Race Issues

Of all the criticisms an apparently panicky Dem party has heaped on Sarah Palin in the hours since her selection was announced, Keith Boykin [bio] has come up with perhaps the unseemliest.  The former aide to President Clinton has accused Palin of being an "affirmative action" pick.Boykin, a graduate of Dartmouth and Harvard Law, was debating the selection with Republican Joe Watkins at the end…

How does Keith Olbermann view pre-Obama America?  Apparently akin to the Soviet Union, and South Africa under apartheid.  Here was his statement from the top of tonight's DNC coverage.CHRIS MATTHEWS: It is an iconic night in history: we'll all remember this night as long as we live. This is the night that the first Western government, the first Western political power, or party, has nominated an…

At the top of Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith set the tone for the show’s coverage of Barack Obama’s upcoming nomination acceptance speech at the Democratic convention: "First, history being made in Denver today." While Obama being the first African-American presidential nominee of a major party is historic, the Early Show went far beyond the other network morning shows, doing…

Update: Scott Whitlock reminds me that Matthews said something very similar about West Virginia Democratic Democratic primary voters back in May. Ah the wit and wisdom of Chris Matthews. Did you know that Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pa., is stuck in 1957? Or that Sen. McCain hopes to peel off Michigan from the Democrats due in part to white voters anger at black Detroit Mayor Kwame…

In the wake of Barack Obama officially becoming the first African-American presidential nominee of the Democratic Party, on Thursday’s CBS Early Show, co-host Harry Smith declared: "This day, August 28, is steeped in history. Barack Obama delivers his historic acceptance speech and 45 years ago, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his 'I Have A Dream" speech. August 28, 1963, hundreds of…

Windy City newspapers this morning are devoting coverage to a he said/she said mini-scandal roiling among Democratic Convention delegates. From the Chicago Sun-Times.:DENVER -- A black Hillary Clinton delegate on Sunday accused state Senate President Emil Jones of calling her an "Uncle Tom."Jones -- Barack Obama's political mentor -- denied using the racially loaded slur against Chicago political…

Joe Biden's insulting remark about Indian-Americans and Dunkin' Donuts franchises didn't indelibly taint the Delaware senator not because the media don't hype Democratic race gaffes but because "no one ever accused Biden of being a racist."That according to Newsweek's Jonathan Alter in an August 23 column exploring why some politicians' gaffes stick and go on to practically define them -- Dan…

You know the old software programmer's excuse: "that's not a bug.  That's a feature!"  John Harwood of CNBC/NYT has produced a political variation on the theme to buff up Joe Biden.  Biden's gaffes, including the racially-insensitive ones, are actually . . . "a strength."Harwood was chatting with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on a special Morning Joe edition today, and the topic of Biden's…

Leave it to the liberal print media to find some way to kill everyone's Olympics buzz.For instance, did you know that the choice by the U.S. Olympic Committee to have Ralph Lauren stitch the threads for Team USA's opening ceremonies uniform was an unfortunate nod to racism and classism and a futile, nostalgic clinging to America's waning WASP empire? That according to Sameer Reddy (pictured at…

That didn't take long.  Tanned and rested on his first day back from vacation, Chris Matthews suggested on this evening's Hardball that under the guise of the "inexperience" charge, John McCain is handing out "permission slips" to racists to vote against Obama.Matthews put his poisonous point to Chicago Tribune columnist Clarence Page.CHRIS MATTHEWS: Let me ask you this.  Isn't he [McCain]…

**Video Below the Fold** Barack Obama has been fond of playing the race card in this campaign telling his enraptured audiences that Republicans will attack him because he's black, even though no GOP candidate or campaign has done so to date. But, Obama is a newcomer to the racemongering game when compared to Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. True to form, in a recent interview…

Peter Beinart at the Washington Post is afraid this Presidential campaign is going to be about race. He is warning Obama that it shouldn't be. It has been brought up though. But by whom? Here is what Beinart had to say:That's the lesson of recent weeks, when the McCain campaign brought up race (on the pretext that Obama had brought it up first). The Obama campaign tried desperately to change the…

On Monday’s Countdown show, MSNBC host Keith Olbermann attacked Sean Hannity for his recent declaration on FNC's Hannity's America that Obama "can’t point to a single instance in which President Bush or McCain or Karl Rove or Sean Hannity or talk radio or any other major Republican has made an issue of Obama’s race." Missing Hannity’s point that conservatives are not attacking Obama for being…