Chris Hayes made an inadvertent admission about the morality of abortion on his All In program on MSNBC on Monday. Hayes contended that in the case of Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson, "It's very hard to get through an interview in which he doesn't compare something either to the Third Reich and Hitler or abortion, right? — the sort of, like, touchstones of human evil." The liberal host later claimed that he "meant slavery, clearly," after someone pointed out the line to him on Twitter.
Culture/Society
By Michael McKinney | October 27, 2015 | 12:39 PM EDT
In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, the cover story by Daniel Engber focused on the recent criminal proceedings involving Anna Stubblefield. Stubblefield has been charged of sexually assaulting a African-American disabled man. Anna Stubblefield, a philosophy professor at Rutgers, was accused of assaulting D.J., a severely disabled man she assisted with “facilitated communication.”
By Tom Johnson | October 27, 2015 | 10:44 AM EDT
It’s a tall order for a black politician to become popular with “the de facto largest white identity organization in the United States,” but DeVega argues that Carson has pulled it off by “betray[ing] the Black Freedom Struggle and assault[ing] the truth in all its forms.” (As you probably assumed, “white identity organization” is DeVega’s description of the Republican party.)
In a Salon article, DeVega attacked Carson for his recent remarks likening abortion to slavery: “Ben Carson and the other conservatives who want to limit women’s reproductive rights and control over their own bodies have more in common with the whites who ran the slave labor rape and charnel camps of the American South than they do with Abolitionists such as John Brown, Harriet Tubman, Frederick Douglass, David Walker, Sojourner Truth, or William Lloyd Garrison.” (Italics in original.)
By Curtis Houck | October 26, 2015 | 6:21 PM EDT
On Saturday, MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry scolded guest Alfonso Aguilar for using the term “hard worker” because it’s demeaning to slaves and working women: "I want us to be super careful when we use the language 'hard worker,' because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like."
By Karen Townsend | October 26, 2015 | 5:15 PM EDT
With this month’s passage in California of the “End of Life Option Act,” CBS’s latest episode of The Good Wife paints a perfect picture of liberal support for physician-assisted suicide. Drawing a line in the sand, the show’s writers point to the “Catholic and conservative lobbies” as the foes of freedom – the freedom of doctors to kill their patients.
By Erin Aitcheson | October 26, 2015 | 12:50 PM EDT
When you mess with the P.C. police you’re bound to get your privilege checked. Which is exactly what happened to former James Bond actor Roger Moore. The View to a Kill star recently became a target of the P.C. police when he commented 007 should be portrayed only as a handsome, suave, masculine, straight man … you know, as the character was originally created by Ian Fleming.
Amanda Marcotte: Paul Ryan Thinks Family Life Should Be ‘Reserved For the Elite and the Rest of Us Can Go Hang’
By Tom Johnson | October 24, 2015 | 9:49 PM EDT After Paul Ryan vowed that he wouldn’t reduce time spent with his family even if he became Speaker of the House, quite a few liberals accused the Wisconsin congressman of hypocrisy given that he has, in the words of one feminist site, “spent much of his political career fighting laws that promote realistic work-life balance for parents.”
Lefty pundit Marcotte believes that Ryan is even worse than a hypocrite. In a Thursday column for Salon, Marcotte asserted that Ryan’s “family time” stand “is a perfect distillation of the Ayn Rand-constructed worldview he has, where all the goodies are reserved for the elite and the rest of us can go hang…Increasingly, the Republican worldview is one where even basic things like love, connection, and other basic human needs are being reclassified as privileges that should only be available to the wealthy.”
By Matthew Balan | October 22, 2015 | 5:50 PM EDT
On Thursday, the Washington Post's Anthony Faiola spun the latest synod of Catholic bishops at the Vatican as a "theological slugfest" between two main factions of the Catholic hierarchy: the "liberal"/"progressive" backers of "Pope Francis's vision for a more inclusive church," versus a "backlash" from "conservatives/"traditionalists." Faiola even hyped how some unnamed "moderate conservatives" at the meeting were "shocked" by the "vehemence of the backlash," which supposedly pointed to a "rise of a Tea Party-like faction of bishops within the hierarchy."
By Kristine Marsh | October 22, 2015 | 1:08 PM EDT
If a man dares to answer a question about feminism, he better be prepared for the backlash if he doesn’t give the acceptable response. But since it seems like even feminists don’t know what they want men to say, good luck to him figuring out what that acceptable answer is.
Even in liberal Hollywood. Take for example The Avengers actor Jeremy Renner’s response to the question, “Would he be willing to negotiate alongside his female co-stars on future projects?” asked by Business Insider UK, Oct.20 during a press conference.
By Tom Johnson | October 20, 2015 | 9:54 PM EDT
Daily Kos writer Denise Oliver-Velez has two plans related to New York state’s primary election next April: vote for Democrats, and give Ben Carson the finger. Carson won’t see it, but that’s not the point -- it’s a therapeutic gesture.
In a Sunday screed, Oliver-Velez, an adjunct professor of anthropology and women’s studies at SUNY New Paltz, charged that Carson “has become the antithesis of the civil rights struggle, directly attacking the gains we have made and are fighting to hold onto…He is not the first black man or woman used by those whose foot is on our necks to co-sign their ideology and practices, and he won't be the last. Nor is he the first to profit from it.”
By Matthew Balan | October 20, 2015 | 6:49 PM EDT
Carol Costello took aim at Carly Fiorina on Tuesday's CNN Newsroom over her attack on Planned Parenthood at the last Republican presidential debate. Costello asserted that "some say Carly Fiorina can't figure out how to define feminism for a GOP audience...she effectively stood up for women everywhere with that great comeback to Donald Trump. But then, she went to war with Planned Parenthood...I understand she's pro-life, but she used a falsehood out of that video to do it."
By Matthew Balan | October 20, 2015 | 3:41 PM EDT
On Monday's Anderson Cooper 360, CNN's Drew Griffin hounded David Daleiden of the Center for Medical Progress over his insertion of outside footage into his undercover videos that targeted Planned Parenthood's sale of aborted babies' organs and tissue. Griffin underlined to Daleiden that "the problem people are having is, that this is not an aborted child...that does seem very deceptive to me." He also played up that "the confusion of David Daleiden's sloppy edits has made its way into the Republican presidential race."