During the Friday night (SOS) Saving OurSelves: The BET Relief Telethon, actor/comedian Steve Harvey and singer/actress Queen Latifah came to rapper Kanye West's defense. Harvey imparted: “We love you, brother. And do keep your head up, and we understand what you were trying to say, and you have a lot of people's support in spite of all the ridicule that you're receiving, man. Do stay strong.” Latifah saw West as a martyr, chiming in with how “you always going to pay to speak what's on your mind and what's on your heart. But that don't mean you shouldn't say it.”

Last Friday (Sept. 2), on NBC's Concert for Hurricane Relief, West ludicrously contended that “we already realize a lot of the people that could help are at war right now fighting another way and they’ve given them permission to go down and shoot us.” He later added this slam: “George Bush doesn't care about black people." (Previous NewsBusters item on West.)

Transcript of the comments from Harvey and Latifah follows. Video Excerpt: RealPlayer or Windows Media

Seeking to extol the virtues of ‘diversity’ and bemoan the lack of same on campus, Michelle Locke of the Associated Press gives us a story titled, “Blacks Still a Minority at UC Berkeley.” She writes:

This fall's incoming class of 4,000 students at the University of California, Berkeley is expected to include just 129 black freshmen, a disturbing trend to leaders of the socially progressive and academically elite school.

The piece then goes on to discuss not only the lack of black freshmen (about three percent), but also Hispanics:

Instead of everybody cowtowing to the race pimps like Jesse Jackson, why don't some of these spineless Republicans get out there and combat this idea that Bush was "slow to respond"? President Bush called Gov. Blanco and asked her to declare a mandatory evacuation, according to Mayor Nagin, she needed 24hrs to fashion a reply and they blame Bush for delays? She then did NOT issue a mandatory evacuation, she sat on her thumbs and "thought the city government was taking care of the evacuation", to quote this braindead woman. SHE HAS STILL REFUSED TO HAVE PEOPLE REMOVED FROM THEIR HOMES! Why you ask ladies and gents? RACISM. Pure and simple. No ones talking about the news footage aired on Fox during O'Reilly the other day, with a young white woman in the French Quarter who had banded together with other merchants in the area to fortify themselves against invaders. She stated that the police told them that they (the police) really didn't want "people like them", to evacuate. She then tried to clarify what she thought he meant by "people like them", she gestured with the broom she was sweeping with and said, "productive people". It seems to me that this White Democratic mayor was protecting the rich peoples property because she knew how a segment of her population would react. Looting, terrorizing, you know the deal. This is why she was dragging her feet, folks. I've often said that liberals are the biggest racists, brandishing the bigotry of low expectations like a knife. In this case it cost people their lives, all of those people that died in the Superdome or on the section of Highway highlit by Shepard Smith of Foxnews, died because of this Governors orders. Naturally when CYA mode is initiated, the supposedly neutral RedCross isn't going to lie for this Governor, so they are responding to the question of delay rather forcefully!

NPR's All Things Considered tonight carried a story from reporter Frank Langfitt focusing on how Wal-Mart brought their efficient distribution system to bear in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, particularly in Kenner, Louisiana, where their supplies arrived before federal or Red Cross help. He did conclude by noting that Wal-Mart is videotaping their charity for reporters. But hey, why not? Wal-Mart has been quite a whipping boy for negative media coverage.

The Free Market Project folks note a positive Washington Post story in the "Quoteworthy" box on their home page as well.

Mr. Schumer, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, has created an online petition to fire Michael Brown, head of FEMA. Mr. Schumer insists that both handling and response time were unacceptable. The petition was discovered to contain a link to a liberal political donation site which has mainstream overlooked.

Hillary was part of the effort to extend big government by moving FEMA under the umbrella yet today she has changed her mind, demanding it’s removal. She certainly is not alone for it’s a party effort, but in light of the fact that everything points to her upcoming elections, she continues to make mistakes and ride under the media radar.

Taking this thought a step further, Mr. Brown has been reassigned. What have we accomplished? Imagine moving FEMA outside of big government once again, what have we gained? How many people would purchase a car or a home without a sales consultant? One must ask questions in order to receive necessary information upon which to base a decision, no? Who is in charge of New Orleans and why are they being ignored?

Reading viewer email at the bottom of 4:00 hour of CNN's "Situation Room," Jack Cafferty dismissed a call from a viewer "try to be 'fair and balanced'" in his commentary segments, deriding the audience member's suggestion as a "thinly veiled reference to the F-word network."

Full transcript:

And finally, John writes: Cafferty, your liberal opinions are not appreciated by a majority of the viewers. Your smart remarks about our President and Vice President are not welcome. If at all possible, try to be "fair and balanced."

I think that was a thinly veiled reference to the F-word Network, Wolf. What do you think?

Video Excerpt: Real or Windows

What would you do if you opened up your morning newspaper or turned on the local television news and found grisly photos of one of your parents, or a brother, sister, uncle, cousin or a close personal friend? You would be outraged. And rightfully so.

But some of my colleagues in the mainstream media claim they can’t report properly the terrible aftermath of Hurricane Katrina unless the Federal Emergency Management Agency allows them to photograph dead bodies up close and personal.

Their claim came in response to FEMA’s refusal to allow journalists to accompany recovery teams searching for victims of the disaster.

"It's impossible for me to imagine how you report a story whose subject is death without allowing the public to see images of the subject of the story," said Larry Siems of the PEN American Center, according to a Reuters story.

After nearly two weeks of media carping about a slow federal response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, tonight ABC will air a story critical of the federal government for listing a charity which is providing hurricane relief -- one founded by Pat Robertson. Viewers of Thursday's World News Tonight were treated to this promo: “Tomorrow: He wanted the U.S. to assassinate a world leader. Now the U.S. is recommending his charity as second only to the Red Cross for Hurricane Katrina donations. The politics of Katrina relief and Pat Robertson, tomorrow, only on World News Tonight.” (As the announcer said that, ABC displayed video clips of Robertson, Hugo Chavez, hurricane destruction, the name “Operation Blessing” and Robertson with a frowning face as he prayed.)

I don't know how the feds made Operation Blessing “second only to the Red Cross,” but below are links to Operation Blessing and a FEMA press release which lists Operation Blessing fourth, after the Humane Society. And why should victims suffer just because the founder of one relief group, who has nothing to do with day-to-day operations, said something dumb?

UPDATED 9:10pm EDT with what aired.

On Tuesday, I posted an item about how Harry Smith worried that Christians who put up Hurricane Katrina evacuees in their homes might force their guests to attend church in order to eat breakfast. It was a silly question in an otherwise non-biased interview with Pastor Rick Warren, author of the best-selling book, The Purpose-Driven Life. Well, our favorite religious scholar made another gaffe today which similarly shows his ignorance about the beliefs of his interview subjects.

Smith asked a female parishioner:

Friday's "news analysis" by Richard Stevenson, "The President From 9/11 Has Yet to Reappear," follows in the slanted footsteps of his previous one. The text box reads: "Still looking for vision in the face of national calamity."

"Nine days after the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush stood before a joint session of Congress and rallied the nation to a new mission. On Thursday, nine days after it became apparent that New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast had been devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Mr. Bush stood in an auditorium across the street from the White House and directed storm victims to a Web site and a toll-free telephone number. There are obvious differences between the situations. But while the first showed Mr. Bush capable of commanding the nation's attention, transcending partisanship and clearly articulating a set of goals, the second has left him groping to find his voice and set out a vision of how the government and the American people should respond."

Stevenson implies Bush is some kind of conservative hypocrite: "But as Thursday's performance made clear, he has remained small bore in addressing the crisis, casting himself more as a manager than a leader. And as someone who regularly cites the virtues of limited government, he has been somewhat out of character in unleashing rather than reining in the kinds of social welfare programs he urged the storm's victims to sign up for on Thursday….But most of the rest of his speech was a guide to government assistance programs, including Medicaid, assistance for needy families, food stamps, housing and job training, many of which he has tried to trim in the name of leaner government."

Stevenson then suggests that waiving a union-backed requirement in order to speed up relief indicates a lack of compassion: "Mr. Bush's effort to strike a compassionate tone were also complicated by his decision to waive a requirement that employers who receive federal government contracts related to the relief effort pay their workers the prevailing wages for that kind of work in the area it is being done. The White House said the change was made to save the government money. John J. Sweeney, the president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O, called it 'unbelievable and outrageous.'"

Speaking of compassion, Wal-Mart, long attacked in the Times for being anti-union, donated $15 million to Hurricane Katrina relief. We'll see if the AFL-CIO proves equally generous.

Go to TimesWatch for more coverage of bias in the New York Times.

The BBC reports that tonight's telethon to help victims of Hurricane Katrina will not be cut to "edit political statements out" of the live show. The BBC also reports that Kanye West has again been invited to perform. During NBC's telethon last week, West deviated from the script to say "George Bush doesn't care about black people."

"No special precautions will be taken to edit political statements out of a live US TV benefit for Hurricane Katrina survivors, the show's producer said...

"Producer Joel Gallen said the Shelter From the Storm telethon would be shown with a standard 30-second delay.

"This will guard against any obscenities, said Mr Gallen, who added that he had spoken to all musicians and actors on the line-up about not detracting from the show's fundraising purpose.

Was FEMA head Mike Brown Assistant City Manager of Edmond, OK, or was he Assistant to the City Manager? And did he serve from 1975-78 or from 1977-80?

Small beer, you might think, but a heady enough brew for the Today show to lead with this morning.

Andrea Mitchell reported on a Time Magazine piece which she claimed raised "serious questions about the management training" Brown had received.

Mitchell, archly noting that Brown is "a political appointee," as if all previous FEMA directors weren't, introduced a clip from Time reporter Carolina Miranda, who stated that the "biggest discrepancy that we found . . . was the fact that the White House release listed him as an Assistant City Manager for the City of Edmond, Oklahoma from 1975-78, saying that during this time he had oversight of the emergency services division for that city and that it was vital experience to his charge as FEMA Director."

After insisting that “I don’t do opinions,” on Thursday’s Daily Show on Comedy Central, NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams seemed to come dangerously close to endorsing the view that racism was behind the slow rescue of residents in New Orleans as he approvingly relayed how, a “refrain” he heard from “everyone watching the coverage all week,” was “had this been Nantucket, had this been Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, how many choppers would have-” At that point, audience applause caused him to cut off his sentence as he gestured toward the audience to cite affirmation of his point.

Hard to imagine that if Williams heard the refrain, which is out there, that the hurricane’s destruction of abortion clinics in New Orleans shows it was meant as God’s punishment of sinful behavior in the city, Williams would have so willingly passed along that line of reasoning.

Transcript follows. Video Excerpt: Real or Windows Media