In a 2010 SOBU, a year into the Obama administration some SOBU panelists are bound to question the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to note that the president’s pledge of gradual withdrawal from Iraq ain’t happening, and that giving a peace prize to a war president, well, doesn’t make sense. Others on the panel would take the president to task for not prosecuting Bush-era war criminals, for continuing torture, assassination, kidnappings and secret prisons. Inevitably others would express disappointment that the president’s promised universal health care bill has turned out to be an bailout of private health insurance companies, and mention the dreaded words “single payer.” Al Sharpton might be taken to task for accepting a half million dollar bribe to team up with Arne Duncan and Newt Gingrich and campaign against public education. Dissatisfaction with the president’s willingness to bail out speculators and bankers, but not rescue homeowners is bound to surface. Somebody would bring up Israel, the occupation of Palestine, and Gaza, or wonder aloud why the US is periodically bombing Somalia and Yemen.
Tavis can’t stack the panels to exclude or silence the critics. How can he tell Cornel West, for example to stay home or stay quiet? He knows his panelists, he knows his audience, and he knows his politics. Even if no panelist dropped more than one of these points, the effect on Democrats and on the White House of any two or three of them, of public black criticism aired on TV in front of millions of African Americans would be catastrophic.
The solid black support the Obama administration enjoys depends on excluding, marginalizing, and hiding any viewpoints to the left of corporate mainstream Democrats. As long as the only opponents of the president allowed access to the mic are Republicans, Obamites can demand that African Americans continue to circle the wagons around the president no matter how much he ignores the actual wishes of what is supposedly his core constituency. A 2010 State of the Black Union would be an uncontrollable source of public, highly visible leftward pressure aligned with longstanding and deeply held political stands in the black America upon the Obama administration, something corporate media are intent on preventing. And nobody personifies corporate media more than the C-SPAN, the public voice of the cable TV industry, whose biggest player, Comcast is now poised to merge with NBC.