Racism

Chris Matthews’ week of hateful speech concluded on March 23 with the liberal MSNBC host going after Tea Party favorite Rep. Michele Bachmann. 

Speaking on Friday, Matthews disgustingly, albeit all too predictably asserted that Bachmann’s criticism of President Obama was motivated by racist beliefs.  [See video after jump.  MP3 audio here.]

Call it Michael Moore's Jesse Jackson moment . . . Jackson once famously said that when he walked down the street and heard footsteps behind him, he was relieved to turn around and find a white person behind him.

This evening, on Ed Schultz's soon-to-be-extinct weeknight MSNBC show, a histrionic Michael Moore accused white gun owners of racism . . . then proceeded to say it was reasonable for them not to be afraid of their white neighbors  . . . and admitted he felt more comfortable walking down the streets of Toronto than Detroit. View the video after the jump.

CNN's Friday afternoon "panel" was a disgusting display of liberal non-tolerance. Anchor Don Lemon compared defenders of traditional marriage with opponents of interracial marriage and ripped their cause as "discrimination," while a panel member compared them to slave owners.

"No one should have to tolerate hate or discrimination," Lemon lectured radio host Ben Ferguson who had expressed his support for traditional marriage. When Ferguson shot back "But I don't hate you," Essence magazine editor Teresa Wiltz snarled, "The slave owners didn't hate the slaves either." [Video below the break. Audio here.]

MSNBC's Chris Matthews is the "real face of character assassination," NewsBusters publisher Brent Bozell argued on the March 21 edition of Fox News Channel's Hannity program. The Media Research Center founder and president reacted to just the latest instance of the Hardball host bashing Tea Party conservatives as racist, xenophobic, and anti-gay. "On Monday night, he was so off on his attacks on CPAC" that the non-partisan media criticism site Mediaite.com "called it grossly unfair and inaccurate." Two nights later, Matthews practically wrote off as insufficiently black African-American politicians like Mia Love, Herman Cain, former Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), who identify strongly with the Tea Party movement.

Also discussed on the "Media Mash" segment was a new Pew survey showing MSNBC is 85 percent commentary to 15 percent news reporting [watch the full Mash segment below the page break].

After a random CPAC attendee defended the benefits of slavery over the weekend, CNN's Don Lemon played it up as more baggage to a Republican party struggling to connect with minorities, on Sunday night's Newsroom.

"Listen, this won't help," he brought up the incident during a panel discussion about the GOP's outreach to minorities. He played the clip twice and narrated the details afterwards, all within the span of a few minutes. Then he implied it could "throw a monkey wrench" into GOP outreach. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

National Review magazine has published an excellent and comprehensive response to New York Times Book Editor Sam Tanenhaus's dishonest smear of conservative thought in a cover story for The New Republic. The article by National Review contributors Ramesh Ponnuru and Jonah Goldberg appears in the March 25 issue.

After first explaining that for the left, "The explanation for conservatives’ opposition to President Obama and his agenda must be found not in our ideas but in our pathologies," they argue (bolds added by me):

In a New York Times op-ed which has been receiving deserved criticism from other quarters concerning other matters (e.g., here and here), Ta-Nehisi Coates ("The Good, Racist People") repeated one of those establishment press-induced "everybody knows" mantras which doesn't stand up to scrutiny after considering the available evidence: "New York is a city, like most in America, that bears the scars of redlining, blockbusting and urban renewal. The ghost of those policies haunts us in a wealth gap between blacks and whites that has actually gotten worse over the past 20 years." In Coates's fevered mind, it's largely due to racism.

In national context, the white-black wealth gap in the two decades since 1993 is not yet known, but in 2005, the 15th of the past 20 years for which information is available (1991-2010), it stayed the same. The multiple only went up significantly when the housing bubble burst and the recession took hold.

If the Supreme Court strikes down section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, it would be a "one of the most jaw-dropping acts of, you know, judicial activism activism that we've seen in probably a generation," MSNBC's Chris Hayes insisted on the March 1 edition of Now with Alex Wagner.

That line of argument is certainly debatable, but Hayes decided to go way off the deep end by then saying that the conservative jurists on the Court, particularly the chief justice and Antonin Scalia were devoted to an "adolescent" jurisprudence on issues of racial equality, because they, wait for it, believe that the law should be colorblind:

Left-wing blowhard and radio host Stephanie Miller has great news for her liberal cohorts.  Republican is now a bad word.  A study from NSON Opinion Strategy -- yeah, I'd never heard of them before now either -- said that 87% of their respondents found the word Republican synonymous with greed, racism, and violence. 

Miller was overjoyed and shared the news with her scores of listeners:

Most U.S. states have some form of voter ID law whereby voters are asked or required to present an ID, preferably with a photograph. In 2005, the Supreme Court, in a decision written by liberal Justice John Paul Stevens validated such laws as constitutional. In 2008,  equally liberal former president Jimmy Carter also endorsed voter ID as a legitimate way to safeguard the integrity of the vote. Recent polls show a vast majority of Americans supporter voter ID laws, including some 60 percent and Democrats and nearly 2/3rds of blacks and Hispanics, two minority demographics that President Obama won in the 2012 reelection campaign (see screencaps below page break). What's more, 73% of Americans believe such laws are NOT discriminatory.

Despite these inconvenient truths, however, MSNBC's Toure believes that voter ID laws are, you guessed it, a racially-charged conspiracy by conservative Republicans, particularly in the South, to disenfranchise blacks. Toure laid out his case in a closing commentary on the Monday, February 25 edition of MSNBC's The Cycle. The transcript of Toure's closing commentary follows:

How does Bill Maher keep his job at HBO?

On Thursday he tweeted, "Man, #HermanCain is making a comeback - says he likes working with Fox team, particularly some of them fine-ass white women they got there":

After the Newtown shooting, CNN anchor Don Lemon cried that "We need to get guns and bullets and automatic weapons off the streets," but he still insisted it "wasn't advocacy" and that he's "about accuracy and the truth," in an interview with the LGBT publication Dallas Voice.  

"It wasn't advocacy. It was being a human. I've always said we are human beings before we are reporters," was Lemon's excuse. Of course, basically calling for an assault weapons ban is advocacy, not to mention comparing opponents of same-sex marriage to segregationists.

Apparently it's okay for MSNBC panels to sit around and tell race jokes on-air. Host Melissa Harris-Perry had her panel guests tell their "favorite race joke" or "best punch line" on race on her Sunday show and laughter ranged between nervous and uproarious. Harris-Perry capped it all off with a Jewish joke.

After discussing if the best way to give a "social critique" on race was through humor, Harris-Perry told her panel, "Okay, so give me your favorite race joke or your best punch line on it." If a Fox News panel sat around and told race jokes on the set, there would be an uproar and accusations of racism would be directed at the network. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

Remember all that talk about a post-racial society if Barack Obama was elected president?

On the Martin Bashir show Monday, the host introduced Lehigh Professor James Peterson as a new MSNBC contributor, and virtually the first words out of Peterson's mouth were, "structural racism," "structural inequality," and "an over-aggressive criminal justice system that is racially biased" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Talk about your phony controversies.

On ABC's Good Morning America Sunday, they actually did a segment addressing whether or not some of the pictures taken during the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue photo shoots were - wait for it! - racist (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Fox News CEO Roger Ailes had some harsh words about Barack Obama recently.

In an interview published by the New Republic Monday, Ailes said, "The president likes to divide people into groups."

Last night, PBS NewsHour anchor Ray Suarez noted the manhunt for alleged cop killer Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer and former naval officer who left behind a rambling manifesto in which he called for an assault weapons ban and praised liberal politicians and journalists.  Unfortunately for viewers, the taxpayer-subsidized network left out those details about the manifesto, even though the manifesto gave some pretty revealing insights into the political ideas that may have inspired Dorner to violence.

Here’s what Ray Suarez reported.

It seems Oscar-winning actor Jamie Foxx just can't avoid saying something really stupid at awards ceremonies.

After calling Barack Obama "Our Lord and Savior" at last November's Soul Train Awards, Foxx, during his acceptance speech as Entertainer of the Year at last Friday's NAACP Image Awards, said, "Black people are the most talented people in the world" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Joseph Berger's long tribute to the late, legendary former New York City mayor Ed Koch made the front of the New York Times Sunday Metro section -- "So, How'd He Do?"

But Berger stained Koch's memory by citing the irresponsible, inflammatory voices of Rev. Calvin Butts and Al Sharpton and bizarrely suggesting Koch's rhetoric played a part in racist assaults against blacks: "Despite his condemnation of the mob beatings, it was hard to tamp down a sense among blacks that his public rhetoric -- in the 1988 presidential campaign, for example, he said Jews would be 'crazy' to vote for Jesse Jackson because of his 'Hymietown' slur about New York and his support for a Palestinian homeland -- may have helped foster an atmosphere in which some young whites felt emboldened to commit such assaults."

Isn't it fascinating how in this supposedly "post-racial society," media members feel comfortable bashing white people at the drop of a hat?

Take New York Times columnist Paul Krugman who on ABC's This Week Sunday, in the middle of a discussion about immigration, felt it was necessary to talk about how Republicans are "doomed if they are only the party of old white people" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Looks like liberals are still trying to peddle the discredited allegation that Tea Party members attacked black members of Congress.

The op-ed page of today's New York Times contains a column by James Sleeper, a long-time left-wing activist, now a lecturer at Yale.  The gist is the grudging respect that Sleeper came to have for Ed Koch, the former New York City mayor who passed away two days ago. Sleeper writes of how as mayor, Koch wrestled to the ground a protester who had stormed the stage as he spoke and pelted him with eggs.  Sleeper wrote that Koch's asking the audience whether they wanted the other protesters removed looked demagogic at the time, "[b]ut not so much now, with Tea Party heckling and assaults on public officials." More after the jump.

Talking to Heritage Foundation president and former Republican Senator Jim DeMint on Sunday's NBC Meet the Press, moderator David Gregory eagerly cited recent criticism of the GOP: "Colin Powell on this program a couple of weeks ago talking about a deep vein of intolerance within the Republican Party. How do you respond to that as you take a look at where the party needs to go?" [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

DeMint refused to give credence to the accusation, instead focusing on the issues of debt reduction and economic growth. However, Gregory refused to the let the topic go: "Senator, do you regret, you know, some of the comments about abortion in this last cycle, about rape, about again, what Colin Powell thought were veiled racist comments from the party?" At no point did Gregory provide a single example of GOP "intolerance" to back up the smear.  

Open mouth, insert foot. Just when it seemed that Piers Morgan was finally putting his ineffective crusade for stricter gun control behind him, the CNN anchor made an obviously stereotypical remark while covering an inaugural ball in Washington, D.C., on Monday evening.

At the end of an interview with Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro and his identical twin brother, San Antonio mayor Julian Castro, the liberal host asked: “By the way, I've never met any Latinos who can't dance, so are you guys going to be -- ?”

New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal again accused Republicans of opposing Barack Obama because of his race, in a Monday post after Obama's second inauguration. That came after he confessed to feeling "the same thrill" as he had the first time around.

The consensus on TV this morning was that Barack Obama’s second inauguration wasn’t as amazing as his first. The crowd was much smaller. People were just not as excited as they were four years ago.

But, call me sappy, when the Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir sang “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” I felt pretty much the same thrill as on Jan. 20, 2009.

Leave it to a Washington Post book reviewer to find a way to blame George W. Bush for the Irish Potato Famine. Okay, Peter Behrens didn't do exactly that, but he used the occasion of reviewing two books about the mass starvation of millions of Irish in the 1840s as an opportunity to bash the Bush administration over the federal response to Hurricane Katrina.  Oh, I almost forgot, the bogeyman of the "free market" also finds itself in Behren's sights.

In his January 13 Washington Post item, Behrens reviewed two new books on the subject, The Famine Plot: England’s Role in Ireland’s Greatest Tragedy  and The Graves are Walking: The Great Famine and the Saga of the Irish People, by Tim Pat Coogan and John Kelly respectively. Behrens favorably accepted Coogan's conclusion that “it was British reluctance to interfere with the supposed workings of the free-market economy that allowed famine to continue in Ireland at a time when the country was producing and exporting tons of food to England.”

Oh those racist Republicans.  Did you know that they're hostile to Colin Powell because he's black? Yup, just ask former Obama car czar Steve Rattner.  The Morning Joe regular today claimed that poor Powell "feels this hostility toward him from the rest of the party in part because he's a minority."

Really?  Colin Powell feels hostility from "the rest of the party" because he's a minority?  The Colin Powell appointed to a series of increasingly prestigious positions by a series of Republican presidents? The Colin Powell for whom so many in the GOP were clamoring to run for president in 1995-96?  That Colin Powell?  Please.  View the video after the jump.

President Barack Obama and his administration have been on the receiving end of a great deal of leftist criticism recently for its "lack of diversity" (to be clear, I find that entire discussion tiresome, as it would be more productive to spend time on problems like John Kerry's anti-American history, Jack Lew's bankrupting budgetary intransigence, and Eric Holder's unprecedented obsession with suing states exercising their sovereign rights).

With that backdrop, it's incredibly convenient that Colin Powell "just so happened" to appear today on NBC's "Meet the Press" with David Gregory, the Washington elitist disguised as a journalist who on Friday escaped prosecution for violating District of Columbia gun and ammunition law three weeks ago, to accuse the Republican Party -- the party whose members ended slavery, provided the margins by which landmark civil-rights legislation passed in the 1950s and 1960s, and whose ranks rarely if ever included members of the Ku Klux Klan while southern Democrats were infested with such members for nearly a century -- of having "a dark vein of intolerance."