“No One Knows HOW He Got in There”….

That line from an American national media News report was, of course, in reference to the “fake sign language interpreter” at the recent Nelson Mandela Memorial.

Amazingly, according to the American national media, “NO ONE knows” HOW a fake signer got into the Mandela Memorial...as if he’d crashed a block party...or an Obama State Dinner. Now WHO would do that? (Hint: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6665738/Couple-who-gatecrashed-Obamas-dinner-photographed-at-inauguration.html)

Well, I certainly KNOW “HOW he got in there,” so maybe I can help out a little bit on this one.

That sign language interpreter slot is a PAID position. In fact, it pays pretty well for a relatively short gig.

SOMEONE, yes (almost certainly) the political hacks (probably the HEAD of the organizing committee) who set up the Memorial HIRED this guy, Thamsanqa Jantjie, who NOW claims he isn’t a fraud but had a “schizophrenic episode” (http://news.yahoo.com/mandela-memorial-sign-language-interpreter-39-fraud-39-004855924.html) while on stage. Wow! That’s a LOT better! Someone, probably a friend hired Mr. Jantjie  instead of, say, someone from a local school for the deaf, since they didn’t appear to have a real signer on staff.

Now here’s the thing about that bit of media paternalism that’s so vexing...these overwhelmingly white media flacks are always more than willing to say such insipid things that make themselves look foolish and risk damaging their own credibility, to defray at all costs charges of incompetence being leveled at...the incompetent, ESPECIALLY when those incompetents happen to be “ethnic minorities.”

But WHY?!

They’ll lamely say that “We don’t want to reinforce the petty bigotries of so many in our audience,” BUT I believe it goes much deeper than that...in fact, it goes directly to their own deeply held petty bigotries about those groups. The ONE THING the MSM hasn’t done very well is integrate their own cozy nests. Why else are most newsrooms, and most of our national media outlets so overwhelmingly, virtually mono-chromatically white?!

This is certainly NOT about  "international sensitivity," because without question the very SAME sort of thing could very easily happen here in the USA. Pick virtually ANY major, dysfunctional (predominantly black) urban area and the same kind of incompetence is merely “par for the course.”

Oh WAIT! Our national media covers for that sort of domestic incompetence as well!

So, it must be a reflex action on their parts. IF those in the MSM are truly devoid of such “petty bigotries” why aren’t more ethnic minorities more visible in the national media?