Thursday, March 8, 2012

Shocking Video

All of the blogosphere is atwitter with the news that back in 1990 Barack Obama spoke up at a protest rally at Harvard in support of Professor Derrick Bell, giving a rousing speech that incited the crowd and proved way back then that he was a dangerous radical. It’s so shocking that the rumors are that Andrew Breibart was killed because he was going to release it.

So at great personal risk, here is the video.


I’ll be hiding out at my undisclosed location until the danger passes.

Wait; it was on PBS’s Frontline two years ago?

The web is abuzz today about video of a speech Barack Obama gave in 1990 (some reports have incorrectly identified the speech as occurring in 1991) at Harvard Law School defending the actions of Professor Derrick Bell. Bell, the law school’s first tenured black professor, had protested Harvard’s failure to offer tenure to women of color as law school professors. Online publisher Andrew Brietbart, who died last week, had said he possessed the speech and hinted that he would release it, arguing that it provided evidence that Obama has long held radical political beliefs.

Today, the website BuzzFeed published a clip of the speech along with an article explaining some past and current context for Obama’s remarks. The website claimed the clip was “not previously available online.” The editors at Brietbart.com responded that the video on Buzzfeed had been “selectively edited” and said that they would release the full footage tonight on Fox News.

But there’s nothing new about the clip or Obama’s role in the controversy at Harvard Law School. In 2008, as a part of our quadrennial election special The Choice 2008, FRONTLINE ran the same footage of the speech as a part of an exploration of Obama’s time at Harvard Law School, where he graduated in 1991. It’s been online at our site and on YouTube since then.

Never mind.