Against my better judgment many years ago, I signed off on hiring a relatively inexperienced wire service reporter to work with me in a television investigative reporting unit. It turned out to be a disaster, especially when I allowed her to conduct an important on-camera interview with a character vital to an ongoing exposé. She didn’t allow man a chance to complete a single sentence. Her constant confrontational interruptions rendered the interview useless. I don’t blame the reporter. It was my mistake in hiring her. She was simply trying to do a Mike Wallace imitation, not realizing that he allowed people to rattle on until their egos entrapped them. The Mike Wallace technique, by the way, won me a lot of journalism awards.
Anyway, watching the unbelieveable rudeness of Fox “News” anchor Megyn Kelly early this week reminded me of the long ago interview disaster that I facilitated. Kelly’s boorish interview of New York Post columnist and political commentator Kirsten Powers had all the class of a drunken honky-tonk brawl. Powers—a moderate voice regularly heard on the Republican propaganda network—was not allowed in this instance to express any opinion contradicting Kelly’s obvious racial prejudice.
Megyn Kelly’s screech on her program, America Live, may explain why she gave up the practice of law to enter broadcasting. Had she displayed similar demeanor in a courtroom, Kelly would be spending time in a jail cell for contempt of court.
The context of the interview was obviously Kelly’s belief that the U.S. Department of Justice engaged in a form of reverse racism by failing to pursue default judgments in lawsuits accusing members of the Black Panthers of imtimidating voters outside a precinct in Philadelphia during the November, 2008 Presidential election. A malcontent, who formerly worked in the Justice Department’s Civil Right’s Division, claims that the Obama Administration and African American Attorney General Eric Holder are going easy on black activist groups like the Panthers. Media Matters covered the issue pretty thoroughly this week.
In short, conservative media outlets have been aggressively promoting the charge by GOP activist J. Christian Adams that President Obama’s Justice Department engaged in racially charged “corruption” when it partially dismissed a case against members of the New Black Panther Party for allegedly engaging in voter intimidation outside of a Philadelphia polling center on Election Day in 2008.
As we have documented extensively, Adams should not be trusted. He is a long-time right-wing activist with extensive ties to the Bush-era politicization of the Justice Department. Adams himself has admitted that he lacks first-hand knowledge to support his accusations. Additionally, Adams’ charge that the DOJ’s action in the New Black Panther case shows unprecedented, racially motivated corruption is undermined by the fact that the Obama DOJ obtained judgment against one of the defendants, and that the Bush DOJ declined to pursue similar allegations against a group of Minutemen — one of whom was carrying a gun — in 2006.
Even the Republican vice chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights called the New Black Panthers case “very small potatoes” and said an investigation into the DOJ’s decision is full of “overheated rhetoric filled with insinuations and unsubstantiated charges.”
And yet again, the fact that this is a completely manufactured scandal didn’t stop conservative media figures from engaging in one of their time-honored traditions: attempting to obscure their own problems with race by accusing others of racism.
Radio host Jim Quinn — who once told “race-baiting” African-American “ingrates” to “get on your knees” and “kiss the American dirt” because slavery brought them to the U.S. — hyped the New Black Panther story by calling the civil rights community “race-baiting poverty pimps.”
Rush Limbaugh — who earlier this week announced that if Obama wasn’t black he’d be a “tour guide in Honolulu” and claimed Obama is using the office of the presidency to seek “payback” for the country’s history of racism — forwarded Adams’ charge that the case was dropped because of racially charged corruption.
Beck, who infamously called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep seated hatred for white people or the white culture,” declared that the Obama administration is “full” of “people that will excuse” the “hatred” of the New Black Panthers. He also relied on falsehoods to try to connect Obama to the New Black Panthers, and claimed today that the New Black Panthers are part of Obama’s “army of thugs.”
If the U.S. Justice Department has adopted a policy of not prosecuting black activists, word of the change has not reached Louisiana. On the west bank of the Mississippi River,African American mayors of Port Allen, New Roads and White Castle were indicted earlier this month, along with a black police chief. A fourth African American mayor is under investigation in the same case. Unless the Justice Department has changed its procedures, the Public Integrity Division in Washington reviews cases involving public officials prior to indictments. Regardless, the recent arrests tends to dispute claims of racial favortism.
Sadly, I sometimes get the feeling that our country is on the verge of returning to the bad old days of race divisions. The NAACP adopted a resolution this week condemning the tea party movement for providing aid and comfort to bigots. If some of the demonstrations are an indications, white hate groups have found a place to spew their hatred. Granted, they are a small minority. But their very presence undermines the legitimacy of the tea party.
I would hope the country had reached a point that resolutions such as the one adopted by the NAACP were unnecessary. But the election of Barack Obama has triggered the worst in many people. And disgracefully, they are being cheered on by the Fox “News,” its pundits and anchors, and scores of right-wing characters polluting the nation’s airwaves.
Racism is still alive in America. If you don’t believe it, look up the definition of the word in your dictionary.
My memoir, Odyssey of a Derelict Gunslinger, is available at amazon.com and independent bookstores. It offers much more than $19.99 worth of laughs. The book is an account of my illustrious (I choose the adjectives) career.
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