Racism

During his first hour today, Rush mentioned the reaction of Peter King at Sports illustrated in King's "Monday Morning Quarterback" collection to a paragraph in the magazine's cover story on Jeremy Lin, the New York Knicks' point guard who has broken through from obscurity to phenom during the past two weeks. What King wrote is indeed an interesting giveaway of what I believe is a common but unsupportable media perspective, namely that students at and graduates of elite upper-echelon universities like those in the Ivy League are presumptively free of overt racism, because, well, they're all so enlightened.

Uh, no. As Pablo S. Torre reveals in said cover story:

On the debut of the Melissa Harris-Perry show on MSNBC on Saturday, after starting the show with a discussion of why she believes it is a good thing for the Republican Party to be a strong party - for the sake of having a competitive, multi-party system to give voters choices - the show soon predictably moved toward talk of alleged racism in the Republican Party. (Video clips below)

At one point, she showed video footage of liberal Republican presidential candidate Nelson Rockefeller from the 1964 Republican National Convention condemning "extremists" in the party. After a clip of a black audience member applauding the speech, Harris-Perry cracked:

On the February 7 edition of MSNBC's Now with Alex Wagner, panelist John Heilemann, who writes for New York Magazine, thought it appropriate to equate the gay marriage debate in California to racial bigotry experienced by African-Americans in the 1960s. 

During an interview with openly gay former Lieutenant Dan Choi, Heilemann asked former Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele the following bigoted and offensive question: “Michael I’m curious about whether you think it would be okay in modern America, for there to be some states where black men could not marry white women?  If local standards where that were unacceptable.” [MP3 audio here. See video below.]

Update (18:46 EST): CBS has since changed the headline to "Controversial Voting Legislation Passes In Virginia Senate."

"'Jim Crow' Voting Legislation Passes in Virginia Senate," a CBS news headline on a Washington D.C. CBS news website alarmed readers tonight.

The AP/CBSDC story, filed at 10:33 p.m. Eastern on the website for CBS Radio's new all-news station WNEW, reports on the passage of a strict voter ID law in the Virginia State Senate. As we've noted previously, the Washington Post has reported, uncritically, Virginia Democratic legislators' Jim Crow comparisons, but it appears that CBS News is taking the Washington Post's bias even further (see screen capture below page break):

On Saturday I noted how Washington Post staffer Laura Vozzella front-loaded her February 4 Metro-section front-pager with overheated rhetoric from liberal Democrats suggesting that voter ID bills pushed by Republicans were the second-coming of Jim Crow. As I wrote my critique, I wondered what sort of news editor would allow such extremely biased dreck to go to publication.

Today's Washington Post editorial blasting the voter ID bills may very well answer my question. In "How to discourage Virginia voters," the Post editorial board today suggested that Del. Mark Cole's bill to make the state's voter ID law stricter is evidence of "institutional racism" in the Old Dominion.

Updated at bottom of post | Virginia Republicans proposing voter ID laws in the state's General Assembly are akin to racist Jim Crow poll workers, lynch mobs, and even Josef Stalin. Those comparisons were all made in the first seven paragraphs of Laura Vozzella's February 4 Metro section front page article, "Voter ID fight heats up in Va."*

Vozzella, who previously has complained about Virginia GOP legislators' "slew of conservative bills" front-loaded her Saturday article with the overwrought rhetoric, which she, of course, failed to dismiss as overheated rhetoric:

So a guy whose contract was terminated by NPR on a phony pretext for not toeing the liberal line enough, including writing a book ("Enough: The Phony Leaders, Dead-End Movements, and Culture of Failure That Are Undermining Black America--and What We Can Do About It") which indicted the modern civil-rights movement for, well, undermining Black America, now appears to want eliminate "Constitution" and "Founding Fathers" from the lexicon of Republican candidates -- and possibly, it would appear, from political discussion in general -- because, well, they're racial code words. How ironic.

That is what Juan Williams outrageously claims in his latest column at the Hill today (bold is mine):

On Friday's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, host Maher repeatedly made jokes about conservatives being racists, and at one point even acknowledged that the main criticism that conservatives make about him is his tendency to make cracks about them being racists.

Maher also defended liberal hatred of President Bush, claiming that the left hated Bush for what he actually did, in contrast with conservatives, whom he claimed mostly make up complaints about President Obama.

As he spoke during the panel segment, the left-wing comedian brought up complaints about his labeling of conservatives as racists:

The unhinged hysteria being displayed by the liberal media over a picture of President Obama and Arizona's Republican governor Jan Brewer supposedly in a heated exchange has become laughable.

On Thursday's The Last Word, newly promoted MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry told host Lawrence O'Donnell that this photo reminded her of "the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Salon's Joan Walsh stooped to an even further low Monday when she said on MSNBC's pre-debate show, "Newt is the face of the politics of resentment and racism and angry white male rage."

Yes, she was talking about Republican presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Charles Blow’s Saturday column for the New York Times, “Newt’s Southern Strategy,” tastelessly conflated GOP candidate Newt Gingrich’s (imagined) racism with conservatives who believe the media have a liberal bias, while Blow called the former House Speaker a "vile, reptilian, hatemonger" on his Twitter feed.

You know liberals are desperate if they’re playing the race card so early in the 2012 campaign cycle. The latest edition of MRC’s Notable Quotables is now out, and this week’s collection was heavy with media quotes attacking both Republican voters and their presidential candidates as racist.

Among the lowlights: NBC’s Ann Curry accusing Newt Gingrich of “intentionally playing the race card” when he talked about President Obama’s dismal economic record, and ex-CNN correspondent Bob Franken nastily asserting that conservative voters harbor “a real resentment against blacks,” and “would love to see us return to the good old days of Jim Crow.”

The worst quotes are below the jump; the full issue can be read at www.MRC.org. (PDF version)

HBO’s Bill Maher said Friday that members of the Tea Party support Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich because he’s racist like them.

Fortunately for the small portion of Real Time viewers with a brain, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis was there to set the ignorant host straight (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

In an unsigned per curiam opinion issued today, the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a federal judge's revision of Texas's congressional redistricting map, finding that the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas had "substituted its own concept of 'the collective public good' for the Texas Legislature’s determination of which policies serve 'the interests of the citizens of Texas.'" The court "appears to have unnecessarily ignored the State’s plans in drawing certain individual districts," the Court added. No justice dissented and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas issued a concurrence.

Yet in teasing Supreme Court correspondent Robert Barnes's story on the Washington Post's website, editors colored the decision in a way that portrayed the move as the justices having "throw[n] out... electoral maps favoring minorities." [see screencap below page break]

Comedienne Wanda Sykes speculated Thursday that Republican presidential candidate Rick Perry had to drop out of the race because "he was one more debate away from saying the N-word." 

Appearing on NBC’s Tonight Show to bash all the GOP candidates, she also told the host that Newt Gingrich might have wanted an open marriage with his ex-wife because she said he had a "tiny penis" (video follows with transcribed highlights and commentary):

On Thursday morning, CNN's Soledad O'Brien suggested that candidate Newt Gingrich speaks with a "racial coding" on the campaign trail. She gave credibility to former President Carter's bizarre remark about Gingrich having a "subtlety of racism" about him, asking her panel if the quote was a "bombshell."

O'Brien could also have questioned Carter's remark as a smear coming from a Democrat. Instead she seemed to argue in favor of his side. “Is there racial coding in what Newt Gingrich has said in not only in these debates, but also even in some of the campaign stops?” she asked her panel. [Video below the break.]

Using the same predictable liberal smear of shouting racism at any conservative who criticizes President Obama, on Thursday's NBC Today, co-host Ann Curry ranted: "...you've been increasingly stepping up your characterization of President Obama as a 'food stamp president,' interestingly, in the lead-up now to South Carolina....Are you intentionally playing the race card to win votes?" [Audio available here and view video below]

Gingrich dismissed the assertion and rightfully condemned those hurling the outrageous accusation: "You know, modern liberals are just, I think frankly, totally off the deep end....their only answer is to yell racism and hide."

New York Times campaign reporter Jim Rutenberg filed from Charleston on Wednesday, amplifying racial accusations against the Republican presidential field, especially Newt Gingrich’s recent comments on Obama as a “food stamp” president, in “Risks for G.O.P. in Attacks With Racial Themes.”

South Carolina has the nation’s first female Indian-American governor (a Republican), the highest-ranking African-American in Congress (on the Democratic side) and a rapidly growing population of Latinos, all evidence, longtime political players here say, that the state is shedding its racially charged past.

Borrowing from a liberal Daily Beast column, CNN's Jack Cafferty set about asking if Newt Gingrich was ignorant and "clueless" about the African-American community, on Tuesday's The Situation Room.

Cafferty dropped the bomb right at the start as he matter-of-factly stated that "Newt Gingrich is clueless when it comes to African-Americans" before backing away and attributing the argument to the Daily Beast's Peter Beinart. Beinart has also been the editor of the liberal New Republic magazine, so Cafferty was not doing his credibility any favors by quoting someone who very well might have a liberal agenda in attacking the Republican candidate.

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews has been making the rounds accusing everyone associated with Monday's Republican presidential debate of racism.

On Tuesday's Hardball, the host finished the program by claiming former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich was race-baiting by calling Barack Obama The Food Stamp President (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich had a rather testy exchange with Fox News's Juan Williams during Monday's debate in South Carolina.

After Williams accused the former Speaker of the House of being racially insensitive when referring to Barack Obama as "The Food Stamp President," Gingrich said, "The fact is that more people have been put on food stamps by Barack Obama than any president in American history. Now, I know among the politically correct you are not supposed to use facts that are uncomfortable" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Update (17:05 EST): Williams tweets in protest: "Not once did I say GOP voters are racists" and has asked that I correct this post accordingly. I stand by my assertion given the context wherein Williams was describing why he believes Palmetto State Republicans, despite their reticence about Romney's Mormonism, could vote for Romney, whom they consider most likely to beat Obama in the November presidential election. At any rate, you can judge for yourself by watching the video below the page break.

Correction: Williams is a former lobbyist, having quit his lobbying work recently to work on Dylan Ratigan's "Get Money Out" campaign, a drive to amend the Constitution to overturn the implications of the Supreme Court's Citizens United ruling. Williams is senior strategist for and co-founder of United Republic.

What better way is there, really, for MSNBC to celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. Day than by leveling charges that Republican voters in general and Republican candidates in particular are racist? That's what Now with Alex Wagner panelists Jimmy Williams and Joy-Ann Reid charged respectively on today's program. [MP3 audio available here]

Hip-hop millionaire Russell Simmons and MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan aren't only outspoken supporters of the Occupy movement.

On the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the pair published an article at the Huffington Post claiming that our decades-old war on drugs is a racist conspiracy designed to unfairly incarcerate blacks to profit government agencies and corporate America:

Well, she’s certainly making a case for the title.

In a piece titled, When white people lack “bourgeois values”, the Salon Editor at Large manages a race and class-baiting exacta, covering an alleged economic disdain shown by Republicans towards African-Americans, and charging the GOP with promoting policies which “shackle women to the home”.

In attacking a Rick Santorum speech on family values, in which he correctly stated, “When the family breaks down, the economy breaks down,” Walsh had this to say: