If it's Friday, it must be Call Herman Cain an Oreo Day.
While neither the terms Uncle Tom nor Oreo were deployed, for the second Friday in a row MSNBC's Martin Bashir brought theGrio.com columnist Goldie Taylor on his eponymous program to slam GOP presidential candidate for essentially being a self-hating black man.
"He said in an interview just over the last week that he could appeal to 30 percent of African-American voters. How is he going to tell that 30 percent of African-American voters that when the civil rights movement came right to his doorstep, he wouldn't open the door?" Taylor complained on the October 7 Martin Bashir, adding later in that segment, "I think it's insulting that Herman Cain had his bedroom slippers on in 1963 and wasn't involved in the civil rights movement even though he was living and working right here in the city of Atlanta."
Today Bashir brought Taylor on air again to attack Cain, this time for his stating that he believes that racism is no longer "rampant" in America.
Taylor insisted Cain was attempting to coax racist Republican primary voters to support him, that there's little chance Republicans really would if it came down to it, and that Cain is a sell-out who would shed his skin if he could:
MARTIN BASHIR: Goldie, it's a great relief, isn't it? Racism no longer exists in America. Do you agree with Mr. Cain?
GOLDIE TAYLOR: You've got to wonder which country Herman Cain is living in or which planet, for that matter.
BASHIR: Planet Cain!
[...]
TAYLOR: I think at the end of the day Herman Cain's um, you know, the way that he raises his candidacy is that he placates a base. And the base that he believes he's after is a right-wing ultra-conservative base that does not want to either see racism as a dilemma or see it as an attack on them.
BASHIR: Goldie, you're almost saying that he's trying to denude and diminish his own ethnicity in order to win that base, is that what you're saying?
TAYLOR: That's exactly what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that if he can shed his ethnicity today, if he could become what I would call the color of water, he would do it. He would do it in an effort to prove that he and people just like him could fit in anywhere and have the same level of success no matter what their race, ethnicity or gender happen to be. That just doesn't happen to be the case. And so, would he shed it? I think he would.
In addition to Taylor, Bashir included Washington Post's Jonathan Capehart in on the discussion, who is a liberal African-American and agreed with Taylor that Herman Cain is "indeed trying to placate his base" that "does not want to hear any accusations of racism against it." But, Capehart insisted, Cain's base is "perfectly fine" with "hurl[ing] charges of racism against Democrats" and liberals.
Later in the segment, Bashir cited Cain's anemic fundraising numbers as evidence that the Republican base was at best just "entertained" by Cain, a notion with which Taylor agreed.
Bashir, of course, failed to include a black conservative in the discussion to offer a differing point of view.
