They MADE the predatory banksters give them loans, by gawd
Bloomberg Businessweek jumped completely off of the rails with their magazine’s cover image this week. Have a look:
The title says “The Great American Housing Rebound — Flips. No-look bids. 300 percent returns. What could possibly go wrong?”
Now, if you want to talk about banks giving out loans to people that have no business with a mortgage, you could show shady banker-types tricking gullible people into signing papers. Instead, Businessweek elected to show a house with:
- An African American woman who looks like child that’s as stupid as the dog who she is feeding money to.
- A buxom Latina showing some sexy cleavage and waving a fistful of cash.
- Another Hispanic-looking woman deleriously scooping up armsful of cash.
- A wild-eyed African American man leaning out the window to show off his fistful of cash.
You see? Those brown people ruined everything and they are about to do so again when they buy their house that has money coming out of the faucets and the windows and the chimney and the downspouts. Hell, even the rodents that live in the house have money in their mouths. Why, they are just robbing all the upstanding white people blind, by the looks of it. Stupid, evil brown people.
Politico reports that Businessweek has kinda sorta apologized:
“Our cover illustration last week got strong reactions, which we regret,” Josh Tyrangiel, the magazine’s editor, wrote in a statement sent to POLITICO. “Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.”
No doubt. As the Politico piece mentions, The Atlantic Cities‘ Emily Badger points out that the article doesn’t even bother to mention “the role of predatory lending”.
But the most perplexing part of the whole affair is the fact that the magazine’s cover – and the story insinuated by it – bears no relation to the actual article contained inside (which has a notably less sexy headline online: “A Phoenix Housing Boom Forms, in Hint of U.S. Recovery”). That piece makes no mention of the racial dynamics of the housing market, or the role of predatory lending.
Of course it doesn’t. It’s the brown people’s fault, not the greedy banksters who signed them up for mortgages anyone with a brain knew they could never pay back.
At least they left out the fried chicken, watermelons and tacos, eh? I guess that’s what passes for progress these days.
Shameful.
[H/T Matt Yglesias at Salon.com]
