As I demonstrated last week, MSNBC and CNN, the two also-rans in the cable news race, survive in large part because about half of their revenues are, once contracts are signed with cable and other providers, guaranteed for several years. This insulates them from much of the financial impact of declining viewership.
MSNBC's far-leftism is particulary painful to watch — so painful that it's hard to imagine anyone other than a critic voluntarily watching it. One of the more egregious recent examples of far-left lunacy occurred this weekend on tax scofflaw Melissa Harris-Perry's show, where a guest actually said that "you don’t have to have a white person around to have white supremacy play out.” Thus, Baltimore's descent into lawlessness, despite having entirely black leadership, is still apparently whites' fault.
"Community organizer" Cherrell Brown, presciently prepping for the Baltimore riots of the past few days, made the statement just quoted. (HT Rick Moran at PJ Media.)
See relevant transcript below:
MSNBC's MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY
April 25, 2015
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: “It feels to me like part of what’s happening here is — when I say biking while black, we talked about walking while black, in the case in the Freddie gray watching the video and seeing and hearing his agony I keep wondering is there no benefit of a doubt given to a black person in public space.
If that is true, if riding an expensive bike in black body inherently generates suspicion, then that is the new Jim crow. That’s what Jim crow was is that black bodies in public space are inherently suspicion.”
CHERRELL BROWN: “Yes. I want to mention two things — I think it’s so ingrained that you don’t have to have a white person around to have white supremacy play out.”
HARRIS-PERRY: “Just pause for a second. What you just said there is going to be difficult for some folks to hear because the discourse of white supremacy can often mean academic discourse. But for ordinary people sitting at home may say did she call all white people racist. So tease that out a little bit.”
BROWN: “I will do my best.”
HARRIS-PERRY: “I recognize that it’s hard on a TV show.”
BROWN: “With an institution like American policing that I believe is founded on anti-blackness, on slave patrols, there are things so institutionally ingrained in terms of how we police communities that are anti-black.
It will surprise absolutely no one, except perhaps Ms. Brown, that Encyclopedia Brittanica's entry on "Early police in the United States" contains no reference to slavery — nor does a page on "English and American policing in the late 19th century." To make sure she has her history right, because she seems to believe that blacks were slaves quite recently, slavery as a legal institution ended once and for all in the U.S. in 1865. I should also note for Ms. Brown's benefit that "the late 19th century" occurred after 1865.
American policing is thus not "founded on anti-blackness, on slave patrols," no matter what Ms. Brown wants to "believe."
Here's another thing: For the most part, police forces in countries throughout the world have developed very similarly as their nations became more urban in nature and industrialized. To buy into Brown's white supremacy nonsense, you have to believe that all of these diverse countries' police forces were built on a "white supremacy" model.
As to Baltimore, it wasn't a white mayor who told her city and the nation that she had to balance freedom of speech and the need for "space" to "destroy." Or did "white supremacy" mind control cause Stephanie Rawlings-Blake to make such an ignorant and dangerous remark? In a city where the power structure is predmoninantly black, how exactly did "white supremacy" make overwhelmingly black rioters loot and destroy?
MSNBC's dreck is so awful and so unwatched that it makes one wonder if ignoring them completely has become a viable option — especially considering the dangers to one's IQ involved in observing some of the things their hosts and guests say.
Not yet, unfortunately, because their hosts and guests still have unwarranted influence and an undeserved following among heavily-trafficked far-left blogs and outlets. Thus, the worst of their nonsense still needs to be called out.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
