On Fox and Friends Sunday, frequent guest and Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz slammed former President Bill Clinton and others on the left for their willingness to "mainstream" racist, anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, responding to their presence on stage together at singer Aretha Franklin's funeral.
The liberal Harvard professor and lifelong Democrat complained that some on the left, including the dominant media, practice an "affirmative action for bigotry" in avoiding criticism of prominent blacks who openly express bigoted views.
At 9:25 a.m. Eastern, co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy introduced the segment: "Outrage this morning over Louis Farrakhan's seat of honor at the pulpit of Aretha Franklin's funeral."
Co-host Pete Hegseth added: "The very controversial Nation of Islam leader who has notoriously declared that 'Jews are my enemy' and 'white folks are going down' was seated prominently alongside former President Bill Clinton."
Dershowitz immediately complained about former Democratic President Clinton's presence on stage as he began: "I am trying really hard to figure out why President Bill Clinton, who I like, would do something like this, would help mainstream a bigot like Farrakhan."
Noting what he would like to ask Clinton, he then added:
Would you sit next to David Duke if he were invited to a funeral of some white singer somewhere in the United States? And of course the answer would be no, and Farrakhan is every bit as bad as Duke. In fact, he has a larger following. Farrakhan has posed with President Obama -- he's posed with Keith Ellison -- he's posed with other leaders both black and white.
And you just can't mainstream and allow legitimacy to a man who has expressed the kind of hateful views he's expressed of Jews and white people, of gays, of so many other people. So the question i put to President Clinton is: Why?
Hegseth brought up the liberal media's lack of interest in the controversy as he followed up:
What about the question to the elites of our country -- to the media. This is not a story. They're not blinking an eye like when you said, if the converse were to be the case, if President Trump was three seats down from an avowed racist, they would talk about it for a month. What does it say about our elites that this is nothing to them?
Dershowitz then complained: "I think some people think that there is an affirmative action program, and the standard for criticizing black bigots is somewhat different than the standard for criticizing white bigots. That's unacceptable. You can't have affirmative action for bigotry in this country."
As previously documented by NewsBusters, the dominant liberal media ignored Farrakhan's most recent racist and anti-Semitic comments from earlier this year, plus revelations that he has connections with a number of prominent congressional Democrats.
