Racism

AP Attributes Ill Intent to Republicans Passing New Va. Voter ID Law
By Ken Shepherd | March 27, 2013 | 1:20 PM EDT

We've come to expect this sort of thing from MSNBC, but the Associated Press should be ashamed of itself. In a story about Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) signing into law a new voter ID law requiring a photo ID to vote-- which may be provided free-of-charge to indigent Virginians, by the way -- the AP strongly suggested the bill is an attempt by Virginia Republicans to prevent a Democratic presidential candidate from winning the state in 2016.

"Republican majorities in the Virginia House and Senate pushed the bill to passage one year after a more modest GOP-sponsored voter identification law failed to prevent President Barack Obama from winning Virginia for the second presidential election in a row and a Democratic U.S. Senate victory," the AP noted in the fourth paragraph of their March 27 story. As you can see in the full story pasted below, this was in the context of hyping a liberal Democrat's charge that requiring voter ID is akin to Jim Crow-era  disenfranchisement efforts (story accessed via FoxNews.com, emphases mine):

Dr. Ben Carson Strikes Back at MSNBC's Toure Neblett: I'm No Uncle Tom
By Noel Sheppard | March 26, 2013 | 6:01 PM EDT

MSNBC’s Toure Neblett last weekend mocked Dr. Benjamin Carson as a token “black friend” to Republicans admired only to “assuage their guilt” for past racial indiscretions.

On Fox News’s America Live Tuesday, Carson struck back at his liberal media critics saying that he’s no “Uncle Tom” (video follows with transcript and absolutely no need for additional commentary):

Chris Matthews Claims Michele Bachmann’s Criticism Of Obama Racially Motivated
By Jeffrey Meyer | March 25, 2013 | 11:59 AM EDT

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.]

Michael Moore's Irrational Reasoning: White Gun Owners Racist, But Understandable They're Not Afraid Of White Neighbors
By Mark Finkelstein | March 22, 2013 | 9:46 PM EDT

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 Panel Compares Traditional Marriage Supporters to Segregationists, Slave Owners
By Matt Hadro | March 22, 2013 | 5:21 PM EDT

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."

Bozell: Chris Matthews Is 'Real Face of Character Assassination'
By NB Staff | March 22, 2013 | 11:58 AM EDT

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].

CNN's Lemon Hypes Isolated CPAC Incident as Potential 'Monkey Wrench' for GOP
By Matt Hadro | March 18, 2013 | 6:15 PM EDT

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.

National Review Eviscerates Racist Smears of Conservatives by NY Times Book Editor
By Clay Waters | March 13, 2013 | 4:44 PM EDT

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):

NYT Op-ed Writer Asserts That White-Black Wealth Gap Has Increased in Past Two Decades (Nope, Just the Past 5 Available Years)
By Tom Blumer | March 11, 2013 | 1:57 PM EDT

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.

MSNBC's Chris Hayes: Demanding Government Be Colorblind is 'Adolescent'
By Ken Shepherd | March 1, 2013 | 6:26 PM EST

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 Stephanie Miller Fawns Over Study Showing That Being Called 'Republican' Is An Insult
By Matt Vespa | February 26, 2013 | 2:52 PM EST

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:

Fearing SCOTUS Will Scuttle Voting Rights Act, MSNBC's Toure Hits New Voter ID Laws in Southern States As Racist
By Ken Shepherd | February 25, 2013 | 6:59 PM EST

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: