Race Issues

“There are several battles that are playing out across this country” today, MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts noted as he opened the 11 a.m. Eastern hour of live coverage on what the network is calling this year's "Super Tuesday."

Roberts quickly established that he and his network were in the trenches with liberals on every one of those "battles":

CNN's Howard Kurtz considers himself to be a media analyst, yet on Sunday's Reliable Sources, he spent 22 minutes discussing Politico's hit piece on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain without once mentioning how the press handled Bill Clinton's actual  sex scandals.

The program began:

Since Monday, MSNBC has practically been a 24 hour video loop of sexual harassment related attacks on Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain.

On Friday's Martin Bashir show, guest Goldie Taylor actually said, "If Herman Cain did what he purportedly did, you know, back in the ’90s with these particular young women in the ’50s and ’60s in this country, he really would have been lynched" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Well, Maureen Dowd’s Wednesday New York Times column on anonymous accusations of sexual harassment against Herman Cain, “Cain Not Able,” certainly shows she has no fear of causing racial offense, at least when writing about conservative political figures: “Even Barack Obama couldn’t be lucky enough to waltz past two wacky black conservatives, first Alan Keyes and then Cain.”

The liberal media are clearly in a full-scale panic over the possibility that a black conservative could either win the Republican presidential nomination or become the eventual victor's running mate.

On MSNBC's The Last Word Monday, left-wing author Touré went on a racially charged attack on Herman Cain referring to him as a black "minstrelsy" entertainer (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Politico stunned the presidential campaign Sunday night with a hit piece on Herman Cain alleging with unnamed sources that two women accused the Republican candidate of "inappropriate behavior" decades ago.

Appearing on Fox News's Geraldo At Large moments after the story broke, conservative author Ann Coulter said, "It's outrageous the way liberals treat a black conservative. This is another high-tech lynching" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

There are times when I'm sickened by what I see so-called journalists do on television.

Sunday was one of those times when Politico's Roger Simon, appearing on CNN's Reliable Sources, said being "a little bit racist perhaps, gives you good bona fides in a Republican primary. It shows them you're on the same side as they are" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Some of the same leftist activists that campaigned to get Glenn Beck removed from the Fox News Channel are now demanding Pat Buchanan be removed from the MSNBC lineup. The Color of Change, formerly run by Obama-appointed Marxist Van Jones, is running a campaign headlined "Tell MSNBC: Fire Pat Buchanan."  Not in that campaign: "and appoint a different conservative." They want the MSNBC airwaves purely liberal.

"For years, Pat Buchanan has passed off white supremacist ideology as legitimate mainstream political commentary. And MSNBC continues to pay him and give him a platform on national TV to do it," they argue. "Buchanan just went on a white supremacist radio show to promote his new book -- which argues that increasing racial diversity is a threat to this country and will mean the  'End of White America.'"

Although interviewee Harry Connick Jr. was unwilling to cast blame towards any specific person or agenda over the failed response to the Hurricane Katrina in 2005, CNN's Piers Morgan thrice tried to bait him into doing so on Monday.  

Connick stated on Piers Morgan Tonight that "at this point, what good is it going to do to blame local or state or federal government?" Yet Morgan emphasized the "scandalously slow" response to the disaster by authorities, and even noted liberal conspiracy claims that "surreptitious racism" was involved. [Video below the break. Click here for audio]

On Monday's Morning Edition, NPR's Carrie Kahn followed her network's standard operating procedure by omitting anti-illegal immigration conservatives from a report highlighting Latino Republicans' concern over the apparently "rough" language from GOP presidential candidates. Kahn cited one activist who bemoaned that the "the harsh talk is making it difficult to recruit new Latino voters."

During his introduction for the correspondent's report, fill-in host Ari Shapiro acknowledged that "Mr. Obama has lost popularity with Latinos recently, mostly due to the economy," but then added that "Hispanic voters looking for alternatives are not too happy with the Republican slate either." Kahn continued by playing up how "if you've been listening to the GOP presidential candidates lately, the talk about immigration control is getting rough."

Sure way to stay schnockered between now and presidential Election Day: sling a shot every time a liberal plays the race card.  

Latest example: on Al Sharpton's MSNBC show this evening, Bill Press ascribed Republican reluctance to give President Obama credit on Iraq to the fact that "the Republican party is like some of the banks down South. They refuse to give a black man credit." Video after the jump.

At the Associated Press today, National Writer Jesse Washington attempted to dissect the relative dearth of college degrees earned by African-Americans in "STEM" (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math).

Not that anything he reported was particularly wrong, but in my view he missed the largest contributor to the problem, one that apparently can't be mentioned in polite press company. He used one word -- "uneducated" -- that started to get close but backed away. The five-word phrase he failed to mention, which could usefully carry the acronym "LUPUS":

For the second day in a row, an MSNBC anchor raised a liberal Democrat's claim that South Carolina's new voter ID law would be "electoral genocide" that disenfranchises thousands of black voters in the Palmetto State.

Daytime anchor Thomas Roberts made note of the alarmist statement by South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian in an interview about the photo ID law in the 11 a.m. Eastern hour with Tulane professor and Nation magazine contributor Melissa Harris-Perry.

Neither Roberts nor Harris-Perry objected to the Harpootlian's rhetoric, although in a tweet a short time later Harris-Perry conceded that "genocide is too strong a term." [video follows page break]

CNN's Piers Morgan claimed on Wednesday that "elements" of the Tea Party are "racist" in an interview with GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain. "You all know there are elements of the Tea Party who are racist," he insisted to Cain.

Morgan again stated it as a matter of fact, in his question to Cain: "How do you deal with that element in the Tea Party that is overtly racist?"

The CNN host also cited black liberals Harry Belafonte and Morgan Freeman as bona-fide experts about the matter, and pressed Cain to respond to them and other "leading black Americans" who think the movement is racist. [Video below the break.]

MSNBC's scurrilous charges of racism against the GOP continued yesterday as Hardball host Chris Matthews tag-teamed with South Carolina Democratic Party chairman Dick Harpootlian and Judith Browne-Dianis of The Advancement Project to insist to viewers that a newly-enacted voter ID law will prevent thousands of blacks from voting in the Palmetto State. The law is currently under review by the U.S. Department of Justice.

As is standard operating procedure for Hardball, no defender of the South Carolina law was featured during the October 19 program's segment -- entitled "Voting Wrongs" -- to balance out the discussion.

To discuss presidential candidate Herman Cain's views on race and racism, CNN's Don Lemon aired the opinions of two African-American liberals, in addition to analysis from conservative blogger Erick Erickson.

Lemon, himself an African-American anchor who has shown his own liberal bias in the past, hosted leftist LZ Granderson of ESPN and played a clip of Democratic strategist Cornell Belcher slamming Cain as a racist at the end of CNN's 12 p.m. hour of Newsroom. [Video below the break.]

CBS political analyst John Dickerson might have stepped too close to calling GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain a minstrel on Tuesday's Early Show: "Now that he [Cain] is a top-tier candidate...he probably has to moderate the jester act a little bit, and show that he can...be seen by voters as a president." Dickerson was replying to Cain's recent controversial remark about an electrified border fence [audio available here].

Anchor Erica Hill brought on the political analyst to preview the next Republican presidential debate, scheduled for later in the day in Las Vegas. She raised the electric fence issue towards the end of the segment, and cited a new CNN poll which has Cain "running, really, almost neck and neck with Mitt Romney." She then asked Dickerson, "How is this going to affect him in how he deals with this question of illegal immigration moving forward?" [video clip below the jump]

The front page of The Washington Post carried a story Tuesday on black liberals demanding all blacks stand with President Obama -- just because he's black. Krissah Thompson's story carried some noteworthy "get in line" quotes from the forget-the-black-unemployment-numbers crowd, but the closest thing to a moderate or conservative in the article is a man suggesting Obama is not God.

On the front page, Thompson quoted from radio host Tom Joyner on his BlackAmericaWeb.com blog. “Let’s not even deal with the facts right now. Let’s deal with just our blackness and pride — and loyalty. We have the chance to re-elect the first African-American president, and that’s what we ought to be doing. And I’m not afraid or ashamed to say that as black people, we should do it because he’s a black man.”

Martin Bashir devoted his October 17 "Clear the Air" segment to defending MSNBC contributor Goldie Taylor from criticism from NewsBusters and The Blaze that she attacked GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain for being in her view ashamed of being black.

Taylor insisted on Friday that Cain would "shed his ethnicity" that "if he could become what I would call the color of water, he would do it" for political advantage.

Bashir failed to find any fault with the "insightful" Goldie Taylor's attack and even doubled down on it with a puerile smear of Cain as being a "post-stupid" candidate, whatever that's supposed to mean [MP3 audio available here; video embedded below page break]:

Martin Bashir's campaign to prove Herman Cain really isn't a black man continued Monday when he accused the Republican presidential candidate of skipping the dedication of the Martin Luther King Jr. Monument in Washington, D.C., Saturday because he "really doesn't want to be overtly associated with African-Americans" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

MSNBC's Al Sharpton lead a jobs rally in Washington, D.C., Saturday, and not surprisingly, he used the event to once again divide the nation along racial lines.

As he has disgracefully done on his PoliticsNation program on numerous occasions in recent weeks, Sharpton accused those favoring proper identification at the polls as wanting to "revoke the Voting Rights Act" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Serious question: if he ever had it, has Ed Schultz totally lost it?  There's lots to be said about the Occupy Wall Street movement.  But of all the cockamamie comments, of all the nutty non sequiturs, surely Ed Schultz's takes the crazy cake.

On his MSNBC show tonight, Schultz claimed that what lies behind Republican criticism of Occupy is . . . racism.  In a beyond-bizarre analogy, Schultz somehow said that there's "no difference" between GOP congressman Peter King's criticism of Occupy Wall Street and Trent Lott's 2002 birthday-party praise for Strom Thurmond. Video after the jump.
 

To answer Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain's claim that racism is not a big factor in African-American unemployment, CNN brought on radical left-wing activists Professor Cornel West of Princeton and Tavis Smiley of PBS, both of who co-host a public radio talk show.

Not-surprisingly, West and Smiley, both African-Americans, ripped Cain's comments. West griped that Cain needs to "get off the symbolic crack pipe" and added that he has "mediocrity, mendacity, mean-spiritedness toward the poor, and now mean-spiritedness toward black people fighting for their lives in this very ugly economy." [Video below the break. Click here for audio.]

What a change The Washington Post wrought by bringing in Patrick Pexton as the ombudsman. The last ombudsman, Andrew Alexander, was a stickler about the Post’s overuse of anonymous sources. But in a Sunday column on Rick Perry and the Post's “N-head” painted-rock “investigative” hullaballoo, Pexton just circled his wagon and made excuses for the newspaper.

“If the seven sources The Post relied on for this article are truthful, then Perry is lying or is badly misinformed about when the rock was painted,” insisted Pexton. But what if the seven anonymous sources are lying or badly misinformed? What if some are Obama voters or financial backers? The Post is throwing the biggest rock they can at a Republican – racism, as in casual acquiescence to the N-word – without telling the public who’s behind it. "Trust us," says the newspaper of the 2006 Excessive 'Macaca' Pile-on.

As Al Sharpton ridiculed Herman Cain on MSNBC's "The Last Word" Friday for saying blacks have been brainwashed into voting for Democrats, the reverend ended up proving the Republican presidential candidate's point.

Seconds after claiming, "What [Cain] does not have the right is to rewrite history by saying that blacks were brainwashed by becoming Democrats," Sharpton showed his ignorance of the subject by stating, "We went with a Party that stood up for the Civil Rights Act of '64 and Voting Rights Act of '65" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

For the second day in a row, MSNBC's Martin Bashir used the death of one man to attack a completely unrelated conservative.

Having disgustingly besmirched Sarah Palin in the middle of his eulogy for Apple's Steve Jobs Thursday, Bashir on Friday went after Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain as he paid his respects to Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Herman Cain is now leading the polls for the Republican presidential nomination, and the folks at MSNBC are clearly scared to death.

Following in Lawrence O'Donnell's footsteps who spent 23 minutes antagonistically grilling Cain Thursday, Martin Bashir said of the black Republican's "calm, measured" style Friday, "The people that he needs to win over in order to win a primary, those people do not want to hear from a black man who’s aggressive, assertive, angry" (video follows with transcript and commentary):