Race Issues

Any old liberal journalist can charge Daily Caller reporter Neil Munro for being a racist for rudely interrupting President Obama during a press conference. It takes a hard-core lefty to delve deeper to diagnose the Irish-born journalist as a bigot for, well, questioning Obama's policy vis-a-vis how it harms the job prospects of American citizens.

During a segment on the June 19 edition of his eponymous program, Bashir assented to the spurious charge by The Root contributor Edward Wyckoff Williams that Munro – an Irish-born naturalized American citizen -- was motivated by a "white supremist [sic] ideology" as evidenced by his belief that President Obama’s quasi-amnesty policy helps illegal immigrants at the cost of job opportunity to American citizens:

NewsBusters reported Saturday that ABC's former White House correspondent Sam Donaldson said a lot of conservatives oppose Barack Obama simply because he's black.

On Fox News's O'Reilly Factor Monday, political commentator Bernie Goldberg thoroughly debunked Donaldson's claim with an inconvenient truth liberal media members dishonestly ignore: people on the Right "would love" a conservative black president. "They'd love him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, former White House correspondent Sam Donaldson said Saturday, "Many on the political right believe this president [Barack Obama] ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his policies and political view but for who he is, an African American!”

On CNN Newsroom Sunday, Don Lemon agreed with Donaldson's indefensible observation (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters reported Saturday, former ABC White House correspondent Sam Donaldson told the Huffington Post, "Many on the political right believe this president [Barack Obama] ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices [sic] and political view but for who he is, an African American! These people and perhaps even certain news organizations (certainly the right wing talkers like Limbaugh) encourage disrespect for this president."

Limbaugh responded to this nonsense by email moments ago:

The mainstream media's response to Barack Obama being interrupted by a Daily Caller reporter during a Rose Garden press conference Friday is getting more preposterous with each passing second.

ABC's former White House correspondent Sam Donaldson told the Huffington Post Saturday, "Many on the political right believe this president ought not to be there – they oppose him not for his polices [sic] and political view but for who he is, an African American!"  

A Politico reporter has suggested that racism was behind Neil Munro's questioning of President Obama at the White House yesterday.  Saying "it's very, very difficult to place race outside of this context," the Politico's Joe Williams claimed racially-motivated direspect of PBO is part of a pattern among conservatives, citing Rep. Joe Wilson, Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, and the Tea Party.

Williams made his remarks in the course of responding to a question from Michael Eric Dyson, subbing for Ed Schultz on MSNBC last night.  View the video after the jump.

On Thursday's CBS This Morning, Bill Plante pointed out that "a new poll shows President Obama's support slipping in one key demographic that helped him win in 2008: white men." However, Pew Research Center's presidential exit poll from that year found that Obama actually lost 57 to 41 percent to Republican candidate John McCain.

Plante noted "concern in Mr. Obama's own party that his economic message in recent months is not connecting with voters," but led his report with a silver lining for the chief executive: "The President...has been claiming for months that he inherited the nation's economic problems, and in the new Gallup poll, more than two-thirds of Americans agree. They say that former President George Bush deserves either a moderate amount or a great deal of blame."

Barack Obama won the 2008 election in an electoral vote landslide, but racism darn near cost him the election - and if he loses this year, it will be because of racism, so says a doctoral candidate at Harvard University.

Google search data proves it, says Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, who is a candidate for a Ph.D. in economics, and wrote a post for the New York Times' “Campaign Stops” blog entitled “How Racist Are We? Ask Google.” Unfortunately, the study is a classic case of confusing correlation with causation.

Fox News's Brit Hume on Monday said leaders of Congress "might want to think twice" about voting in favor of contempt charges against Eric Holder, "the first African-American Attorney General."

Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, Hume added, "Everybody will be saying, ‘He wouldn’t do this, they wouldn’t do this to him if he were white.’ You know that’s coming."

During the special 11:00 p.m. edition of The Ed Show on Tuesday, MSNBC host Ed Schultz fretted about what he viewed as "pretty damn scary stuff" that he believed Republicans would do in following Governor Scott Walkers example in pushing a conservative agenda in Wisconsin.

A bit later, during an interview with the Reverend Jesse Jackson, he asserted that conservatives are trying to "destroy and defund public education," which he claimed was "hurting the minority communities."

Al Sharpton, the veteran Democratic activist and racial provocateur who hosts "PoliticsNation" on MSNBC, reviewed a James Brown biography for the New York Times Sunday Book Review and was interviewed in the Reviews' "Up Front" section. Sharpton credited the biography by RJ Smith for placing Brown in the context of the civil rights movement. But why would the Times consider Sharpton qualified to comment on anything, much less racial matters?

As usual, the Times didn't address at all Sharpton's racially inflammatory past or any of his controversies. As MRC president Brent Bozell recently wrote:

"Black preachers [are] divided on same-sex marriage, not Obama," insists the Washington Post's headline for a June 1 Religion News Service article about how African-American ministers across the country may disagree with President Obama on same-sex marriage, but that they are 100 percent committed to his reelection.

RNS's Lauren Markoe based this analysis on the amen chorus of some 200 pastors at a recent meeting of the Conference of National Black Churches. But Markoe failed to report a dissenting group of African-American ministers, the Coalition of African-American Pastors, which has sent a letter requesting an audience with President Obama as the Washington Times' Stephen Dinan reported Friday:

At the Associated Press, aka the Administration's Press, Jesse Washington's Friday evening coverage ("Who's an American Indian? Warren case stirs query") of the nuances involved in claiming Native American Indian heritage -- or ancestry, or biology, or allegiance, or identity, or identification, or membership (and I've probably missed a couple) -- occasioned by Democratic Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren in Massachusetts is the journalistic equivalent of what the occasional Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball game was like (with final scores sometimes in the 20s) before the NCAA legislated the shot clock: a continuous exercise in stalling.

Washington's report is time-stamped at 10:31 P.M., meaning that its last rendition was at least 18 hours after the Boston Globe performed a rare exercise in journalism and found the following, of which there is no hint in the AP story:

New York Times White House reporter Jackie Calmes gushed over Obama's hair as a symbol of hope for blacks in Thursday's "When a Boy Found a Familiar Feel in a Pat of the Head of State," which made the front page of the paper's National section and is the most emailed Times story as of Thursday morning.

In a convenient bit of public relations, the would-be "indelible" image (the initial online headline was "Indelible Image of Boy's Pat on Obama's Head") used by the Times was captured by White House photographer Pete Souza. Calmes, who is a notorious defender of the administration's economic policy, wrote on Thursday:

Once again last night, President Obama faced an embarrassing showing in Democratic Party primaries, winning only 58.3 percent of the votes of Arkansas Democrats and 57.9 percent of Kentucky ones. Once again, in covering the story, the Washington Post buried the news placing the development on page A6. The last time the president faced such an embarrassingly low showing, the Post put its coverage of federal inmate Keith Judd's stunning 40 percent showing in West Virginia's Democratic primary on page A4.

This time around, Post editors gave readers a misleading subheadline that invoked an all-too-predictable liberal bogeyman: "His struggles in Appalachia, parts of South could be attributed to racism, some say." Yet in the article itself, two Southern Democrats told the Post that while a small minority of white Democrats may be motivated by antipathy to Obama's racial heritage, the vast bulk of the anti-Obama vote is predicated on their distaste for his liberal policies.

In her May 22 "Singles File" -- described as "A weekly playlist for the listener with a one-track mind" -- Washington Post music critic Allison Stewart suggested readers might want to download the new single "Reagan" by rap artist Killer Mike.

"The Obama years haven't been fruitful ones for sociopolitically minded rappers, at least until now," Stewart gushed, noting that the Atlanta musician "dusts off some late '80s ghosts on this unblinking and brutal track from his newest [album] 'R.A.P. Music.'" But when you check out the lyrics of the track, and read his May 21 interview with HipHopDX.com, what really becomes clear is Killer Mike's "unblinking" apology for the late terror-sponsoring Libyan dictator Muammar Qadhafi.

"Face The Nation" host Bob Schieffer spotlighted the left's talking points on two issues in the presidential race on Tuesday's CBS This Morning. Schieffer tried to play it down the middle when he stated, "I think most people understand that Mitt Romney is not the robber baron that the Democrats would have you believe." But he immediately added, "Nor is Barack Obama the European socialist that the Republicans would have you believe."

The CBS journalist also contrasted the Obama campaign's line of attack on Romney regarding his leadership with Bain Capital, which was ripped by Newark, New Jersey Mayor Cory Booker; with how many Republicans condemned "a plan that some Republicans had to launch this race-baiting campaign, trying to tie the President, once again, to Jeremiah Wright."

On today's edition of The Daily Rundown, MSNBC's Chuck Todd sat down to chat with Rev. Jesse Jackson to discuss a variety of issues, from Afghanistan to whether the Rev. Jeremiah Wright is fair game for Republicans to attack President Obama. In the middle of the interview, Todd asked the former Democratic presidential candidate about the NAACP Board of Directors's "historic" decision over the weekend to give the organization's stamp of approval to same-sex marriage.

"There has been this conventional wisdom that particularly among older African-Americans that the president's position on gay marriage is going to hurt him," Todd noted, adding, "Does the NAACP sort of backing up the president on this help convince the older African-American [voters], might be a little more religious, might be struggling with this issue, to ignore that part?"

It's becoming clearer and clearer that no matter what evidence comes out concerning the Trayvon Martin shooting in Sanford, Florida, America's media will support him.

On HBO's Real Time Friday, host Bill Maher actually said, "I just want to say if I had a son he would not look like Trayvon Martin, but I hope he would act like him" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Since that awful Sunday in Sanford, Florida, back in February, the media have shown time and time again they don't understand how the American justice system works.

Take ABC legal analyst Dan Abrams who on Thursday's Nightline said, "So even if Zimmerman was on his back, even if he was losing a fight, he still has a lot of explaining to do and is going to have to prove that Trayvon Martin was the initial aggressor" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

"Some religious leaders are struggling with President Obama’s support for gay marriage but not the Rev. Jesse Jackson," gushed frequent MSNBC contributor Toure noted in the opening line of his May 17 Time.com "Ideas" blog post as he introduced how he "spoke to the Reverend [Jesse Jackson] about the impact of Obama’s announcement among blacks and the wider community of the faithful."

It goes without saying that the interview was a game of softball in which Toure helpfully lobbed easy questions over the plate to drive home for readers, but particularly those who may be African-American Christians who typically vote Democratic, that it would be great if they could evolve to where President Obama has on same-sex marriage, a "civil rights" and "discrimination" issue.

CNN continued its ridiculous narrative of tying gay rights to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, on Tuesday's Starting Point. Anchor Brooke Baldwin and her panel battered Virginia Delegate Bob Marshall for blocking the nomination of a gay prosecutor to the state's bench, even though Marshall argued that he was unfit for the position because of his activism and not his orientation.

Baldwin went so far as to connect the nomination with desegregation and women's suffrage. "Obviously, you know, blacks used to have to sit in the back of the bus. They don't have to anymore. There was discriminate – women couldn't vote. They can vote now. Times have changed. Do you not – do you not agree that he could be given a chance?" she offered Marshall. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

In a bizarre attempt to make Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg wearing a hoodie at a recent Wall Street meeting into a racial issue, on Thursday's NBC Today, attorney and panelist Star Jones decried the supposed "hypocrisy" of it all: "...when we talk about Mark Zuckerberg, rich white guy, wearing a hoodie, we call him brainy and self-confident....But when a young black kid walks down the street in a hoodie, that's ghetto." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump]

Moments later, she made it clear that she was referring to Florida teen shooting victim Trayvon Martin: "...what I'm saying to you is, is you're having a discussion about an article of clothing where two months ago, that article of clothing was looked at as negative."

As previously noted here at NewsBusters, while the predominantly liberal hosts of The View did generally coddle and flatter President Obama during his appearance on their show yesterday, they do deserve some credit for questioning at least one ridiculous thing he said when he claimed that he might lose the election due to his untraditional name.

In his appearance, Obama suggested that prejudice among some voters will make it more difficult for him to be re-elected. When asked how close he expected the November presidential election to be, Obama said: "When your name is Barack Obama, it's always tight." After one of the hosts noted that Obama's full name was "Barack Hussein Obama," the president repeated his full name twice, stressing his middle name and implying that it caused voters to vote against him.

"I’ve never understood the opposition to gay marriage." That's the confession with which Sally Quinn -- the agnostic, liberal editor of the Washington Post's "On Faith" religion section-- began her May 11 column. But rather than humbly seek an understanding of the religious faith that informs the beliefs of millions of American Christians, Quinn launched into an attack on them by comparing them to opponents of the racial integration of the nation's public schools.

History, Quinn insists, is on the side of the eventual societal and legal acceptance of same-sex marriage, and those who stand in the way will one day be haunted by it, living their lives knowing how wretched they were to oppose progress in the first place:

CNN's Don Lemon Sunday evening compared Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney to former Alabama governor George Wallace.

At the beginning of a CNN Newsroom segment he calls "No Talking Points," Lemon played a clip of Wallace saying in 1963, "I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, and segregation forever" followed by Romney saying Saturday, "Marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

In his first public response to the Trayvon Martin shooting, President Obama famously said in March, "If I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."

CNN legal analyst Mark NeJame, after uncovering a picture of George Zimmerman's relatives during his investigation of this matter, told Piers Morgan Thursday, "If President Obama has indicated that his son would have looked like Trayvon Martin, then most respectfully, if you look at these pictures, his grandparents and great-grandparents would have looked a lot like George Zimmerman's grandparents and great-grandparents (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Obama booster Gayle King attacked conservative Dennis Prager on Thursday's CBS This Morning for his opposition to same-sex "marriage." King channeled the left by equating such opposition to opposing desegregation: "You recently wrote...that you can be against same-sex marriage and not be anti-gay...it's sort of like saying to a black person...I want you to sit at the back of the bus, but I'm not anti-black." [audio available here; video clip below the jump]

The morning show slanted in general towards the cultural left by bringing on three supporters of same-sex "marriage" or civil unions: former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani; Chris Hughes, the publisher of The New Republic; and Max Mutchnick, co-creator of the TV show "Will and Grace," which was recently cited by Vice President Joe Biden as he announced his support of the redefinition of marriage on Sunday's Meet The Press. Hughes and Mutchnick are both open homosexuals.