Racism

Historian Rick Perlstein, the author of three books (so far) on American movement conservatism from the mid-‘50s through the mid-‘70s, believes, in essence, that conservatives are tribalists whose central task is to promote hatred against other tribes. According to Perlstein, two recent news stories serve to illuminate that process, which, he suggests, involves an almost scientific-sounding…

Bill Maher slammed CBS's Major Garrett in a Wednesday post on Twitter for his pointed question to President Obama during a press conference in the East Room: "#MajorGarrett is a huge asshole. If U wanna 'strike a nerve' with POTUS, why not just scream the N word? That shld [should] get his attention."

On Wednesday, CBS This Morning rushed to promote remarks made by President Obama at the NAACP’s annual conference in which he criticized the current state of the criminal justice system. 

Howell Raines, the controversial former editor of the New York Times and self-described "liberal to radical," notorious for using his perch to crusade against the all-male policies of Augusta National Golf Club and Fox News, is back with some helpful advice for the "punitive" political party he loathes in a guest column for the paper's Sunday Review: "Anecdotal evidence indicates that affluent…

The media instinct to trash all that is inspiring and noble was unmistakable in Monday morning's Today report on the new novel (Go Set a Watchman) by Harper Lee, the author of the widely celebrated, best-selling To Kill a Mockingbird, first published in 1960. Debate has raged over whether Lee, who is in very poor health and whose mental competence has been questioned, ever wanted her manuscript…

Liberal media types like Al Hunt haven't called Donald Trump a Hitler. Yet.  But Judy Woodruff's husband has branded Trump a modern-day version of an iconic personification of racism. On today's Morning Joe, Hunt declared that Trump is "George Corley Wallace, 40 years later."

Aamer Madhani at USA Today took the easy way out on Friday in covering the sharp increases in murders in many U.S. cities during the first half of this year. He quoted Milwaukee's police chief bemoaning "absurdly weak" gun laws. He noted that "the increased violence is disproportionately impacting poor and predominantly African-American and Latino neighborhoods." He found a university prof to…

On his The Nightly Show on Comedy Central, in the aftermath of the Charleston church massacre, host Larry Wilmore tried to deceive his audience into believing that Fox News hosts as well as former Senator Rick Santorum had been clinging to the possibility that the Charleston church massacre was motivated by religion, even after reporting surfaced that the gunman had expressed blatantly racist…

Amid mounting evidence of Bill Cosby’s depraved behavior, many have changed their minds about Cosby the person. Should they also reconsider, for very different reasons, their affection for his megahit sitcom, The Cosby Show? Lefty writer Chauncey DeVega thinks so. In a Sunday article for Salon, DeVega opined that the series “lied to its white viewers about the nature of racism, white supremacy,…

Michael Lind, contributing editor to Politico and Salon columnist, had a very interesting way of showing his independence week patriotism this year- by dreaming about how great America would be without the south.

What does it say about Mike Barnicle that, in a discussion of the surge in inner-city homicide, Al Sharpton sounded a lot more reasonable than the former Boston Globe columnist? On today's Morning Joe, Sharpton almost echoed the NRA's famous "guns don't kill people, people kill people."  Said Sharpton: "people, because guns are there don't make you get up and shoot."  But there was the…

Following in the footsteps of its first two voter panels each of which featured a sample strongly slanted to the left, CNN's New Day on Thursday unveiled its third gathering of voters, this time featuring a lone conservative pitted against four liberals in a group from Iowa which also included as its sixth member one Republican who did not express any ideological views.

What does MSNBC's Alex Wagner have against stately Indian warriors? On today's Morning Joe, Wagner said it was "amazing" that anyone could look at the Washington Redskins logo and name and not find them controversial. This NewsBuster can understand the debate over the "Redskins" name. But the logo? Has Alex actually had a look at it?  Could Wagner be confusing it with the Cleveland Indians'  …

Four days after a racist rant against Clarence Thomas, George Takei apologized and insisted his comments were not meant to be bigoted. The Star Trek actor took to Facebook and began, “I owe an apology.” Takei on Monday had referred to the conservative African American judge as a “clown in blackface” for his dissent in the gay marriage case.