Racism

In his speech to the Republican National Convention earlier this year, actor Clint Eastwood told the assembled crowd that there are more conservatives and moderates in Hollywood than they might think. Such people “play closer to the vest. They do not go around hot dogging it,” Eastwood said.

Unfortunately, actress Stacey Dash is finding out the hard way what happens to those celebrities who are willing to think for themselves: they get attacked by the very people who claim to preach “tolerance” and “peace.” (Note: This blog post is “not safe for work” and certainly not for children.)

The Daily Beast's Andrew Sullivan clearly hasn't gotten over last week's horrible debate performance by the President of the United States.

In an article entitled "Behind The Obama Implosion," Sullivan wrote Sunday evening, "If Obama was rattled by Drudge, Carlson and Hannity yelling 'Remember he's a n---er!' the days before, then the Romney campaign has gotten into Obama's usually impermeable head."

MSNBC's Touré made another in a series of racist remarks Friday.

Appearing on the Martin Bashir show, Touré said of Republicans, "If you just have a bunch of white people, you’re gonna come up with alternate realities that don’t make any sense" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MRC President and NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell appeared on the October 4 edition of Hannity and exposed the hollowness of the media's argument against covering inflammatory quotes Barack Obama made in a 2007 speech on race, clips aired for the first time earlier this week on Hannity. [Watch the full video after the jump.]

Host Sean Hannity set up the newest "Media Mash" segment: "I just played this tape, 2007. Yeah, the speech was reported on, but they didn't report what happened in this speech. They didn't -- major portions of it where the President is accusing the United States government -- before a predominantly African-American audience -- of not taking care of Katrina victims because of race."

If one were trying to prove in court that MSNBC is crazily biased, you could do worse than submitting Rachel Maddow's Tuesday night show.

She was discussing the recently released June 2007 tape of Barack Obama using Hillary Clinton's black accent to tell an audience of black preachers that the U.S. government doesn't care about black people, Maddow explained with her typical leaden sarcastic wit that the tape reveals Obama's "secret plan to be way more black than he seems to you now."

CNN dismissed the controversy behind a 2007 Obama video that just resurfaced, by calling it "old news" and whitewashing the President's own words. CNN even touted its own 2007 coverage of the speech without admitting that it ignored the most controversial part.

Anchor Soledad O'Brien, who has stuck up for Obama more than once before, lamely spun that Obama "was talking about racial discontent and hopelessness because of poverty." CNN's Zoraida Sambolin said "it is old news" and added that CNN "covered it at the time." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Andrew Sullivan is spitting mad at Tucker Carlson.  Writing at The Daily Beast today, Sullivan vilifies the editor-in-chief of the Daily Caller as a "degenerate, disgusting, racist demagogue."

Sullivan is infuriated by Carlson's Daily Caller having recently called attention to a 2007 speech, largely ignored by the MSM, by then presidential candidate Barack Obama.  Addressing an audience of black ministers, Obama lavishly praised Rev. Jeremiah Wright, blamed the LA riots and the response to Hurricane Katrina on racism and made, in the words of the Daily Caller, "repeated and all-but-explicit appeals to racial solidarity, referring to 'our' people and 'our neighborhoods.'”  More after the jump.

Ann Coulter had a tremendously contentious encounter with civil rights activist and author Kevin Powell on Current TV’s Say Anything Tuesday.

Things got so heated that by the end of their discussion, he called her “homophobic, anti-Semite, and a racist," and she called him “a moron” (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

As even the casual reader of NewsBusters is well aware, the MSNBC cable news network is forever on the lookout for racially-tinged "code words" in Republican speeches and "dog whistle" ads by GOP super PACs against Democrats. But the network's keen sense of outrage is conspicuously absent when it comes to attacks by Democratic groups against Mia Love, the African-American Republican Mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah, who is challenging long-time liberal -- he boasts a lifetime American Conservative Union score of 38.61 out of a possible 100 -- Rep. Jim Matheson (D).

Michael Warren of the Weekly Standard reported on Sept. 28 about a Utah State Democratic Committee mailer than seems to have darkened Love's skin tone. Warren also linked to a Blue Dog Democrat-linked Super PAC ad that falsely charged that Love's record is summed up in the words "skyrocketing crime" [video embedded below page break].

From his spot on the Time Ideas blog, the MSNBC anchor Toure admitted "If President Obama had to run against Senator Obama of 2008, he’d probably be crushed. Back then, Obama seemed superhuman; today he is merely mortal. His victory in 2008 was historic, breaking the race barrier in the nation’s highest office."

Guess what came next. Re-electing Obama is a greater test of whether America is racist than it was in 2008: "But an Obama victory in 2012 would say something even more profound about how far our country has come. Granted, Obama’s election (or not) is merely one of many factors that will tell us where we are on race in America. But it is a big one." Toure put Obama into the metaphor of The Matrix:

NewsBusters has been showcasing the most egregious bias the Media Research Center has uncovered over the years — four quotes for each of the 25 years of the MRC, 100 quotes total — all leading up to our big 25th Anniversary Gala tomorrow evening. (Click here for posts recounting the worst of 1988 through 2011.)

Today, the worst bias of 2012 (so far): Newsweek sees Barack Obama as “grotesquely underappreciated,” afflicted by critics who are simply “dumb;” Chief Justice John Roberts becomes a media hero by voting to save ObamaCare; and an ex-CNN correspondent charges Republicans are trying to take the country back “to the good old days of Jim Crow.” [Quotes and video below the jump.]

CNN's Jim Acosta on Tuesday's Situation Room asked what many will think was a truly offensive question.

"If you were to somehow beat the first African-American president, what would you say to the black community to assure them that you would be their president also?" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In the just published excerpt of Ann Coulter's new book Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama, the conservative author noted the racial double standards of MSNBC commentators such as Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow.

Appearing on Fox News's Fox & Friends Tuesday, Coulter expanded her criticism to Lawrence O'Donnell and HBO's Bill Maher (video follows with transcript):

Ann Coulter is an eight-time New York Times bestselling author as well as the legal correspondent for Human Events and a syndicated columnist for Universal Press Syndicate.

She has been a dear friend of the Media Research Center’s for decades and is beloved by NewsBusters readers around the world.

We’re very pleased to have an opportunity to discuss her new book with her entitled, “Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama.”

All this week during the 11 a.m. Eastern MSNBC Live program, "we're going to look at the ballot battles that could decide the race for the White House," MSNBC's Richard Lui noted today as he set up a segment with two liberal opponents of voter ID laws -- "wired into the concerns of minority voters" -- Ohio State Senator Nina Turner (D) and Common Cause staff counsel Stephen Spaulding.

Although Lui briefly quoted from two officials for True the Vote, a conservative anti-voter fraud group that supports voter ID laws, he failed to bring on any representatives of the group, even though Turner was there to rail against what she sees as the racist motives behind the Ohio Secretary of State's move to cut back on in-person voting hours.

Bill Maher not surprisingly spent most of his HBO show Friday trashing Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

During his final New Rule, the Real Time host said, "In many ways we're all a bit Mitt Romney - and I don't just mean dorks in mom jeans who are afraid of black people" (video follows with transcript and commentary, serious vulgarity warning, file photo):

Civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) has said new voter ID laws reflect old Jim Crow laws, and CNN's Carol Costello played right into his outlandish rhetoric on Friday morning.

"Are you kind of stunned we're talking about these kinds of things in this day and age, with your history, I mean?" Costello asked the liberal congressman of the debate over voter ID laws. He answered in the affirmative and again likened voter ID laws to Jim Crow. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Finding racism in ridiculous places: It isn’t just for MSNBC anymore. The Huffington Post has performed a neat trick, exercising its own religious bigotry by accusing someone else of racism. The result is a breathtakingly inane article. (The crusade to re-elect Obama has spurred his media acolytes to heroic exertions, hasn’t it?)

Writing in HuffPo on Sept. 9, Paul Harvey and Edward J. Blum broke incredible news: Mormon iconography commonly includes a statue of a white Jesus! And that white statue first appeared in Salt Lake City in 1966, “the middle of the Civil Rights movement.”

During the midnight hour of MSNBC's Thursday night Democratic National Convention coverage, host Chris Matthews managed to squeeze in another charge of racism against a black President by "right wingers" as he brought up the birther movement and asserted:

It's irresistible to play the game of imagining the MSM response had a prominent Republican been caught saying of Barack Obama that "a few years ago this guy would have been carrying our bags."  In the case of a Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan, calls for them to quit the campaign would be echoing from the halls of MSNBC to the shores of the New York Times.

But let a Democrat say it, in the person of The World's Greatest and Most Beloved Politician, AKA Bill Clinton, and well, no problem.  The MSM reacts with a yawn.  Take Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker correspondent who actually broke the story.  Appearing on CNN this morning, Lizza assured host Soledad O'Brien that "I don't think it's racial.  I don't think Bill Clinton has a racist bone in his body."  View the video after the jump.

Minutes after Paul Ryan finished his RNC speech on Wednesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews slammed the Republican vice presidential candidate for supposedly ignoring blacks during his "very constricted, very negative, very nasty speech," and suggested that he was directing the address to racists: "It's clear that Paul Ryan was talking to people who think about rights as something...produced by Thomas Jefferson, ignoring the people for whom the rights only came in the 1960s."

Matthews added that "for some reason, they never mentioned those things, because they're talking to people - let's be honest about this - who didn't feel – the benefit, at all, from those civil rights, and I think that's very important to point out." [audio available here; video below the jump]

Chris Matthews was on Hardball tonight covering the Republican National Convention with guests Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and John Heilemann of New York Magazine.  In what is seemingly the natural progression of things these days with Matthews, the subject of the 'otherization' of the President was being discussed.  Because, if you weren't aware already, Barack Obama is black, and any time a Republican chooses to discuss the failure that is his administration, the media will be there to quickly remind you that they only feel that way because of his skin color.

But tonight's episode of race-baiting with Chris Matthews was a bit odd in that the panelists somehow came to the conclusion that reminding people of the President's roots in Chicago politics is racist.  In fact, simply saying Chicago is racist.  (Video below).

This afternoon, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell got his hands on excerpts of the remarks that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) was preparing to give this evening. Bound and determined to find racism where it doesn't exist, O'Donnell did not disappoint. Taking to the air on Martin Bashir's eponymous program, O'Donnell laid out his case that McConnell's crack that the president "has been working hard to earn a spot on the PGA tour."

That's just plain racist, even if by two or three degrees of separation, O'Donnell explained. The long and short of it: When you think Obama at the PGA, you think of Tiger Woods, and when you think of Tiger Woods, you think about his cheating on his wife. [You can watch the Breitbart video embedded below page break.]

Update 22:47 Eastern: Reeve doubles down on his assertion in a piece entitled "Why We Think John Boehner Is Hoping for Low Minority Voter Turnout" | A comment by House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) that many blacks and Hispanic voters that are traditionally in the Democratic column will not show up to vote for President Obama's reelection because of his poor handling of the economy is being twisted by the Atlantic to suggest that Boehner cynically "hopes" for a depressed turnout by minorities.

"Boehner Says Out Loud He Hopes Blacks and Latinos 'Won't Show Up' This Election," blares the headline for the August 27 story by Elspeth Reeve at TheAtlanticWire.com. Reeve himself got his information from another liberal site:

Syndicated columnist Cal Thomas made a statement on Saturday's Fox News Watch that is guaranteed to raise a few eyebrows.

"An African-American president can divide racially in this country - as I believe this one has done quite effectively - and he gets a free pass from the media" (video follows with transcript):

There was, understandably, plenty of outrage this week upon hearing MSNBC host Touré accuse Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of what he called the "niggerization" of President Obama.  

On Thursday's The Cycle, Touré responded to Romney's charge that the President can "take [his] campaign of division and anger and hate back to Chicago” in the following unhinged manner:

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Touré Neblett on Thursday's The Cycle accused presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney of using what he called "niggerization" against Barack Obama.

On Friday, Neblett offered a twelve second - yes, I said twelve second! - apology for his disgraceful remark (video follows with transcript and commentary):