Race Issues

Surprisingly, the October 21 "View" mentioned Congressman John Murtha’s "my constituents are racist" comments. Though Joy Behar called it a "stupid thing to say," they were much gentler on Murtha than on Michele Bachmann, who stated that Obama has associated with anti-American individuals.Joy Behar labeled Bachmann a "red baiter" and alluded to the McCarthy era. Whoopi Goldberg asked "it okay for…

CNN contributor Roland Martin used an unoriginal line to attack Rush Limbaugh on Monday’s Election Center program. Host Campbell Brown wanted Martin, a Barack Obama supporter, to comment on something the talk radio host had said about Colin Powell’s endorsement of the Democratic presidential candidate: "Rush Limbaugh said today, this is about race. That's all it's about." Martin’s response: "I…

In her October 21 article, "White supremacists target middle America," USA Today's Marisol Bello took a look at how hate groups are trying to go more "mainstream" by ditching Nazi armbands, brown shirts and white sheets and going for a more "middle class" look. While there is merit in covering such a story, Bello and/or her editors unfortunately chose to color the piece in a way that reflected…

With Sen. Barack Obama's present lead in the polls, there's been hand-wringing in the media that he could possibly lose the race due to the so-called Bradley Effect, wherein racist white voters lie to pollsters on the telephone about their voting preferences in order to, well, not sound racist.But as a former Bradley campaign staffer writes in an October 19 op-ed for the New York Times, it was…

The Associated Press has once again called Governor Sarah Palin a racist. This time Rachel D’Oro for the AP bases her claim on the fact that Palin appointed minorities to her Alaska administration -- but not enough of them to suit the AP -- and because at an Alaska rally when she was running for governor one attendee once spoke to a black cameraman in an unkind manner. Yep, that's a mountain of…

Taxpayer-subsidized journalist Ray Suarez (pictured at right) thinks concerns over Barack Obama's liberalism are transparent proxies for something more sinister: racism. What's more, the PBS "NewsHour" reporter suggested that McCain running mate Gov. Sarah Palin is the campaign's point woman charged with "pil[ing] on the doubt" about Obama's fitness for office. So reported Grand Rapids Press…

At the top of CNN.com’s most popular stories at midday Wednesday was a commentary by CNN contributor Roland Martin, a relentless unpaid Obama spin controller and host of a series of weekend specials. Martin's commentary argued that the Bill Ayers issue is a "smokescreen" and that if Barack Obama is tarred by working with Ayers, McCain is just as tarred by working with....Strom Thurmond, Jesse…

In a rapid fire display of flip-flopping that would make even the staunchest of liberals proud, Newsweek's Howard Fineman manages to change his opinion on the justification of an Obama-Lincoln connection three times in just under 900 words. The random logic is hard to see through all the gooeyness behind the concept of such a ridiculous comparison in the first place, but once you wipe the screen…

The Associated Press has long been a bastion of liberal bias. But has it now sunk to the level of a left-wing blog in the throes of Palin Derangement Syndrome?  Yes, suggests the Morning Joe folks.  In a rare bit of unanimity, the panel condemned and ridiculed AP for its "analysis" item, "Palin's words carry racial tinge."  According to Douglass K. Daniel, the item's author, Palin's criticism of…

There's one good reason Gwen Ifill, the host of the PBS show Washington Week, is moderating the vice-presidential debate: she has a forthcoming book about Barack Obama (and other black Democrats) called The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama. Ifill talks about the book project on YouTube here. In addition to her portrait of Obama, Ifill will also investigate Massachusetts Gov.…

With the first official presidential debate for 2008 set to begin this evening on the Oxford campus of Ole Miss, Washington Post associate editor Kevin Merida gave readers of today's Style section a glimpse at how the state of Mississippi is still "Bearing Its Southern Cross."Merida opened by insisting that the Magnolia State "has been chasing away ghosts for years, trying to rid itself of a past…

On September 20, Noel Sheppard of NewsBusters posted on a misleading Associated Press/Yahoo poll on racism. The poll asserted that if Barack Obama loses, it will be because of "[d]eep-seated racial misgivings" held by "one-third of white Democrats." Later that day, NB's Michael Bates criticized the AP's report on the poll for its historically inaccurate claim that the US "enshrined slavery into…

A 60-year-old white woman from Spring Hill, Florida is quoted as saying that there is no chance a black man can win the White House. This same woman, Sandra Cichon, is quoted in a total of three St. Petersburg Times stories, the latest being from September 15. But in a follow up interview, Barbara Sowell of digitaljournal.com finds that Cichon claims she was never called by a pollster, as the…