Race Issues

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.]

As NewsBusters reported Tuesday, MSNBC's Chris Matthews accused Republican voters in South Carolina of being racist.

On Thursday's Hardball, former South Carolina first lady Jenny Sanford told Matthews this depiction of her fellow residents "is absurd and nonsense and frankly just, you know, stirred up by people in the press" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

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:

New anchor Gayle King tossed softballs at admitted friend Michelle Obama on Wednesday's CBS This Morning. King sympathized with the First Lady over how many supposedly see her. When her guest dropped a racially-tinged charge, that "that's been an image that people have tried to paint of me since...the day Barack announced, that I'm some angry black woman," she replied, "How do you deal with that image?"

During the twelve-plus minute interview, which aired in two segments, the close associate of Oprah Winfrey also especially sympathized with Mrs. Obama over charges against her in a recent book: "I think it's frustrating for her to see so many untruths. You know, I read the book, too....and I'm thinking- well, I was there. That didn't happen, that didn't happen, that didn't happen. And she never told Carla Bruni Sarkozy that living in the White House was hell- quite the opposite is how she feels."

CBS's Early Show repeatedly hit GOP candidate Newt Gingrich on Friday over his comments on African-Americans and food stamps. The network played the quote for African-American Congressman Tim Scott (R-S.C.) and engaged Gingrich over the context, even accusing him of trying to start a class war.

"You've accused President Obama of trying to start a class war," co-host Nancy Cordes told Gingrich in an interview at the bottom of the 7 a.m. hour. "Aren't you doing the same thing?" she pressed him. [Video below the break.]

While various liberal media outlets have been busy trying to smear former senator Rick Santorum as a racist for supposedly saying, "I don't want to make black people's lives better by giving them somebody else's money," at a campaign event, other intellectually honest liberals have rendered a different verdict.

One of them, Mediaite writer Tommy Christopher, noted today how "Young Turks" co-host Jayar Jackson thinks the Santorum is unfairly being criticized for what, in context, seems to have been a candidate tripping over a verbal tic (emphases mine):

On Tuesday's NBC Nightly News, correspondent Tom Brokaw asked Perry, Iowa resident Eddie Diaz: "Were you accepted right away by the community?" Brokaw explained: "Diaz is a Perry high school teacher, part of a growing Hispanic population....Eddie could go elsewhere, but he likes Perry, which he says is more moderate, politically and culturally, than the candidates realize."

Brokaw touted how Diaz lectured Michele Bachmann at a campaign event: "Recently he challenged Michele Bachmann for her hard line on immigration." Diaz argued: "Why would you choose to punish these kids?...Because every election cycle, immigration is used as a punching bag, and it's just so easy to demonize people."

At the same time that the nation's leading networks can't call Obama a "liberal" more than about once a year, NPR's religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty on Monday announced Rick Santorum was "very, very conservative" on the social issues, in addition to being "very pro-life." He even -- horrors! -- home-schools his seven children.

"He's Catholic. He's billed himself very much as the family values candidate," the reporter announced on NPR's afternoon show Talk of The Nation. "His wife Karen has homeschooled all seven of their children. He's surging in the polls because he's been very, very conservative on these issues." They also discussed if white conservative Christians dislike Obama because they're racists.

Twenty-four years ago, Los Angeles Dodgers VP Al Campanis was forced to resign his position for saying on national TV that blacks lack "the necessities" to be baseball managers and executives.  

On today's Hardball, Chris Matthews was so enjoying himself mocking Rick Perry's intelligence, that he decided to use a slightly mangled version of the same line on the Texas governor. Video after the jump.

Q. How do you know when MSNBC has sunk to unimaginable depths of Dem-partisan hackery? A. When even Al Sharpton renounces it.  

On his MSNBC show this evening, Sharpton said the network was right to apologize for the smear MSNBC host Thomas Roberts perpetrated against Mitt Romney earlier in the day, when Roberts suggested Romney had borrowed a campaign slogan from the Ku Klux Klan. Video after the jump.

All this week MSNBC is giving Politics Nation host Al Sharpton a platform to attack voter ID laws as a move to "Block the Vote" and keep black voters from the polls.

To help drive more viewers to tune in, the network is having daytime news anchors run segments critical of such voter ID laws. Today during the 11 a.m. Eastern hour of MSNBC programming, anchor Thomas Roberts interviewed former NAACP chairman Julian Bond, who insisted that voter ID laws were "racist in intent" [MP3 audio here; video available here]:

On Friday's NBC Today, MSNBC anchor Craig Melvin gushed over a new class at Georgetown University taught by liberal professor Michael Eric Dyson: "Race, class, gender, culture, all things that would be covered in most sociology classes and they're covered in Michael Eric Dyson's as well, but the issues are examined in a way that uniquely appeals to college students."

Melvin touted how, "Jay-Z's street rhymes that became stage anthems are being taught at one of America's top schools." He promoted the course as serious education: "In the Georgetown University syllabus, it's called, 'The Sociology of Hip-Hop: The Odyssey of Jay-Z.' For about 140 students twice a week it's 90 minutes of head bouncing and dissecting....Dyson uses Jay-Z's 2010 memoir 'Decoded' to break down lyrics, but maintains a traditional classroom, using articles, guest speakers, essays and exams."

If you thought you'd heard the last of Jimmy Fallon's band and the case of the offensive song played on NBC's Late Night last week as Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann walked onto the stage, think again.

On Thursday, the bandleader responsible for the song choice was interviewed by Pitchfork, and he not surprisingly made some accusations of racism at "Tea Party extremists" (serious vulgarity warning):

As is to be expected whenever he's in front of a camera, Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson, appearing on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday, accused Republicans of exploiting "racist elements" in the society.

Fortunately for viewers, the lone conservative on the panel, National Review editor Rich Lowry, pushed back against this nonsense (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, MSNBC's Chris Matthews on Saturday expressed his harshest criticism of Barack Obama to date saying amongst other things that he's got "the worst kind of a notion of the presidency."

Roughly three months ago, Matthews on the syndicated weekend program bearing his name smelled racism in the declining number of whites supporting the current White House resident (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Bill Randall is a candidate for Congress, running in North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District.  Mr. Randall also happens to be an African-American.  In early October, Randall had a campaign billboard vandalized with a spray-painted, vulgar phallic symbol, accompanied by the letters "KKK”. It was the kind of message that would normally launch the media into full-blown racial apoplexy. 

One small problem.  Bill Randall is a Tea Party Conservative Republican.

Despite filing a report with the Wake County Sheriff’s Department on October 9, holding a press conference regarding the incident, issuing a press release, and having a local news report linked at the Breitbart.tv website, nobody in major media outlets in Raleigh have covered the story.

[UPDATED: See video and transcript below.] Appearing on ABC's Good Morning America, Monday, to shill for his latest book, Bill Maher told George Stephanopoulos he's rooting for Mitt Romney to win the Republican nomination. "At least he eats with a knife and fork. I mean, he is all that stands between us and the rise of the apes."

Couldn't that be seen as a bit racist toward Herman Cain? We're used to Maher slamming religious folks in that way, but "apes"? Stephanopoulos didn't blink. He only said "He's [Romney's] probably odds-on, although Newt Gingrich..." [MP3 audio here.]

Liberal MSNBC contributors like Toure have "gone beyond the pale" with their recent remarks about Herman Cain, NewsBusters publisher and Media Research Center president Brent Bozell complained on the November 10 edition of "Hannity."

Bozell was reacting to a montage that included the liberal author anticipating a racist backlash by white conservatives who, according to Toure, will now fear Cain's "predatory black sexuality" following the allegations of Sharon Bialek, a "blonde, white woman."

"It's the worst kind of racism, Sean," Bozell added. "What they're trying to say is, 'Hey, look at you Republicans, this is a black boy. He's going after your white women. Look at this, aren't you offended, aren't you offended?!'" [see video below page break]

Appearing on Wednesday's NBC Today, Meet the Press host David Gregory discussed the political fallout of sexual harassment allegations against Herman Cain and the possibility of the Republican presidential candidate being urged to drop out, declaring: "Well, there is no, you know, grand wizard in the party right now who can really force the issue." [Audio available here]

The term "grand wizard" was used as a leadership title in the Ku Klux Klan. Gregory later apologized via Twitter: "'Wizard' remark this morning was a very poor choice of words. Did not mean to make that connection at all. Was not thinking. I apologize." While Gregory may have simply used poor phrasing, if a Republican official or conservative commentator had made that kind of remark, Gregory and others in the media would certainly jump on it. [View video after the jump]