Murdoch's 'Real Black,' Unreal for White House

No one should be surprised that Rupert Murdoch likes Ben Carson. Both seem to think that their ingenuity in one area of life makes them experts on just about everything.

Renowned brain surgeon Carson is running for the Republican presidential nomination because he thinks he knows enough to be a dandy leader of the free world.

Media mega-mogul Murdoch similarly seems to think his business genius makes him an expert on black people.

"Ben and Candy Carson terrific," Murdoch tweeted after watching Carson -- a former contributor to Murdoch's Fox News Channel -- and his wife on Fox's "The Kelly File" last Wednesday. "What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide? And much else."

Right. And if anybody should know "a real" African-American, it's a white 84-year-old white billionaire from Australia.

The Twitter universe exploded in speculation as to what Murdoch might have meant. After years of allegations from the political right that Obama was too black to give whites -- or, at least, conservatives -- a fair shake, was Murdoch now saying Obama is not black enough?

Is Obama in Murdoch's eyes a BINO, Black In Name Only?

Is Murdoch saying, as conservative provocateur Ann Coulter declared on his network four years ago, "Our blacks are so much better than their blacks"?

Murdoch sent a second tweet moments after his first: "Read New York magazine for minority community disappointment with POTUS."

The mogul apparently was referring to "The Paradox of the First Black President," a thoughtful Oct. 7 article by Jennifer Senior about Obama's racial tightrope: How to address urgent black community concerns without sparking too much backlash from white conservatives.

But reading the article makes Murdoch's complaint sound like a humblebrag. If he thinks Obama has worsened our racial divide, as many conservatives claim, he had plenty of help from his ideological opponents.

Whatever Murdoch meant, he apparently realized after hours of backlash on Twitter and other social media that his message needed clarification. "Apologies!" his follow-up tweet exclaimed. "No offense meant. Personally find both men charming."

That's a relief. But since Obama's racial tightrope apparently comes as news to Murdoch, I too have a magazine article to recommend to him: "The Return of the Middle American Radical," a Sept. 8 analysis in the National Journal by John B. Judis. It analyzes the rise of political outsiders like Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Carson -- and the challenge their supporters present to today's Republican Party, particularly among white voters.

The "Middle American Radicals, or MARS," first identified as such by sociologist Donald Warren in the mid-1970s, Judis reports, are mostly white. They tend to lack college diplomas and feel shafted by political and corporate elites from above and by minorities, liberals and allegedly undeserving poor from below.

MARS can be more loyal to personalities than parties when a colorful populist like George Wallace, H. Ross Perot, Pat Buchanan or Trump comes along.

What distinguishes them is their ideology, Judis writes. They don't trust corporate power or either party's political establishment. But they also turn very conservative on poverty and race with "an intense conviction that the middle class (is) under siege from above and below."

That's probably what appeals to Murdoch about Carson. Our current black or, at least, biracial President Barack Obama apparently is not "black" or "real" enough for Rupert. A "real black president" in Murdoch's mind would share his very conservative values -- as Carson does.

Taxes? "Simply tithe," says Carson. Never mind that taxing everybody 10 percent would not only disproportionately burden the poor but also grew the national debt.

Obamacare? "Worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery," says Carson. Never mind the millions of all colors who have health insurance for the first time.

Carson may be a brilliant brain surgeon, but Republicans could do better at supporting black conservative office holders. Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, for example, the South's first black senator since Reconstruction, won with mostly white votes. Yet he has been a leader on issues like criminal justice reform and police body cameras that his black constituents in particular care about.

That's how you practice the politics of addition, not division. I eagerly wait for the Party of Abraham Lincoln to practice it again.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)