Race Issues

Paul Bedard at the Washington Examiner reports “A new Ipsos/Reuters poll throws cold water on the racially-charged #OscarsSoWhite trend and other campaigns suggesting that the overly liberal Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences was biased this year against blacks and other minorities in picking Oscar nominees.”

Esquire blogger Pierce alleges that right-wingers have turned the civil-rights movement “into a weapon against issues on which Dr. King surely would have come down on the progressive side,” and declares that the movement “no longer can be used as history's truncheon against the legitimate social, cultural, and political aspirations of the people who are its truest heirs.”

On Monday night, Comedy Central’s newest late-night comedy show, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, premiered as the replacement for the recently departed Stephen Colbert. The former Daily Show correspondent spent the entirety of his debut episode talking about race in America and even brought on Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to ask him “do you feel like you're just a hoodie away from being face…

Tuning into the middle of a Morning Joe segment today, at first I assumed that MSNBC's Ari Melber was chatting with the Oscar nominees.  But no, turns out Melber had scored interviews with President Obama's SOTU speechwriting team. You'll excuse my confusion. As you'll see, just like the Oscar hopefuls, the SOTU writers appear to be a panorama of people of pallor. 

MSNBC plays the race card 365 days a year, but on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, you can be sure they'll really ham it up. Witness MSNBC.com writer Jane Timm's pathetic attempt to bash the GOP as racist by bringing up decades-old votes on whether or not to make the civil-rights leader's birthday a federal holiday. "GOP haunted by anti-MLK Day votes," blares a teaser headline on the msnbc.com home…

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their nominations for the 87th Academy Awards and many have criticized the academy for shutting out the film “Selma” from the four biggest acting categories. With the so-called controversy over the film’s lack of nominations continuing, on Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources brought on actor Gbenga Akinnagbe, star of HBO’s “The Wire”…

Monday is Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, and on Sunday morning, ABC’s This Week decided it was the perfect opportunity to scold the Republican over his civil rights record. During the show’s weekly “powerhouse puzzler” segment, guest host Martha Raddatz asked the This Week panel “which president signed a law making MLK’s birthday a…

Denise Oliver-Velez argues that Love is merely “another brown face to shove in front of the cameras” as supposed proof that the Republican party cares about non-white people, but “she certainly isn't going to convince any black folks who aren't Teapublican patsies already.”

"'Selma' Snubbed" lamented the teaser headline on msnbc.com for Joseph Neese's Academy Awards nomination story. "Director Ava DuVernay doesn't make Oscar cut," complained the subheader. But in fact Selma was not completely "snubbed," garnering two nominations, including the top prize, Best Picture.

On Wednesday's CNN Newsroon, CNN religion editor Daniel Burke likened French society's treatment of Muslims to the situation in Ferguson, Missouri around the time of the shooting of Michael Brown: "It's kind of like what we saw in Ferguson – that this was...in some way, the tinder that lit the spark – but the embers were already burning. There is a prevailing feeling in France, among many Muslims…

Not much in the way of political commentary crosses the line into public service. Here's one that does. If you aren't familiar with Andrew Klavan's brilliant polemics at Truth Revolt, PJ Media and City Journal, you're in for a treat. He's also a best-selling author of mystery novels under the pen name Keith Peterson. Remember that great Michael Caine crime thriller, "A Shock to the System,"…

"We think Texas was right to reject the Confederate plates, but that North Carolina should have issued the abortion rights plates.  How can this be?  Are we merely siding with liberals in both cases?  No." Methinks the two professors who wrote those lines in a New York Times op-ed appearing today doth protest too much. Their column opines on a case before the Supreme Court deciding the…

The Santa Barbara News-Press building has been vandalized due to criticism it received over a recent headline using the word “illegals” which, incidentally, described immigrants who entered and are living in the United States illegally.  It all started on Saturday, January 3, 2015, when The Santa Barbara News-Press wrote a front-page article titled “Illegals line up for driver’s licenses.”

CNN's Chris Cuomo made a "colorful" gaffe on Friday's @ This Hour, as he reported live from Paris, France. Minutes after police stormed both sites where Islamists had barricaded themselves, Cuomo labeled one of the dead French terrorists "African-American." Anderson Cooper quickly corrected his colleague: "Not American – the man of African descent." Cuomo replied, "Right – African descent. Thank…