Barack Obama

The internet is such an amazing place. It really is an amazing place.
In many ways it is more exciting than a library because of the ready access to unlimited reams of information, without ever having to leave your home.

i was cruising the internet highway looking up information about incivility. Characteristically incivility is social behavior that lacks good manners.

Wikipedia had a small piece about incivility which i quickly read. It was not very informative and as i was getting ready to try something else i noticed a list below the description which caught my eye.....i've decided to reproduce it because i'll bet there are a few terms that would catch your eyes also.

* Abuse
* Anti-social behaviour
* Anti-Social Behaviour Order
* Delinquent
* Deviant behavior
* Folk devil
* Harassment
* Hooliganism
* Incivility (on Meta)
* Juvenile delinquency
* Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour In Company and Conversation
* Yobbo

Being infinitely curious two links jumped out and insisted i click on them. Folk devil was first and off i went. i was so intrigued by the term that i have copied the description and display it here:

A folk devil is a person or group of people who are portrayed in folklore or the media as outsiders and deviant, and who are blamed for crimes or other sorts of social problems. (compare scapegoat)

The pursuit of folk devils frequently intensifies into a mass movement that is called a moral panic. When a moral panic is in full swing, the folk devils are the subject of loosely organized but pervasive campaigns of hostility through gossip and the spreading of urban legends. The mass media sometimes get in on the act or attempt to create new folk devils to create controversies. Sometimes the campaign against the folk devil influences a nation's politics and legislation.

The concept of the folk devil was introduced by sociologist Stanley Cohen in 1972, in his study Folk Devils and Moral Panics, which analysed media controversies concerning Mods and Rockers in the United Kingdom of the 1950s. The basic pattern of agitations against folk devils can be seen in the history of witchhunts and similar manias of persecution; in many predominately Protestant countries, there is history of anti-Catholicism in which many Catholics were seen as folk devils; minorities and immigrants have often been seen as folk devils; in the long history of anti-Semitism, which frequently targeted Jews with allegations of dark, murderous practices, such as blood libel; or the Roman persecution of Christians that blamed the military reverses suffered by the Roman Empire on the Christians' abandonment of paganism.

More recent folk devils have included the McCarthyite persecution of alleged Communists; Satanists and allegations of Satanic ritual abuse; blaming video games and violence, Goths, and other youth subcultures or musical genres for the Columbine massacre.

When i finished reading the above i decided something was missing. Shouldn't Islam be included as today's folk devil?

But Moral Panic had caught my eye. Moral Panic...what in the world could that be and i remembered it was linked with folk devil in the book written by Steven Cohen in the 1970's.
Apparently moral panic is defined in his book as:

Characteristic of "a condition, episode, person or group of persons [who] become defined as a threat to societal values and interests." [Cohen, 1987: 9] Cohen goes on to discuss the way in which the mass media fashions these episodes, or stylizes them, amplifying the nature of the facts and consequently turning them into a national issue, when the matter could have been contained on a local level.

Hmmmmm i thought...hadn't our country been brought to its heals by folk devils and moral panic when considering "terrorists, Islamofacists and Muslims.

i decided to move on to Yobbo and hit the back arrow until i could find the link. Well, i was surprised to learn it is a term that has been lengthened from yob. Now "yob" is "boy" spelled backwards and was meant to describe a male working class person in Britain.

As some may know Barack Obama was recently referred to as "boy" by a right wing pundit. A slur made with malicious intent in my book.

During the entire circuitous investigation on the net the one thing hammering away on my brain was that traditional media was constantly trying to define Barack Obama in terms of moral panic(he is a Muslim) a folk devil (he is black) but also a yob(represents the working man).

So far they have failed to marginalize him and that says reams about the man i hope gets the nomination for President.