinkable to dismiss this charade as lighthearted comedic jesting. If you were to casually regard Fox’s snickering “White House Infestation” segment as mere comic relief, you’d be viewing the world through the proverbial rose-colored lens and missing the real picture.

The fact is that symbols are powerful tools of mass communication. One need only reflect on the passion that symbols can evoke; the American flag, the Confederate flag, the Star of David, the Christian cross. Across cultures and through the ages, animals, insects, and objects have been imputed symbolic meanings. And once symbols are embedded and codified as icons, they possess a unique ability to convey intent and significance in compact, coded – but also immediately recognizable – form.

Glenn Beck has long displayed a ferocious proclivity for deconstructing symbolism as he plants himself to pontificate piously in front of an image of the Statue of Liberty, or frames his bloviations with the American flag, or implores the electorate to beware of treasonous communistic iconography in our midst – as in the artwork of Rockefeller Center, stoking fears of the demise of our morals and our democratic society.

The effect of icons, signs, and symbols is enormous. The fly’s image has had currency for centuries as a symbol of filth, decay, and disease. The fly on Obama’s cheek evokes the fly-covered faces of Biafran children in UNICEF campaigns. And Beck tastelessly drags the joke to even more sophomoric levels by pretending to ingest a dead fly for “yuck” effect.

Likewise, rats have long signified pestilence, plague, betrayal, and death, at least in Western culture. (In China the year of the Rat denotes prosperity and good luck.) In Albert Camus’classic novel, The Plague, the image of rats is called forth to do more than merely symbolize disease – the rats parallel the frailty of our human condition. Both creatures are regarded as vermin; fodder for annihilation lest they infect our homes, crops, and livestock.

And then there’s the troublesome White House bee-infestation imagery. What gives this story wings, so to speak? After all, rose gardens are expected to attract bees and more significantly, for the first time in history a bee hive is being maintained on the South Lawn as part of the First Lady’s environmental and healthy-foods efforts. (This was never mentioned by Beck and O’Reilly.) Robert Bridges in his poem “The Parable of Bees” refers to ancient times when the life of the bee was not systematized and regulated as it is today, and “the bee was not a State-kept hoard.” In other words, before people colonized bees into hives for cultivation, they were free. In the brief clip used by O’Reilly and Beck, the bees appear to be swarming in attack mode, overwhelming the groundskeeper in a terroristic frenzy.

The visuals serve to drum home Beck’s story line. In his subliminal iconography, the bee hive represents a socialist society dependent upon the Queen Bee, a perfect metaphor for the Republican narrative that seeks to portray Obama’s presidency as imperial, with full reign over big-government resources and committed to redistributing the wealth (and subtly implying redistribution on the basis of race). Symbolically, bee swarms in the Rose Garden represent a rebellious, disruptive (white) electorate on the attack against the President for leading the nation down the slippery slope to socialism – to a society in which individual freedoms are viewed as subservient to the survival of special interests,minority groups and blacks in particular.

Within days of his hijacking of the bee footage, Beck was hawking “The Bees Know” t-shirts on his website.

In addition to the rats, flies, and bees, other symbolic literary references surfaced in this same “Beck and Call” segment, all deviously laden with disturbing allegory masquerading as good-humored jesting at the President’s expense: Obama mocked as Pied Piper, as Dr. Doolittle, as the blood-sucking Count Dracula, and the White House portrayed as the Amityville Horror house (which, along with the haunting spirits, was infested with – you guessed it – flies). These giggly comparisons are not void of layered social, psychological, political and, yes, deliberate racial connotations. They are meant to demean and marginalize the President by innuendo, using symbolism and literary imagery to reinforce the notion of Obama’s mystical “otherness.”

Fox’s program executives have strategically allowed Beck and O’Reilly to cast America as a nation in decline under Obama’s leadership. Biblical allegories of deadly plagues, mystical metaphors of evil haunted houses, and raw images suggesting a vermin- and insect-infested White House are calculated to conjure fear and revulsion in an already economically insecure and anxious American electorate. They present a vision of the U.S. plunging from number-one reigning world empire to banana republic by casting President Obama as alien, third-worldly; an unworthy occupant of America’s most revered residence, the White House.

Despite Beck’s admitted lack of formal education – he never earned a college degree – he nonetheless is a New York Times bestselling author, so it’s difficult to believe that he is unaware of the racist content of Hugh Lofton’s original Dr. Doolittle books, in which, for example, the African Prince Bumpo persuades Dr. Doolittle to bleach his face white in hopes that he may marry a fairytale European princess. The books have come under attack from advocates seeking to draw attention to children’s books that portray racist imagery and mock black people.

Powerful stereotypes, both positive and negative, depend upon one’s cultural perspective. Nearly four decades ago at Fisk University, I reviewed research on racial stereotypes when I studied with the brilliant Japanese-American scholar Dr. J. Matsuoka. Many of the same vicious and factually baseless stereotypes persist today, having been bequeathed from generation to generation. For example, in 2007 a D.C. high school teacher asked students to list stereotypes they were aware of pertaining to black, white, and Latino populations. Many of the descriptors generated by the students echoed the vicious views found in Dr. Matsuoka’s empirical studies from the 1960s. For black people, these included “low job expectations, dropouts, live in the ghetto/projects,” despite blacks’ enormous economic and educational gains over forty years, while whites were characterized as “rich with big houses” and “always in a hurry and on time.”

Beck and O’Reilly are perversely intentional in their skillful appropriation of symbols and stereotypes – in this case infestation; linking rats, flies, and bees with the name and image of Obama for the subliminal manipulation of their viewers’ emotions and opinions, further stoking the suspicion, racial division, apprehension, anger, and hatred that they are often accused of evoking in more open, direct commentary. Their visual tools of mind control are carefully crafted for full effect – to perpetuate the us-against-them and we-they attitudes within our national psyche that govern our common discourse on race.

As Marshall McLuhan intoned in 1960, “the medium is the message.” Television’s formidable power to shape public opinion and common cultural understandings is not lost on Beck, O’Reilly, or pundits and network executives across the industry. Fox’s mass-media forum, tactically handed over to the likes of Beck and O’Reilly, becomes a lethal weapon; spewing propaganda, reinforcing stereotypes, and smearing innuendo for political advantage and, to an even greater extent, for pure monetary profit. Why else would Fox spend the enormous salary and production costs-per-minute to devote such an inordinate number of minutes to this infestation narrative when so many larger issues loom?

The illusion of a hoped-for post-racial American society has not materialized. Like a steady drumbeat in the polarizing cable media “culture wars,” the carefully crafted, symbol-laden imagery of Beck and O’Reilly propels their storyline. Obama’s White House, like the Amityville Horror house, is infested with threatening, blood-sucking (your tax dollars!) nuisances that must be exorcised or “there goes the neighborhood.”

At the end of the televised “Beck and Call” segment, O’Reilly asserts that everything Beck has said is completely true. You be the judge of whether what is portrayed is truthful the next time Mr. Beck portends to reveal the symbolic meaning of an event, relationship, idea, object, or picture. (More recently, for example, he compared Obama’s America to the Planet of the Apes. )

Ask yourself what Beck is really saying. And then ask: Why should we care? As freedom-loving Americans, indeed we all should care. Think about it.

Why Do I Do This Thing Called Jazz?

As I awoke yesterday morning to the news of an earthquake in the Maryland and Washington DC area, I reflected on the new morning, which was my birthday, and on the meaning of what’s called the Grace of God – God’s unmerited favor. On Thursday morning I had driven from NYC to Hyattsville, MD near DC to rehearse with a new band. Later in the afternoon, I drove home, only hours ahead of the quake, which registered 3.6 in the Richter scale. Thank God for safe travel mercies. I returned safely to the comforts of home and a loving significant other. Finally, I was able to casually “chill-ax” with a glass of merlot after a grueling rehearsal and ten hours of driving through DC/ Baltimore rush-hour traffic. I reflected on why I do this music. The answer is simple – because I love music and I especially love performing jazz. When I think about how fortunate I have been to have a measure of good health and strength sufficient to move freely about performing, sharing life, music, art and being blessed by love, friendships, and colleagues – and as the elders say “having a reasonable portion of my right mind” – I better understand God’s grace. So as I celebrated yet another milestone anniversary and survey how simply and graciously I’ve been blessed, I counted each blessing and gave thanks to God for having brought me this far. Were it not for the unmerited favor He has extended to me, none of my activities would be possible. At this stage in my life I know from whence cometh my real strength and joy; it cometh from the Lord God. And I thank you, Heavenly Father for allowing me to approach another year on the planet earth. Amen. Now with your Good Grace, I'm ready to go out sing my A_ off! Oops!

Benny Powell Left A Great Legacy

I was saddened to learn of trombonist Benny Powell's transition. Benny was a friend and a consummate artist, who fought the "good fight," astute, well-rounded, Benny was a proud native of New Orleans and comfortable on the world stage whether as a much sought after side-man or leader. He executed his craft skillfully, always comporting himself as a man of great dignity, class and grace.
I met Benny in the 80s through our joint work with the American Federation of Musicians union Local 802’s Justice for Jazz Committee's efforts to change New York City’s archaic cabaret laws, which limited musicians in their ability to earn full wages and benefits they deserve. Benny was among the early wave of musician activists leaders who pressed for needed changes in the City’s restrictive cabaret laws. His and the efforts of his comrades opened new opportunities for jazz musicians in NYC and the work continues.
A highly trained world-class musician in the classical sense of it's best meaning, Benny Powell remained committed to his music; always growing, learning, expanding his knowledge by teaching, mentoring, composing and collaborating. We last spoke in late 2009 about my wish to record a great song he had composed that I love. Benny made a difference with his life through sharing his music and his irrepressible gift of inspiration with countless musicians and music lovers throughout the world, Benny Powell will surely be missed. Well-done Benny! RIP.

On Face Book After One Year

For me FB is an important tool, for networking, marketing and connecting individuals with diverse backgrounds. It is among the purest forms of open democratic expression available to people world-wide except for a few autocratic regimes intent on limiting political discourse and artistic expression deemed subversive to the State's interest. As with any governing entity rules of conduct and regulations need to apply to protect individual rights and preserve the integrity of the system for every ones' benefit.After going on-line as a Facebooker a year ago. I can say the experience
has been mostly positive. It's not perfect by any means but as a social media outlet its power for the good and creating a more global and humane environment is a blessing we can ill afford to take for granted or abuse.Now, I'm off my soapbox and "gone fishing". Enjoy!

Win-Win Situation for Fisk Jubilees and Carnegie Hall’s Community Sing

By Dennis Day
©D-Day Media Group, Inc.

“In the Fisk Jubilee Singers, America has produced the perfectest flower of the ages. I wish it were a foreign product, so that she (America) could lavish money on them and go properly crazy over them.”
- Mark Twain, American Humorist


The Community Sing with the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Nashville, Tennessee, sponsored by Carnegie Hall and held at Aarron Davis Hall on the pristine campus of City College, was a resounding success Tuesday evening, May 18. Despite a grey drizzly evening, a large, racially diverse audience turned out to hear the renowned Jubilee Singers and was charmed by 17 bright-eyed African-American singer-scholars. The Fisk Jubilee Singers, , a group Mark Twain once associated with a choir of angels, carry on a rich American tradition of more than 140 years, singing “slave songs,” known today as spirituals. The original Jubilee Singers introduced these beautiful songs to the world in 1871 and were instrumental in spreading and preserving this rich American musical tradition. In the late 19th century, they broke racial barriers in the U.S. and abroad, even performing before Europe’s royalty.

If audience response is any indication of what the future portends for Fisk University and its storied Jubilee Singers’ hallowed tradition, this week’s performance supplied ample assurance that the historically Black university’s prospect for once again becoming a premier destination among the best and brightest students is not a pipe dream. Vastly expanded opportunities for African Americans during in the post-Civil Rights Movement era coupled with some progress in enforcing equal educational opportunity and affirmative action policies pose ongoing competitive challenges for the private, once-elite baccalaureate-level university as it seeks to attract gifted faculty and students. In recent years Fisk has been plagued with dwindling enrollment and allegations of financial mis-management. A lawsuit enjoining the University not to sell highly valued pieces of its vaunted Alfred Stieglitz art collection – bequeathed by Georgia O’Keefe – in an effort to remain solvent has wound its way through the Tennessee Supreme Court.

Despite these challenges, Fisk remains a beacon of hope for today’s generation of mostly young African Americans seeking a solid liberal arts education from an institution that once held the distinction of producing more Black PhDs in natural science than any other American university. In fact, until the mid 20th century nearly half of all African-American physicians and dentists were graduates of Fisk. An unpublished survey conducted by D-Day Media Group in 2007 found that Fisk graduates have served for more cumulative years in governmental leadership and legislative positions, both elected and appointed, than graduates from any other school except Harvard, Yale, Howard, and Princeton.

The nation’s first African-American Solicitor General, Wade McCree, was a Fisk alumnus and the late Judge Constance Baker Motely matriculated at Fisk and served as U.S Federal District Court Magistrate from 1982 to 2005. From 1942 until his retirement in 1970, U.S. Congressman William Dawson (D) of Chicago was a powerful chairman of several committees. Congressman and leading Civil Rights figure John Lewis (D) of Georgia has represented that state’s Fifth Congressional District since 1987, while Alcee L.Hastings (D) has served Florida’s 23rd District. Fisk’s current president, the honorable Hazel O’Leary, Esq. served as Secretary of the Environmental Protection Agency under former president Bill Clinton. And Clinton’s chairperson of the One America Initiative on Race was the late historian Dr. John Hope Franklin, former Professor Emeritus at Duke University and one of Fisk’s most notable alumni. Together, these leaders’ extensive terms total well over 100 years of national service.

The Fisk roster of illustrious alumni and professors is impressive by any academic measure. The list includes Dr. W.E.B Du Bois, regarded by many as one of the 20th century’s leading intellectuals and social philosophers, and Dr. Charles S. Johnson, an African-American social scientist largely credited with having helped advance research on African Americans and the modern school of social science methodology. Johnson also became president of Fisk. Other notable teachers were Japanese-American sociologist Dr. J. Masuoka, and four powerful influences of the Harlem Renaissance: Writer and poet Arna Bontemps; James Weldon Johnson, who served as Adam K. Spence Chair of Creative Writing; Arthur Schomberg, Curator of Black Literature; and artist Aaron Douglass. Contemporary notable figures who share the Fisk experience include Judith Jamison, director of the Alvin Ailey Dance Company; renowned poet Nikki Giovanni, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author-historian alumnus Daniel Levering Lewis.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have made immense contributions to our nation’s welfare and deserve wide recognition. Fisk University stands at the vanguard of those great institutions. If Fisk is to thrive, administrators, trustees, faculty, students, and alumni must summon their best angels and wisely employ all necessary human and capitol resources needed to sustain Fisk’s academic reputation and status as a top-tier liberal arts postsecondary institution.

The Carnegie Hall/Fisk Jubilee Communiy Sing template is simple and powerful. Director Paul Kwame provides the audience with a brief historical outline of the University’s origins during the U.S. period of Reconstruction and shares vignettes about Fisk’s struggle to independently establish the first permanent edifice erected for the education of Blacks in the South – Jubilee Hall, now a national historic landmark. He then rehearses each choral section; soprano, alto, tenor, and bass. After a couple of trial run-throughs, the Jubilee Singers perform a version of the song being taught to the audience. The audience has now been gracefully molded into a newly minted chorus and is cued by Director Kwami to sing along with the legendary Singers. The effect is a profound communal experience that is at once powerful, inclusive, self-affirming, and educational – a beautiful mosaic of ethnic and cultural diversity.

Fisk and Carnegie Hall, or some other viable business, partner should consider expanding this concept nationwide. The Carnegie Hall/Fisk Jubilee Community Sing Partnership offers an important forum for reconnecting Fisk’s remarkable narrative to ordinary Americans in cities, villages, and hamlets throughout the nation. By introducing entire communities of contemporary Americans to a slice of authentic American culture as introduced, performed, and perfected by people of African descent, these mini audience-participation concerts would afford students and families an invaluable opportunity for lessons about cultural history that become exercises in democracy, requiring common goals, leadership, cooperation, participation, and execution. The experience is a rare and precious one, unlike any other.

With diminished support for the arts, both Fisk and a partnering arts organization could generate needed revenue from the sale of DVDs, CDs, and related paraphalia. The biggest most enduring sale being one’s bragging rights when captured on video, documenting that “I once sang with the Fisk Jubilee Singers!”

Refections on Stevie Wonder: the Age of Innocence

Happy Birthday Steveland Morris! In this photo taken at Harlem’s Hue Man Bookstore, I joked with Stevie about his annual summer visits to my old neighborhood in East Chicago, IN where his grandparents lived and his mom was raised.

My sister, a talented singer in her own right, along with her Our Gang-motley crew from the "hood" would tag along wherever Little Stevie and his escorts would roam, like good little groupies savoring his spontaneous bursts into song, coaxing the “Boy Wonder” to sing and play his harmonica. More often than not those assisting him, usually his cousins, former baby sitters, or neighbors would allow this extraordinarily gifted child freedom to dazzle his young and older admirers with a selection or two.

In our neighborhood, we all knew the little blind Morris grandchild visiting from near Detroit was special. Stevie’s impromptu mini-concerts usually took place near his grandparents’ home and family business, the Morris Liquor Store at 138th and Alexander Avenue, or on the bustling green and playground of Smith Park that served as a sort of Village Square near the Carver Public Swimming Pool. This phase of Stevie’s emergence as an artist predates his rise to fame with his first huge hit record Fingertips, Part 1.

When Stevie visited the “hood” back in the day, it was like watching the Pied Piper, only in real time. Instead of leading rats to the river, boys and girls trailed Little Stevie during the humid hazy days of Lake Michigan summers, marveling at his talent, waiving in the musical afterglow of pure soulful genius. The boy Wonder’s entourage often lingered for one last song into the evening, before the street lights came on and happy kids from a more innocent time excitedly returned home, sharing the story of their unforgettable musical experience that day.

I was privileged to have been part of Stevie’s marches in Washington DC, during his successful campaign to make Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday a national holiday. If our paths should cross again, I’d ask him whether his mom or grandparents allowed him to go swimming in the neighborhood public swimming pool located a block from his grandparents’ home and business. The pool opened its doors in the 1940s, named in honor of George Washington Carver the great African- American scientist, who personally attended the ribbon cutting ceremony. The Carver Swimming Pool was built to preserve racially segregated neighborhoods and recreational activities in East Chicago, a town known as a melting pot of ethnic backgrounds. For nearly 70 years, Carver Pool was a source of community pride and summer joy and for generations of largely black and Puerta Rican youth. The swimming pool has long since been demolished and the rust belt neighborhood Stevie and I fondly recall is nearly a ghost town as a result of the region’s decline as a steel-producing economic engine. What will never fade are our sweet memories of youth and the joy one little blind kid shared annually with those of us “living in the city.” Happy 60th birthday Stevie, we love you!

Shirley Horn: A Glimpse of Paradise on Earth

In life's journey one encounters rare individuals whose genius or artistry leaves a profound imprint . Shirley Horne was such an artist in my life. Ms. Horne, always elegant and impeccably gracious was kind enough to indulge me as an aspiring young jazz singer. When I sat in with her at the Bohemian Caverns in Washington DC, in 1983 she was just returning to jazz after a long hiatus during most of the 70s. The experience enraptured me . Never before had I felt a sense of being engulfed in this “thing” called music. I floated on and above the richness of her full bodied chord and harmonic selections. I heard musical nuances like never before. I knew then, I'd only begun to scratch the surface music compels in discovering its depths. Such human revelation is only fully conceived and executed when true genius blossoms and spreads its marvelous fragrance among those who would stop and savor its power to lift and elevate us to higher levels of human experience. As the last chord progression faded to pianissimo, and I realized that as a singer, I had never sounded or felt better, I could only say to myself , Wow how magnificent this has been, what a memory and a moment to be cherished even savored , and it indeed has been! The song was Erroll Garner’s immortal Misty.The Grammy Award winning pianist/singer composer is commemorated for her 76th birthday May 1,2010. RIP Shirley Horn