Racism

Fox News Emails Sound Like ‘White Supremacist Chat Room’ – Have They Ever Watched Fox News?

Posted by on April 26, 2019 at 12:39 pm. 3 Comments :

Donald Trump spoke at the annual convention for the National Rifle Association (NRA) on Friday. Despite the organization’s unrepentant support for terrorists and felons and spousal abusers having unfettered access to guns, Trump felt it was necessary to help prop up their sagging approval ratings (and his own) with hias Deplorable base.

Fox News, KKK

These are the same sort of cretins who attended the white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, VA, that Trump also defended as “very fine people.” In the aftermath of those repugnant remarks, Fox News struggled mightily to protect Trump from the fallout for having praised neo-Nazis. And apparently, they are still doing it. Trump is also still defending those remarks with new distortions of reality.

Friday morning it was revealed that an internal email exchange between some Fox News reporters devolved into a flagrantly pro-Trump brainstorming session. They were discussing how to respond to charges made by Joe Biden in his campaign announcement wherein he reminded people of Trump’s affection for torch-carrying racists.

The fact that they were brainstorming Trump defenses is bad enough. That isn’t the job of legitimate reporters. But their rationalization of such hatred makes matters worse. So much so that even one of the reporters in the email chain got fed up with what he was reading. After Fox’s Doug McKelway implied that Biden was lying, he drew this response from Fox News Radio’s Jon Decker:

“I really don’t understand the point you are making. Jarrod Kuhn was one of those individuals in Charlottesville holding a tiki torch while the mob chanted “Jews will not replace us. […] Your posts read like something you’d read on a White Supremacist chat room.”

While it’s admirable that Decker had the courage to forthrightly renounce McKelway and his other colleagues, there is a bigger problem that is left unchanged. It isn’t just that email thread that sounds like a “White Supremacist chat room.” It’s much of the programming on the air at Fox News. Tucker Carlson has become the voice of America’s white nationalists with nearly every show advancing their rhetoric and agenda. Laura Ingraham frequently launches brazenly racist diatribes, particularly against minority celebrities and sports figures. And the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends take every opportunity to smear politicians of color.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So if an email exchange sounds like a “White Supremacist chat room,” the Fox News Channel sounds like the Aryan Broadcasting Network. More of Fox’s reporters need to take a lesson from Decker and call out their racist confederates. The network is already suffering an exodus of advertisers who don’t want to be associated with such hate speech. Now the anchors and guests need to step up and denounce the racist culture that permeates Fox News. Will they have the courage to do publicly what Decker did in an email that he thought was private?

What White Nationalists? Tucker Carlson of Fox News Acts Like the Mob Denying There’s a Mafia

Posted by on April 12, 2019 at 2:25 pm. 1 Comments :

In the early and mid 20th century, there were organized crime syndicates that terrorized much of the country with extortion, robbery, and murder as tactics to gain control of businesses, communities, and wealth. It was a well-orchestrated collective of ruthless criminals who would go to any lengths to achieve their nefarious goals.

Fox News, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump

One of the favorite methods that the Mafia used to avoid accountability was to simply insist that there was no such thing as the Mafia. They would assert that they were legitimate businessmen engaging in legal free enterprise. Never mind all the bodies washing up along the shores of the Hudson River, or the storefronts that were engulfed in flames with resistant shopkeepers inside, or the cops driving Cadillacs they couldn’t reasonably explain how they paid for.

That’s the same tactic that Fox News is employing to pretend that there isn’t any such thing as white nationalism in America. And the host of Fox’s primetime White Nationalist Hour is the alt-right’s poster boy, Tucker Carlson. So it should come as no surprise that he spent much of his Thursday night program gaslighting his audience into believing that white nationalism was merely a hollow insult that lefties threw around, but that no such thing really existed in any significant numbers. Carlson asserted that nobody, including himself, even knows what the term means:

“You’ll notice that none of these dumb people pause, even for a second, to explain what a white nationalist is. You probably still don’t know. And, honestly, neither do we. And that’s because there are so very few of them in this country. There are probably about as many legitimate white nationalists in America as there are Russian spies. You could live your entire life here without running into a white nationalist.”

So let’s be clear. This is white nationalist Carlson denying that there is any such thing as white nationalism. Never mind all his blustering about the supremacy of European white culture, his lamenting of how oppressed white men are in America, and his hostility toward anyone else as “dirty and divisive.” Those comments have resulted in a mass exodus of his advertisers, despite his high ratings.

To be sure, Carlson is not alone. His Fox News colleagues, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro, and the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends, all agree with him. What’s more, Donald Trump has fully adopted this racist philosophy as well as the dishonest technique of pretending it doesn’t exist. Asked by reporters whether he thought white nationalists were a growing threat after the massacre in Christchurch, New Zealand, Trump said “I don’t really. I think it’s a very small group of people.”

So the circle is complete. The President of the United States is proclaiming to the world that white nationalism is fake news. And he got that news for his State TV partners at Fox. But for the record, the Southern Poverty Law Center has documented that “The number of hate groups operating across America rose to a record high – 1,020 – in 2018 … a 30 percent increase roughly coinciding with Trump’s campaign and presidency.” Nevertheless, according to Trump and Fox News, it’s no big deal and hardly merits a sideways glance. Got it? And there’s no such thing as the Mafia either.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Whiny Baby Trump Lashes Out at Spike Lee for Telling Oscar Viewers to ‘Do the Right Thing’

Posted by on February 25, 2019 at 12:08 pm. 2 Comments :

The 91st Academy Awards was broadcast on Sunday night to the millions of fans of the cinema and celebrities. But there was one viewer that wasn’t especially pleased with what he saw. Although the Oscars were aired on the eve of Trump’s trip to Vietnam for a second summit with his BFF (“We fell in love”) Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump wasn’t bothering to prepare. Instead, he was gathering rage at what he assumed was Hollywood liberals disparaging him.

Spike Lee, Donald Trump, Oscars

Perhaps the most notable incident of Trump projecting himself into the event involved Spike Lee’s acceptance speech (video below). He won the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for his film BlacKkKlansman. He concluded his remarks by saying:

“If we all connect with our ancestors we will have love and wisdom regained. We will regain our humanity. It will be a powerful moment. The 2020 presidential election is around the corner. Let’s all mobilize. Let’s all be on the right side of history. Make the moral choice between love versus hate. Let’s do the right thing.”

Notice that Lee never mentioned Trump by name. He was speaking about history, humanity, love, and morality. So naturally Trump took it as a insult directed squarely at him:

First of all, Trump’s swipe at Lee’s note reading is a peculiar line of attack for him. After all, he cannot speak coherently without his ever-present TelePrompter (or even with it). And when Trump goes off script, that’s when he usually commits his most idiotic and damaging gaffes. But Trump went further by calling Lee’s remarks a “racist hit on your President.” What part of Lee’s speech could possibly be characterized that way?

Finally, Trump rattled off his routine ego-boosting self-praise about what a god-send he has been for African-Americans. Never mind that nothing he’s done has contributed to the welfare of the black community. To the contrary, Trump has exacerbated hostilities and the rise of racist hate groups across the country.

Nevertheless, Trump personalized Lee’s inspiring comments and turned them into a perceived put-down. It’s impossible for Trump to see anything as not being about him. And whether it’s a holiday or a funeral, Trump can only view it in terms of how it affects him.

However, in this case he’s got a point. Because any reference to overtly racist behavior can easily be associated with Trump, the first president to receive an endorsement from a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (David Duke), and the full support of the Nazi website, Daily Stormer. And if you are ever asked to “do the right thing,” you can be confident that that really means to vote against Donald Trump.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Donald Trump’s Blatantly Racist Spin About a Poll of Veterans Cites Only the White Veterans

Posted by on December 30, 2018 at 11:23 am. 2 Comments :

At this point in the Era of Trump, it isn’t exactly breaking news when Donald Trump tells another lie. It’s really just the natural state of his psychosis to casually pervert the truth in all things great and small. He does it daily on his Twitter feed as well as his hostile encounters with the press. And in most cases the obvious falsehoods are easily spotted and debunked.

Donald Trump, Military Parade

However, every now and then Trump engages in a fit of dishonesty that is so outrageous it’s hard to fathom what’s going through his diseased mind – or if anything is going through it at all. And one of those fits occurred during his regularly scheduled Sunday morning tweetstorm. While languishing forlornly in the White House this holiday season, Trump found some rare solace in an Associated Press poll. So he blurted out on his Twitter machine that:

It’s generally understood that the military is more conservative than the population at large. Although some high profile leaders have been notably disgusted by Trump, including his ex-chief of staff Gen. John Kelly, who called Trump an idiot, and his ex-defense secretary Gen. James Mattis, whose letter of resignation made it clear that Trump is reckless and ignorant. Trump appointed both of these senior officers with glowing accolades, but eventually fired with them unseemly disrespect for their service.

But the problem with Trump’s citation of this poll is that he’s read it horribly wrong. The sixty-two percent figure that Trump cited is just related to border security, not his approval by veterans in this poll. That number is fifty-six percent. The number Trump quoted is, more interestingly, also his job approval by just white veterans. That’s a disturbing coincidence for someone who is so often associated with racists and racism. In all likelihood, this was deliberate on Trump’s part to imply that a larger level of support than he really has. After all, the opinions of his white followers are the only ones that mean anything to him. For the record, the poll shows that only twenty-two percent of African-Americans in the military approve of Trump. And of course, Trump got and twisted this info from his favorite Fox News program, Fox and Friends.

It’s also noteworthy that this poll questioned 115,000 people, of which only 4,000 were veterans. So the numbers reflecting that segment are tiny compared with the overall pool of respondents. And on that matter, Trump didn’t bother to mention the other results in this poll. For instance, overall, 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the job Trump is doing as president. And women, the fastest growing demographic group in the military, disapprove of Trump by fifty-eight percent. Only forty-eight percent of vets say that Trump “has the right temperament to serve as president.” Fifty-eight percent of all respondents say he has “tried to impede the Russia investigation.”

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

So as usual, Trump has flagrantly misrepresented reality in order to prop himself up. He has to distort the truth because otherwise there is little he can say that isn’t dreadfully negative about him. But this episode is worse than usual because Trump takes a number that is obviously a specific segment of the veterans community and he tries to pass it off as broader, across the board support. That’s the behavior of a sick and desperate loser who has nothing left but a fantasy world wherein he is universally adored.

HEY Trump Jr, Is Fox News Now Fake News Since They Nixed Daddy’s Racist Ad Too?

Posted by on November 5, 2018 at 1:35 pm. 2 Comments :

On last Saturday, Donald Trump, Jr posted a tweet that took CNN to task for declining to run a blatantly racist campaign ad for Daddy Trump. Lil’ Donnie wrote that “CNN refused to run this ad… I guess they only run fake news and won’t talk about real threats that don’t suit their agenda.”

Donald Trump Jr

Needless to say, the “real threats” to which he was referring were phony assertions that a “caravan” of poor and frightened Central American refugees were amassing to “invade” the United States to take your jobs and rape your daughters. But what Lil’ Trump was complaining about was the alleged media bias by CNN for refusing to accommodate the Racist-in-Chief by running the repulsive video. And his outrage was unambiguously expressed by condemning CNN as “fake” news with a presumably leftist agenda. But what will Trumpkin say now that Fox News has also banned the ad from both the Fox News and Fox Business networks? The announcement of this decision by Fox said that:

“Upon further review, Fox News pulled the ad yesterday and it will not appear on either Fox News Channel or Fox Business Network.”

This statement is something less than satisfying because it doesn’t bother to say what the “further review” uncovered that made the ad too objectionable to run. Also, Fox didn’t pull the ad until it had already aired fourteen times. But at least they eventually did the right thing and protected their audience from – well, from the rancid bigotry that their regular hosts disseminate every day anyway.

Trump was asked by reporters on Monday morning about the offensive ad and lied that he didn’t know anything about it. He literally tweeted it himself. Is he suffering from dementia? [Don’t bother answering that]. Elaborating, he said that:

“We have a lot of ads. They certainly are effective, based on the numbers that we’re seeing. … A lot of things are offensive. Your questions are offensive.”

So Trump is apparently conceding that he has a lot of offensive ads. But that’s alright as long as they are “effective” based on some uncorroborated (and probably fictitious) numbers. Then he goes on to play the child’s game of Rubber and Glue by calling the reporter’s questions offensive, without explaining why. Meanwhile, his child still hasn’t commented on the fact that their State TV affiliate (aka Fox News) banned the racist ad just like CNN did. I guess that news didn’t fit his wingnut, conspiracy theory agenda.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Crybaby Don Jr Whines That CNN Refused to Air a Flagrantly Racist Ad By Daddy Trump

Posted by on November 3, 2018 at 10:35 am. 3 Comments :

Apparently the crybaby gene is a dominant component of genetics. It was obviously passed on from Donald Trump to his pampered offspring who do nothing but complain about the awful fate they have suffered by being the spawn of a fake billionaire con man. The latest evidence of that genetic flaw trickling down in the Trump family is a sniveling tweet by Donnie Jr.

Donald Trump

Last Wednesday Trump posted a disgusting video on his Twitter account that accused Democrats of supporting the free access of a Mexican murderer, and others like him, to enter and reside in the U.S. It was the most brazen appeal to racism in a campaign ad since the infamous Willie Horton ad – a creation of the late Roger Ailes of Fox News. Trump received near universal condemnation for having posted the ad, even from many Republicans sickened by its barefaced bigotry.

Subsequently, a similarly repulsive ad was submitted by Trump’s campaign to CNN. The network properly declined to run it. And that act of integrity triggered Donnie Jr to run to his Twitter box and post this:

First of all, what mental sickness would cause someone to ask people to “enjoy” that clip of a nauseating killer? But more to the point, for the Trumpette to describe the contents of this ad as “real threats” demonstrates how far removed he is from reality. The main thrust of the ad is advance Trump’s fear mongering with regard to the refugees marching in Central America. It closes with a message to “Stop the Caravan” by voting Republican. But the “caravan” is at least a month away and is populated by frightened refugees – mostly women and children – fleeing violence and poverty. There is no proof that any villainous stereotypes like the one in Trump’s video are among the migrants.

What’s more, the murderer featured in the ad was actually released from custody by Trump’s pal, and pardoned felon, Sheriff Joe Arpaio. And he later re-entered the U.S. during the Bush administration. So if anything, this ad should be advocating voting for Democrats who had nothing to do with this sleazeball.

CNN appropriately declined to run the ad and said so in a direct response to Trump Jr. They called out the obvious and abhorrent racism in the ad and noted that they would not take dirty money to air it. Which raises the question as to whether Fox News was solicited to run this ad. If they were and refused, then why isn’t Donnie Jr whining about that? And if the ad wasn’t taken to Fox, then was this just a publicity stunt to malign CNN?

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Of course there is still the possibility that Fox News took the ad and is planning to run it prior to election day. Which would be entirely consistent with their racist editorial policy. Their hosts spew bigotry like this all day long, and they do it for free. Why wouldn’t they pocket some of Trump’s cash and profit from spreading more hatred and division?

Trump, Once Again, Blames the Victims for Not Having More Guns in Synagogues and Churches

Posted by on October 27, 2018 at 11:21 am. 6 Comments :

The Era of Trump continues to unfold with repeated incidents of violence and tragedy. And through it all, the President regards himself blameless for the horrors that take place on his watch. But what’s worse is that he has no plans to do anything about it except offer “thoughts and prayers” while denying any responsibility for his own hate-speech and the easy accessibility to deadly weapons.

Trump Charlotsville

On Saturday morning there was another mass shooting, this time in a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Law enforcement officials are reporting multiple fatalities and wounded. The suspect is in custody and is reported to have yelled that “All Jews must die,” prior to murdering innocent worshipers in cold blood.

Donald Trump spoke to reporters briefly on the matter as he left the White House Saturday morning. He was expected to make remarks about the shooting at the Pittsburgh synagogue. However, he opened with a promo for his speech later in the day at the Future Farmers of America conference. Naturally he had to put all of the attention on himself before addressing the tragic event.

When he got around to the shooting he said that “It’s a terrible, terrible thing that’s going on with hate in our country and all over the world.” It’s a surprisingly ironic comment coming from someone who is so personally responsible for that hate. But then he engaged in the following exchange with a reporter (video below):

Reporter: Mr. President, do you think you need to revisit gun laws?
Trump: Well, again, this has little to do with it. If you had protection inside, the results would have been far better. This is a dispute that will always exist, I suspect. But if they had some kind of protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a very much different situation. They didn’t.

First of all, Trump is either lying or is woefully uninformed about the facts. There actually was an armed guard in the synagogue. And three trained security guards were wounded by the shooter. This has been the case in a many of the mass shootings that occur in the U.S., but they rarely prevent the sickening loss of life. Guards are to be commended for their courage and commitment, but a shooter who arrives a semiautomatic assault weapon, and without warning, can cause a lot of damage before a defender can even get to the scene. Stopping people from getting weapons like those used in most of these incidents is a far better solution that cuts the off the rampage at its source. But Trump, and his cohorts in the NRA-captive Republican Party, refuse to even consider that option, despite the endless bloodshed.

More troubling is Trump’s routine assertion that the victims are to blame for their own murders because they weren’t armed to the teeth in their temple. And by being peaceful worshipers, Trump believes that they, not the murderer, bear responsibility for their deaths. Trump and his ilk believe that America needs to become an armed fortress where everyone is packing heat in the event they encounter a wrongdoer. That’s a nauseating vision of a violent, dystopian society that would only pile up more innocent bodies in our streets.

This is just another tragic event wherein a shooter with obvious ties to right-wing doctrine and bigotry has brought sorrow to innocent families. And our nation is burdened with a heartless president, who previously found common ground with similarly bigoted crackpots who chanted “Jews will not replace us,” as they marched through the streets of Charlottesville, North Carolina. That ended in tragedy as well, and Trump’s response was that “there are very fine people on both sides.” And that sort of dismissal of overt prejudice is what emboldens more murderous cretins like the one that just shot up this synagogue.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Racist Fox News Hosts Smear Democrat Stacey Abrams as Promoting an ‘MS-13 Blue Wave’

Posted by on October 14, 2018 at 4:04 pm. 2 Comments :

It really doesn’t take much to set off the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends when a Republican candidate is trouble. That’s the current state of the gubernatorial election in Georgia where Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams is in a dead heat with her GOP opponent Brian Kemp. This is a deep red state where Democrats aren’t supposed to win, so Fox News has bolted onto the scene to muck it up.

Fox News, Stacey Abrams

On Sunday morning’s episode of Fox and Friends (video below), the three co-hosts set out to malign Abrams, who would be the first African-American women governor in the U.S. But they had to manufacture a controversy by taking her comments out of context so they could align her with criminal gangs. Co-host Ed Henry began by saying:

“As if on cue, Stacey Abrams, who is the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in Georgia […] sounds like, she thinks at least, that that the Blue Wave is gonna include illegal immigrants voting.”

Then they run a video clip of Abrams saying:

“The thing is that the Blue Wave is African-Americans. It’s white, it’s Latino, it’s Asian-Pacific Islanders. It is made up of those who were told that they are not worthy of being here. It is comprised of those who are documented and undocumented.”

Coming out of the video, Henry says that “If you’re undocumented you’re not supposed to be able to vote.” Whereupon his co-host Pete Hegseth asks:

“What should we label it? Is it an illegal Blue Wave? An alien Blue Wave? If you’ve got criminal gangs coming across, is it an MS-13 Blue Wave?”

Really? First of all, it needs to noted that Abrams was not talking about voters. And nowhere in the clip that Fox played did she say that. She was talking about all of the people who can contribute to an awakening of progressive change in the country. That includes many people who don’t vote but care about the direction this nation takes. It includes students who are not yet eighteen, like the survivors of the Parkland massacre. It includes Dreamers who fulfill every criteria of citizenship except for the technicality that they are undocumented. And it includes the tens of thousands of citizens in Georgia that are being unlawfully removed from the voter rolls by a corrupt Republican secretary of state who happens to be Brian Kemp, Abrams’ opponent.

However, for Fox News to go so low as to associate Abrams with the MS-13 gang is way beyond the pale. As an aside, the MS-13 gang did not come across the border. It’s a home grown gang from southern California. Nevertheless, this proves that Fox News has a complete lack of integrity, honesty, and ethics. And it proves their intention to advance a racist theme that African-American candidates must be connected to criminal elements simply because of the color of their skin. It’s a theme that Fox’s audience will readily accept due to the priming they’ve had from years of watching Fox.

There is going to be a Blue Wave in November, and Fox News is going to have to live with it. Of course, they will lie their butts off and spread bigoted propaganda like they did here, but they can’t prevent the coming progressive tsunami by exposing how hateful and prejudiced they are. They are just going to make matters worse for themselves and the Republican Party they are shilling for as America becomes more diverse. And maybe Democrats and progressives should welcome any actions they take to destroy their own Deplorable right-wing.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Fox News Guest Dinesh D’Souza Honors the Humanitarian Slave Owners of the Old South

Posted by on October 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm. 3 Comments :

Leave it to Fox News to find the bright side of slave owners. While the rest of the civilized world condemns human trafficking, the “Curvy Couch” potatoes of Fox and Friends managed to produce a segment that highlighted the freedom loving Confederates on the old plantations of Dixie.

Fox News, Dinesh D'Souza

Co-host Steve Doocy interviewed one of Fox’s favorite shameless disseminators of flagrant lies, confessed felon Dinesh D’Souza. Earlier this year Donald Trump pardoned D’Souza for the federal crime that he had pleaded guilty to. The Fox segment began as an attempt to mock Democratic congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for what they asserted was a gaffe. It wasn’t. She tweeted that:

Ocasio-Cortez was replying to a tweet that noted that two recent presidents who lost the popular vote have put four justices on the Supreme Court. Doocy then asked D’Souza “Why does the Electoral College matter,” and “what do you think she was talking about?” D’Souza’s reply began by mansplaining what Ocasio-Cortez really meant (video below):

“Well, first of all, I think she’s confusing the Electoral College with the “three-fifths” laws. The three-fifths laws was about slavery, and it had to do with an argument between the North and the South over representation. Ironically, the North, which was the anti-slavery side, wanted blacks to count for zero because they wanted to reduce the representative power of the slave states. The South wanted blacks to count for a full person. So the three-fifths laws which was usually presented to show that the founders didn’t consider blacks to be fully human, doesn’t actually show that at all.”

D’Souza is almost right. The problem is that he leaves out the fact that the South only wanted to count slaves because it gave the region more clout in the federal government. Slaves would still be denied any rights and considered to be property. The South wanted it both ways: to own blacks like chattel, but count them to increase the political power of their white masters. Then D’Souza swung back around to the Electoral College:

“Now the Electoral College was a different matter. The Electoral College emerges out of this contest between the large states and the small states. Not an antiquated issue. We have that now. We have large states, we have small states. And if we had a system that gave power only to the large states, the small states would essentially be unrepresented. The whole point, remember, the core of our founding is the consent of the governed. So to create the union the founders needed the consent of the large states and the small states. The Electoral College is a part of that arithmetic.”

Once again, D’Souza os only partly correct. Much of the dispute between the large and small states was still a matter of north and south. The population of the North far exceeded that of the South. So Ocasio-Cortez was correct in associating the Electoral College with slavery. What’s more, D’Souza is wrong in stating that smaller states would be unrepresented without the Electoral College. Their representation in Congress would be identical. The only difference would be in presidential elections.

However, that difference has become a useless and undemocratic anachronism. Given the boundaryless mobility of the modern U.S., we should not still be electing the president by states, but rather by voters. There is no coherent reason why the tiny populations of Idaho or Wyoming should have a greater say in presidential elections than the vastly more numerous populations of California or Texas. And it’s fair to say that there are a lot of former residents of Idaho and Wyoming who now live in California and Texas. Should their votes be diluted simply because they moved?

Ocasio-Cortez is right to raise the issue of eliminating the outdated Electoral College. It should have been done long ago. Hopefully her colleagues in Congress join her in that initiative when she gets there in January. In the meantime, Fox News needs to stop hosting racists who talk down to women and demean them personally as incapable of grasping these issues. But then they would have hours and hours of dead air.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.

Bring Back Jim Crow? Tucker Carlson of Fox News Accidentally Admits He’s a Straight-Up Racist

Posted by on September 15, 2018 at 1:18 pm. 4 Comments :

The Senior Douchebag of Fox News, and host of Tucker Carlson Tonight, has been making news this week. In an “interview” with Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, Carlson was beaten to a pulp and exposed as an intellectual lightweight who has no grasp of facts or common sense. It was delicious to see him squirm and stutter.

Tucker Carlson Fox News

You would think that after such an embarrassing display, Carlson would try to rehabilitate his tattered reputation. You would be wrong. On Friday’s episode, Carlson hosted Univision anchor Enrique Acevedo for a discussion on immigration. Carlson began his inquisition by framing the entire debate as a measurement of the immigrant population of the country. His premise was that the more immigrants, the worse off the nation is. And he expressed a longing for the past, which he perceives as being more homogeneously white. It wasn’t. It’s just that the majority white population was more in control. But Carlson viewed that as better:

“When I was born in this country, the percentage of people who were living here, who were foreign-born, was under five percent. It’s now about fourteen percent. So that’s a three-fold increase. That’s a huge change – huge change – in less than fifty years. Is the country better or worse for that, would you say?”

Acevedo responded that the country is better off, as is the economy. Well, he tried to respond, but Carlson cut him off after about twelve seconds. Then, when Acevedo tried to inform Carlson that two-thirds of GDP growth since 2011 was due to immigration, he was interrupted again after twelve seconds. Does Carlson have an “interrupter clock”?.

The debate then shifted to the immigrants themselves, and whether they merited entry to America. Carlson argued that most immigrants were poor and undeserving of entry. You know, the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” He couldn’t comprehend the reality that even poor immigrants contribute to the country, either by filling jobs that Americans won’t do, or by rising up through hard work and innovation to found companies like Apple and Google.

Carlson then asserted that there is something undemocratic about current immigration policy because all the polls say that Americans want less of it. That, however, isn’t true. In fact, most polls show that broad majorities of Americans (75%) favor immigration in general, and are opposed to a border wall in particular.

But Carlson never lets facts get in the way of his rank bigotry. In the following exchange, Carlson let slip that he looks back longingly on a bygone era when white nationalists like himself reigned unencumbered by those pesky minorities demanding civil rights. Acevedo asked Carlson what period in the past he was advocating as superior to the present. Carlson replied:

Carlson: When I was born it was fine. It was a better country than it is now, in a lot of ways.
Acevedo: In what sense was it a better country? By what metric?
Carlson: It was a more cohesive country.
Acevedo: It was a less diverse country, maybe?
Carlson: No. It’s not about race. The middle-class was vibrant when I was born. It’s dying now. And [cutting him off] we’re out of time.

To the extent that the middle-class is less vibrant today, it’s due directly to the policies of Carlson’s Republican Party. Their agenda of tax cuts for the rich and regulation cuts for corporations is the single biggest factor in the shift of wealth from the middle-class to the top one percent. America’s economy is booming, but average Americans aren’t seeing any of the benefits. It’s a certainty that Carlson doesn’t want to roll that back.

As for his nostalgia, Carlson was born in 1969. That was just a few years after the Civil Rights Act was passed. The country was still unwinding the decades of Jim Crow laws that dominated most of the South. Martin Luther King was assassinated only one year prior and his work was far from over, as evidenced by his murder. There was one African-America senator, and only six members of the House. But that’s the wonderfully “cohesive” time that Carlson wishes America would return to. With this rhetoric it seems that he’s not even trying to disguise his racism anymore. And Fox News is apparently cool with that.

How Fox News Deceives and Controls Their Flock:
Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Cult of Ignorance.
Available now at Amazon.