D.L. Hughley

Catching up with Friday night's Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO, guest D.L. Hughley -- the actor/comedian who until recently had a show on CNN -- insisted “you never saw drugs or drive-byes or homeless people” in inner-cities before Reagan “cut” social programs and became “the Moses of...greedy white men.” Left-wing blogger Jeremy Scahill predicted “some guys” will pull down the new Capitol rotunda Reagan statue “and drag it through the street like the Saddam statue with some kid hitting it with a shoe.”

Pegged to the placement of the new statute of Ronald Reagan, Hughley declared: “I didn't love Ronald Reagan.” Maher echoed “I didn't either,” and then Hughley launched a rant with distortions of quotes from Ronald Reagan, as he recalled:

I grew up in Los Angeles inner city -- you never saw drugs or drive-byes or homeless people or anything like that. All the social programs that were cut as a result of Reagan coming into office and greed just became a hobby....I remember watching...him say people in America who are homeless are homeless because they want to be. That seemed to be one of the most-- and I was a kid -- I knew how cruel that was and I would never, you know, ascribe any level of greatness to somebody who would say, you know, if somebody's hungry in America it's because they're on a diet. Like that, to me, made greedy white men feel good about being greedy white men. He was the kind of the Moses of leading them to feeling good about being greedy white men. So to me he wasn't a great man.

New York Times "visual op-ed" columnist Charles Blow remains giddy over Republican failures in his latest column, "Three Blind Mice." Blow's mice (aka "the axis of drivel") are Republican governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, RNC chairman Michael Steele, and talk show giant Rush Limbaugh (the latter of whom controls "Limbaugh-tomized minions of the far, far right").

All these insults are packed into one puny-sized column in Saturday's edition, accompanied by a graph (that would be the "visual" part) demonstrating beyond a shadow of a doubt that among citizens at large, the newly elected President of the United States is more popular than a conservative talk show host. This apparently proves something or other.

...the Republicans have dissolved into a querulous lot of nags and naysayers without a voice, a direction or a clue, and we are not amused.

And who has surfaced as their saviors? Bobby Jindal, Michael Steele and Rush Limbaugh -- the axis of drivel.

In the midst of a segment on Rush Limbaugh on Sunday morning's Reliable Sources portion of CNN's State of the Union, host Howard Kurtz scolded his journalistic colleagues for a remark which “totally got missed by the media,” how CNN host D.L. Hughley charged “that the Republican convention 'literally looks like Nazi Germany.' I don't understand how he can get away with saying that. I think that is an outrage.”

Kurtz, the Washington Post's media reporter, interjected his criticism after guest Amanda Carpenter of the Washington Times, and formerly with TownHall.com, had defended RNC Chairman Michael Steele's characterization of Limbaugh's rhetoric as “ugly,” a slam on Limbaugh he made on Hughley's show, D.L. Hughley Breaks the News, last weekend. She guessed Steele was thinking of “Rush Limbaugh's interpretation of 'Barack the Magic you know what,' so when he said 'ugly,' that was ugly, that was a very ugly part of the discussion that was in the run up to his election.” (Of course, “Barack the Magic Negro” was a song parody inspired by a black writer who used that term in a Los Angeles Times op-ed about Obama.)

As Limbaugh-bashing networks like CNN and MSNBC continue to play up a Rush vs. Michael Steele feud, the diversionary tactic isn’t just keeping people away from focusing on Barack Obama. It also prevents a focus on CNN host D.L. Hughley’s inflammatory statement that the GOP convention "looked like Nazi Germany," and the man who put Hughley on the air – CNN president Jonathan Klein.

Klein is the man who killed Crossfire after 22 years in 2005 because he agreed with liberal comedian Jon Stewart that this harsh partisan head-butting was "hurting" America. Four years later, wild talk about Nazi conservatives is okay with CNN’s boss: he told the AP last fall that Hughley was given the instructions "Anything goes!"

On October 16, 2008, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that Klein hired Hughley because he was "well-informed," deeply knowledgeable about the world (does that fit equating an American political convention to Nazi Germany?) Harsh partisanship would be encouraged, but this time without a troublesome conservative in the cast:

It always comes down to this one, doesn't it? Leftists and fringe politicos calling Republicans "Nazis." Well, the "N" word was once again unleashed against John McCain's Republican Convention on September 2 during CNN's Larry King Live show. Actor D.L. Hughley and Independent former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura both went for that shopworn epithet as King discussed the Convention.

Along with Hughley and Ventura, King had on former Clinton Press Secretary Dee Dee Myers who claimed that Republicans were saying with their convention theme that “only Republicans put their country first” ridiculously saying that Independents shouldn't vote for the GOP because they are insulted so much. "I don't understand why any independent or Democrat would consider voting for the McCain/Palin ticket," Myers partisanly intoned, "after being called all night that only Republicans put their country first."