Race Issues

It was just a fleeting remark, but quite a telling one. Closing out a segment on his June 23 Hardball program, MSNBC anchor Chris Matthews made reference to Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof in a way which diminished the racist terrorist's responsibility for his actions.

Racial issues, not gun issues, understandably have been at the forefront of most media coverage of the Charleston massacre, but Adam Gopnik suggests that in any such mass shooting, the firearm is the salient factor. “Mental health, the enduring structures of racism—these are issues that we have to deal with, too,” wrote Gopnik in a Tuesday column. “But they are not at the heart of the tragedy.…

On Tuesday, the Washington Post promoted an article touting how  "many" supposedly view Bobby Jindal as "a man who has spent a lifetime distancing himself from his Indian roots" by Tweeting a professor's eyebrow-raising claim about the Louisiana governor: "There's not much Indian left in Bobby Jindal." In Wednesday's newspaper, that quote served as the big headline on page A-9.

CNN's Chris Cuomo zeroed in on five state flags that have supposed "strong Confederate references" on Monday's New Day. Cuomo cited unnamed experts on flags and symbols who claim that the state flags of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, and Tennessee – along with that of Mississippi and Georgia (which incorporate two different Confederate flags) have such "references." He later wondered, "Do all of…

In a Tuesday piece for Salon, Stanford comparative-literature professor David Palumbo-Liu alleged that Fox News “surely planned to furnish [accused Charleston mass-murderer Dylann] Roof with an alibi regarding the exact nature of his heinous crime,” and declared that “if Roof is convicted I suggest we regard Fox as an accessory after the fact.” Palumbo-Liu also claimed that Fox News “provides a…

CBS This Morning co-host Gayle King appeared on Comedy Central’s Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore on Monday and rushed to President Obama’s defense after he used the n-word during a podcast with comedian Marc Maron while discussing the history of racism in America. 

During a panel discussion on racism in America on MSNBC’s Last Word w/ Lawrence O’Donnell Monday night, Mark Thompson, a host on SIRIUS XM, argued that “voter suppression” is a new and “more sophisticated form of lynching” taking place in America today. 

The left's "screw up, move up" principle for career advancement appears to be at play again. Of course, the press is playing up the move-up, and ignoring the screw-ups. Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, whose statements and strategies inarguably led to more property destruction and civil disorder than would have occurred if someone more responsible had been in charge during that city's…

In their coverage on Monday night of the calls by South Carolina officials to remove the Confederate flag from the State Capitol’s grounds, the major broadcast networks failed to note the full context of the flag’s history in the Palmetto State and how it was a Democratic Governor who first hoisted it above the Capitol dome in 1962. Meanwhile, Fox News’s Special Report noted this fact during one…

Friday's The Situation Room on CNN ran a report by correspondent Tom Foreman fretting over the Confederate flag's presence in a part of the South Carolina capitol grounds that is reserved as a tribute to the state's history. Even though the report acknowledged that the flag is padlocked into place so that it cannot be flown at half staff in times of tragedy, Foreman still worried over the fact…

During a panel discussion on Meet the Press, New York Times reporter Helene Cooper rehashed President Obama’s infamous scolding of the Cambridge, Massachusetts police for acting “stupidly,” recalling that at the time Obama's take “made sense to me.” 

In the wake of the horrific racially motivated shooting on a historic African American church in Charleston, South Carolina last week, CBS News Sunday Morning hosted liberal New Republic editor Jamil Smith who argued that “black bodies are under assault” all across the country. 

Imagine if any Republican president in the past fifty years had said the following: "I get letters, people say, you are an idiot -- (laughter) -- and here’s what you didn’t do, and here’s the program that is terrible, and all kinds of stuff. But this gentleman, he said, I voted for you twice but I’m deeply disappointed. And it went on and on, chronicling all the things that hadn’t gotten done."…

Anger, sadness, and disgust have been nearly universal responses to Wednesday night’s apparent act of racist terrorism in Charleston, S.C., but Jeb Lund doesn’t think such reactions make sense coming from conservatives. In a Friday screed, Lund argued that the Charleston shootings shouldn’t have surprised anyone, given that “American movement conservatism has already made these kinds of killings…