I doubt I am the only one who wishes this book had been written after the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. I'm sure it is no longer "difficult to assess the nature of the coverage because studies disagree about the tone of black candidates' coverage" (218). I suppose some people might argue that political attacks such as accusing President Obama of being a Muslim not born on American soil are not racially motivated, but I would argue those people are probably also racists (but of the "I'm not a racist, it has nothing to do with race" ilk). I've never been accused of being a Muslim or a non-citizen. Hell, I'll let Bill O' Reilly speak for himself:

"It's a changing country. The demographics are changing. It's not a traditional America any more. And there are 50% of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama. He knows it and he ran on it. And, whereby twenty years ago, President Obama would have been roundly defeated by an establishment candidate like Mitt Romney. The white establishment is now the minority. And the voters, many of them, feel that the economic system is stacked against them and they want stuff. You are going to see a tremendous Hispanic vote for President Obama, overwhelming black vote for President Obama. And women will probably break President Obama’s way. People feel that they are entitled to things and which candidate, between the two, is going to give them things?"

See, totally not racist... Okay, okay, that was totally racist. But that's just Bil O' Reilly, right? Hm, what about comments made by Brent Bozzell of the (improperly named) Media Research Center:

"How long do you think Sean Hannity's show would last if four times in one sentence, he made a comment about, say, the President of the United States, and said that he looked like a skinny, ghetto crackhead? Which, by the way, you might want to say that Barack Obama does. Everybody on the left would come forward and demand he be fired within five minutes for being so insulting towards a leader of the United States."

Sounds a tad racist to me. So are statements made by Fox News' Eric Bolling that President Obama was "chugging 40's in IRE while tornadoes ravage MO" or that when President Obama had the president of Gabon and a a rapper (both Black) over to the White House he had "hoodlum[s] in the hizzouse." I could go on and on, but I'm sure you all get the point. I guess what I am trying to say is that this section of the book seems dated and a bit irrelevant. I have a difficult time believing that this racism in the media when it comes to minority candidates is a new phenomenon, even though I will admit that I did not notice it until the 2008 presidential election when it was thrust full force into the spotlight. This section just seemed filled with a bunch of seemingly meaningless statistics. I would have much preferred a deep analysis of the language used to describe the candidates rather than a percentage of references made to the candidate and other information that I had a difficult time interpreting in any productive way (and it seems like Larson had the same problem). Hopefully more research into racism towards politicians in the media will be conducted soon, if it hasn't been already.