Racism

In a textbook case of damning with faint praise, the Washington Monthly's Ed Kilgore asserted on Thursday that of all the "dramatically underqualified people" who may run for president in 2016, Ben Carson is the frontrunner.   Kilgore opines that since Carson is black, his popularity with white conservatives "absolve[s] them of any racist motives when they complain about those people on…

Talking Points Memo editor and publisher Josh Marshall thinks that one of the reasons many conservatives despise President Obama is that he's black, but that's basically a micro-issue. The macro version, Marshall contends, is that Republicans' race-based detestation of Obama is inseparable from their discomfort with an increasingly multiracial Democratic party. In fact, Marshall argues that…

You can guess you’re on the NPR website – and the “Code Switch” race-matters blog – when an article on ice-cream trucks comes with an editor’s warning: “This article is about a virulently racist song. Read no further if you wish to avoid racist imagery and slurs.” Some trucks apparently play the well-known melody “Turkey In the Straw,” and Theodore R. Johnson III blamed "a great many" ice…

Tauriq Moosa slammed Nintendo in a Monday item for The Daily Beast for supposedly perpetuating "anti-gay bigotry." The writer singled out the Japanese video game company for rejecting same-sex relationships as an option in its "life simulator" game Tomodachi Life, and lamented that its decision "has a huge effect on creative media, on culture, and thus people themselves." Moosa used the…

Ed Schultz briefly revealed what he actually thinks on his radio show yesterday, then quickly retreated to the comforting confines of the nonsensical. Schultz was talking about embattled Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and his interview with Anderson Cooper of CBS about racist remarks made by Sterling and recorded by a gold-digger girlfriend working for him as an "archivist." (…

Appearing as a guest on the Saturday edition of Disrupt with Karen Finney on MSNBC, former NBC News man and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert asserted that Republicans are "hostile to the interests of African-Americans" and suggested that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul would not have a problem with a hotel or restaurant barring black customers from entering. Herbert's comments came during a…

Chris Matthews mocked Republicans on Friday's Hardball over their hawkish stance towards Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of girls. Matthews made a thinly-veiled racial attack on the GOP during a panel discussion on the terrorist organization: "By the way, when did the Republican Party take this keen interest in Africa? I may have missed that one."…

"George W. Bush is a racist."  Those where the first words I heard about modern American politics when I came here to study back in 2000.  How did my friends know?  Well, he was the Republican candidate.  I wouldn’t want to be associated with someone like that, so I became a Democrat.  That scenario is not uncommon.  That is how a large number of Hispanics get their feet wet in American…

Much like their English-language counterparts, the flagship evening news programs of the Univision and Telemundo television networks found plenty of time to cover the scandal over racism that rocked Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling, but no time to devote to news developments which cast President Obama and his administration in a negative light. Over the course of four days between…

A new YouTube channel, Digitas Daily, has an amusing little montage about MSNBC's non-stop talk about racism. It's a clever one-minute look at how the Lean Forward network has been Johnny One-Note. So we thought we'd give you a look at it below the page break. As an added bonus, we also embedded another video Digitas Daily did a few weeks back, headlined, "He Reports. They Recite," about the…

On the Wedneday, April 30, Hardball, during the show's regular "Side Show" segment, MSNBC host Chris Matthews highlighted Comedy Central's Jon Stewart using Donald Sterling's racist talk to make a crack about alleged "crazy talk" from Sarah Palin. Matthews began:

CNN's Jake Tapper gave a full segment to Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson calling Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas an "Uncle Tom," but the broadcast networks completely ignored the controversy on Wednesday evening. The networks' blackout of a Democrat using a racial insult against a Justice shows a clear double standard after their deluge of coverage of Los Angeles Clippers owner…

On Wednesday, Jake Tapper set aside a full segment on his CNN program to Rep. Bennie Thompson's "Uncle Tom" insult of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Tapper spotlighted the "racially-charged" and controversial" remarks, where the Mississippi Democrat also denigrated Senator Mitch McConnell and opponents of ObamaCare in general as "racists." The anchor turned to correspondent Dana Bash…

ABC, CBS, and NBC have set aside over 146 minutes of air time on their morning and evening newscasts to the controversy surrounding a racist tirade by L.A. Clippers owner Donald Sterling. However, as of Wednesday morning, the Big Three networks have yet to pick up on a Tuesday scoop from Buzzfeed's Andrew Kaczynski, who discovered "shocking racial comments" by a sitting Democratic congressman…