If you’re looking for someone to come on your program and bash conservatives – especially in the wake of an incident such as Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing – the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Mark Potok is your man.
On CNN’s Piers Morgan Live Tuesday, Potok disgracefully said the perpetrator of Monday's attack likely wasn't a member of the "radical right" because the target wasn't "black people or Jewish people or gay people or Muslims" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
PIERS MORGAN: Mark Potok, if it is a domestic terror attack, is it more likely from your experience to be a lone wolf or part of an existing group?
MARK POTOK, SENIOR FELLOW, SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER: Well, I think in general, it's more likely to be a lone wolf, these kinds of things, at least in the radical right. The non-Islamic radical right, they don't tend to be carried out in groups at all.
I’ve got to say I think there's something to what was just said, that it may be, in fact, a home grown radical, but perhaps of the jihadist sort. And the reason I think about that in that way is think about who the targets were. You know, this was not a target that one would associate with a radical right-wing bomber. It was not a government building, it was not the IRS, although it was Tax Day on Monday. It was not a minority group. It wasn't black people or Jewish people or gay people or Muslims.
In fact, the only thing really that the victims, that the targets shared in common seems to me is they were Americans. So that does suggest a broader kind of attack and perhaps one that's not linked to the world that we cover.
Honestly, with the exception of MSNBC which you can understand because it isn't a news out, why does any organization striving for credibility and better ratings invite this hateful man on to comment about anything?
As NewsBusters reported Monday, CNN came in fourth last week behind Fox, HLN, and MSNBC.
Maybe it is perilously biased, inflammatory guests such as Potok that are keeping viewers away from the supposedly most trusted name in news.
They say you are who you associate with.
As long as CNN associates with the likes of Potok, it's destined to continue to languish on the trash heap of cable news.
