The unhinged hysteria being displayed by the liberal media over a picture of President Obama and Arizona's Republican governor Jan Brewer supposedly in a heated exchange has become laughable.
On Thursday's The Last Word, newly promoted MSNBC anchor Melissa Harris-Perry told host Lawrence O'Donnell that this photo reminded her of "the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
O’Donnell began the segment by showing a video clip of President Obama’s interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer wherein he said of the incident with Brewer, “This was really not a big deal.”
But that’s not how Harris-Perry saw it:
The fact is, when I see that still, I cannot help but to be reminded of the still photograph that was captured in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, of the young woman Hazel screaming at a young Elizabeth Eckford on her way trying to get into Little Rock High School, Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. And the reason I bring up that image is because what we’ve come to know about Hazel in the years later is that as a young woman, Hazel, the young woman who was screaming at Elizabeth Eckford, was not herself sort of particularly, you know, full of racial animus or anything like that. But she was, she was caught up in this moment of racial anxiety, of making this point against these people who were coming in and trying to force their way into the school, and she sort of enjoyed the show or being able to yell at Elizabeth Eckford in this moment. But that image captured all of the ugliness, all of the nastiness of the larger political milieu, and I feel that this picture does as well.
This picture does as well?
This is a classic moment in the Civil Rights era when after the Brown v. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court, Central High was integrated.
Elizabeth Eckford, fifteen, was part of a group of nine black students trying to enter the school surrounded by an angry mob that included Hazel Massery who was also a teenager.
And Harris-Perry had the nerve to compare this iconic moment to a 67-year-old governor and a 50-year-old president having a disagreement that the latter has now publicly stated "was really not a big deal?"
Nevermind that footage of the Brewer-Obama meeting showed that it was actually far more cordial than the press are depicting, or that the racial tensions today can not in anyway be compared to what was happening in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.
On top of this, it's astonishingly disgusting to claim that any disagreement between Brewer and Obama is at all related to the color his skin.
But that's the knee-jerk reaction liberal media members have to anything involving this president who they promised in 2008 was going to end racism and unite our nation like never before.
I would say that Harris-Perry should be ashamed of herself for making this statement, but her hiring by MSNBC makes it unlikely she possesses anything akin to shame.
She clearly is going to fit in nicely at this abomination of a so-called "news" network.
(H/T NB reader Jane Perzyk)
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