Race Issues

As the broadcast network evening newscasts on Tuesday gave attention to Vice-President Joseph Biden asserting that Mitt Romney, by "unchaining" Wall Street would effectively "put y'all back in chains," only CBS's Bob Schieffer informed viewers that about half the audience in Danville, Virginia, was African-American, thus suggesting the Vice-President was making an embarrassing pander to black…

On Tuesday's Anderson Cooper 360, substitute host Soledad O'Brien made the argument that Vice-President Joseph Biden's "chains" gaffe in Danville, Virginia, was "racially coded language," as she rejected the Obama campaign's spin that the comment was not meant to be a reference to the enslavement of African-Americans in the past. After relating the Obama campaign's explanation, she shot it…

NewsBusters reported Friday that Politico's Roger Simon, appearing on PBS's Inside Washington, accused the Romney campaign of employing a racist "dog whistle" in its anti-Obama welfare ad. Also appearing on the program was syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer who scolded, "Any time a real issue is brought up here, all of a sudden it’s a silent dog whistle that only liberals hear...Clinton…

Everyone knows that politics can be an ugly business, but MSNBC’s Chris Matthews sunk to a new long on his Hardball program Tuesday night.  Matthews’ outrage came from an ad put out by the Romney campaign suggesting that President Obama, "announced a plan to gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements," which, his administration most certainly did. Since there's nothing factually…

CNN associated a white supremacist neo-Nazi band with the political right-wing as it labeled the punk rock band of Wisconsin shooter Wade Michael Page as "far right." CNN had reported Page's band named "End Apathy" as "white supremacist," "neo-Nazi," and as a "hate group." Yet it also repeatedly labeled it "far right" on Sunday and Monday. [Video below the break. Audio here.]

CNN stoked fears that new voter ID laws might hearken back to the days of Jim Crow. Monday marked the anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, and CNN's Zoraida Sambolin used that to discuss whether the new laws might "suppress the minority vote." "Do you think that having an African-American president is actually reigniting some of these old prejudices?" she asked former Ambassador Andrew…

On the Saturday Washington Post “On Faith” page, columnist and Newsweek religion editor Lisa Miller insisted it was not a news story that black ministers came to the National Press Club and insisted Obama’s support for gay marriage “might cost him the election.” It’s not a story, Miller insisted, because Rev William Owens is “enough to make a cynic blush...He’s a figurehead in what political…

Is CNN equating racism with a store owner refusing to bake a wedding cake for a gay couple? In its "controversial marriage news" on Monday, CNN reported both a church refusing to let a black couple marry in its sanctuary and a bakery refusing service for a gay couple's wedding reception. Back in May, anchor Don Lemon compared Mitt Romney defending traditional marriage to infamous Alabama…

On her 1 p.m. et hour show on MSNBC on Tuesday, host and NBC chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell decried Mitt Romney labeling President Obama's big-government philosophy "foreign" to American capitalism: "...he is still using the term 'foreign' and I'm telling you, this is happening every day, it is a dog whistle." [Listen to the audio or watch the video after the jump] Chief…

Of all the political angles that might be played in connection with the Aurora theater shooting, surely racism would be a card too far, right? Wrong. Subbing for Ed Schultz on MSNBC tonight, Michael Eric Dyson managed to suggest that James Holmes would have attracted the attention of the authorities earlier had he been, yup, "a Muslim or another minority."  Until he twisted her arm, it was…

Mitt Romney's speech to the NAACP convention in Houston was -- according to one's political perspective -- a "calculated move on his part to get booed..." to help his white base (Rep. Nancy Pelosi), or a presentation to "independent thinking adult citizens" whom he treated as equals (Rush Limbaugh). Having an adult conversation in a racially and politically polarized age is nearly impossible…

UPDATE AT END OF POST: O'Donnell responds. It's really becoming difficult keeping track of all the things the liberal media claim are code for racism these days. On MSNBC's The Last Word Monday, host Lawrence O'Donnell accused conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh of being racist for saying Barack Obama smoked weed and snorted coke (video follows with transcript and commentary):

Appearing as a panel member on Friday's Inside Washington on PBS, Bloomberg View's Margaret Carlson - formerly of Time magazine - asserted that Mitt Rommey "wanted the boos" he received as he delivered his speech to the NAACP. She went on to say the GOP presidential candidate is "taking those boos to his fund-raiser with Dick Cheney," and that "he's so proud of them."

On Thursday's edition of the New York Times's daily TimesCast, liberal columnists Charles Blow and Bill Keller discussed Mitt Romney's appearance at the NAACP convention (which Keller, the paper's former executive editor, found condescending). They took on the issue of voter ID laws in various states. Over a montage of still photos of blacks in line to vote, Keller called voter fraud "kind of…