From the yellowed columns of newsprint, Ms. Tucher . . . skillfully draws a contemporary moral. — New York Times Book Review
[Tucher] presents the colorful story of the early penny press with all the verve, intelligence, and humor it merits. — American Heritage
A deceptively complex book. . . . A readable, racy, and often funny study of an important aspect of antebellum social history. — American Historical Review
This well-written book is a valuable contribution to the literature on journalism in the nineteenth century. — Journal of the Early Republic
This is scholarship as solid as oak and history as timely as today’s tabloid titillation. — Bill Moyers
Product Description
Two notorious antebellum New York murder cases—a prostitute slashed in an elegant brothel and a tradesman bludgeoned by the brother of inventor Samuel Colt—set off journalistic scrambles over the meanings of truth, objectivity, and the duty of the press that reverberate to this day.
In 1833 an entirely new kind of newspaper—cheap, feisty, and politically independent—introduced American readers to the novel concept of what has come to be called objectivity in news coverage. The penny press was the first medium that claimed to present the true, unbiased facts to a democratic audience. But in Froth and Scum, Andie Tucher explores—and explodes—the notion that ‘objective’ reporting will discover a single, definitive truth.
As they do now, news stories of the time aroused strong feelings about the possibility of justice, the privileges of power, and the nature of evil. The prostitute’s murder in 1836 sparked an impassioned public debate, but one newspaper’s ‘impartial investigation’ pleased the powerful by helping the killer go free. Colt’s 1841 murder of the tradesman inspired universal condemnation, but the newspapers’ singleminded focus on his conviction allowed another secret criminal to escape. By examining media coverage of these two sensational murders, Tucher reveals how a community’s needs and anxieties can shape its public truths. The manuscript of this book won the 1991 Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians for the best-written dissertation in American history.
In an effort to revive the anti-immigration wave that seemed to crest with Republican Tom Tancredo’s failed presidential primary bid, right-wing bigots are vigourously buying ad space — placing the blame for traffic and sprawl, population growth, and sundry, on immigrants.
The ads go on to blame overpopulation for overcrowded schools and emergency rooms, deteriorating public infrastructure and high property taxes, and then points to a Pew study projecting 82 percent of population growth through 2050 will result from immigration. It ends with the tagline “300 million people today, 600 million tomorrow. Think about it.” The 600 million figure is a projection from census data of the U.S. population in the year 2100….[MORE >>]
What next?
Maybe they will blame the high gas prices and their inability to get erections on immigrants too!
These imbeciles are like a virus — spreading and infecting everything in their path.
…..therefore Black People, please vote Republican — because Martin Luther King Jr. was a Republican. Meanwhile WE of the NBRA have launched Racial Anti-Obama Ads — like the ones below:
What can I say, other than repeat what I have posted in this blog a thousand times: Black ReTHUGliTOMS demean blackness, hopelessly.
Today, it is pretty clear that African American interests are “better” served by the Democrats than the Republicans.
It is also true that Democrats have supported vicious confederate slavery in the yester years, but they, to a large extent rectified this in the sixties, beginning with the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson.
Some Democratic legislators from the southern epicenters of White Racism opposed President Johnson’s Civil Rights Act of 1964, due to “KKK Hangover,” but most did support it. This Act drove a significant number of white voters away from the Democratic Party, and the Republicans instead of joining with the Democrats to reform America, pounced on the opportunity — grabbing the “Southern Vote” a.k.a the “Bigot-Vote.”
Up to date, the Democratic Party has a far much better Civil Rights record than the Republican Party, for without the “Bigot-Vote,” the Republican party has no footing.
Consequently, race-baiting smothered in fear-mongering became a staple of the modern Republican Party.
Republicans, and in this instance ReTHUGliTOMS like “re-living the past,” oblivious of the fact that modern Republicanism is just a new name for pre-sixties “Dixie-Cratism,” ….spun around, modernized and “Stealthified.”
The “Bigot-Vote” is the main-stay of the Republican Party, and they pander to it incessantly, with the help of the “putrid dung” excreted by Talk-Radio (Rush Limbaugh and Co.) and Fox News (O’reilly, Hannity and Co.)….to name a few of these vicious hyenas.
Hillary Clinton tried to dip her filthy finger into the “Bigot-Pot,” failed and got beaten by a “Black Man,” called Barack Obama.
And why is Obama “Black” and NOT “White” — for he is an offspring of the union of a white mother and a black father.
Simple answer: RACISM — perpetrated by “some” Democrats and a “large majority” of Republicans.
Evolutionary Scientist Richard Dawkins states:“It is the height of injustice to think of a person as “black” just because his blood is “tainted” with “black,” whereas, if “taint” is what it is, then his blood is equally tainted with “white,” in which case, he equally qualifies also as white.Philip Ochieng, a prominent Kenyan intellectual examines Dawkins’ assertion very thoroughly in this piece titled: Why Obama is Black, not White. — Excellent Read!
Depending on your view, it could be a matter of who is the “lesser of two evils.” ….Republicans or Democrats?
To me the Republican party is “super-evil.”
I won’t pen the language I am tempted to use, because someone else offers a more eloquent and “tighter summary” of what the ReTHUGlican Party represents:
Since the New Deal, Republicans have been on the wrong side of every issue of concern to ordinary Americans; Social Security, the war in Vietnam, equal rights, civil liberties, church- state separation, consumer issues, public education, reproductive freedom, national health care, labor issues, gun policy, campaign-finance reform, the environment and tax fairness. No political party could remain so consistently wrong by accident.
The only rational conclusion is that, despite their cynical “family values” propaganda, the Republican Party is a criminal conspiracy to betray the interests of the American people in favor of plutocratic and corporate interests, and absolutist religious groups.
Back to my Black Brothers & Sisters — The National Black Republican Association.
The late Khalid Abdul Muhammad was blunt and dramatic about you: “When white folks can’t defeat you, they’ll always find some Negro, some boot-licking, butt-licking, bamboozled, half-baked, half-fried, sissified, punkified, pasteurized, homogenized Nigger that they can trot out in front of you.”
Not to be outdone, movie director Spike Lee called people like you: “Handkerchief-heads, chicken-and-biscuit-eating Uncle Toms.” — a statement I have “Pluralized,” from the original that was directed by Mr. Lee at the “Big Kahuna” Uncle Tom — The one and only “Long John Silver” Justice Clarence Thomas — A ReTHUGliTOM Smothered In “Uppity Niggerdom” a.k.a “NegroPhobia Syndrome.”
That said, the National Black Republican Association is just but a congregation of frustrated slaves crawling back to the plantation, so to speak! “Virulent Oreo Phenomenons,” “Punk-Asses,” and “Uncle Tom Calamities.” — Thanks to Historian John Henrik Clarke and Author June Jordan.
Your ADs above are a big joke — and an insult to the black community!
