D. Watkins has written at Salon.com for about 1-1/2 years.
In his previous columns, he has shown that he fits right in with the "white privilege and oppression of blacks explains everything" crowd. Friday (HT Twitchy), he went into uncharted territory, seriously suggesting that no American should be able to own a gun until they "know the pain of getting hit" (bolds are mine):
Rupert Murdoch is in a pickle, and the famously abrasive lefty writer Taibbi is loving every minute of it. In a Tuesday article for Rolling Stone, Taibbi portrays Murdoch as “desperate… because he senses his beloved audience of idiots” abandoning Fox News in favor of Donald Trump, “a onetime Fox favorite who is fast becoming the network's archenemy.”
Taibbi argues that Fox News must routinely dumb itself down in order to stay popular; Murdoch and Roger Ailes, he writes, “know they've spent a generation building an audience of morons. Their business model depends on morons; morons are the raw materials of their industry, the way Budweiser is in the hops business…[But] you have to keep upping the ante to make it work. Trump is…going to places now that make even Rupert Murdoch nervous.”
The new Scandal episode, titled “Dog-Whistle Politics,” began as a reenactment of the Monica Lewinsky scandal. It had previously been revealed to the press that main character Olivia Pope was having an affair with the president and the episode has all the same elements -- attacks from the White House on the mistress’s reputation, a First Lady-turned-senator with her eyes set on taking the Oval Office someday, and talks of impeachment -- that we became all too familiar with from 20 years ago. But then, when Marcus Walker is hired to join the Olivia Pope and Associates crisis and public relations firm, the episode takes a racial turn.
Law and Order: SVU is known for its unrepentant liberalism. The show also prides itself on pulling plots directly from the headlines, especially if the show’s producers think they can use the storyline to push a left-wing narrative. Tonight’s episode, titled “Community Policing,” continued the show’s established tradition, diving headlong into the #BlackLivesMatter controversy, depicting New York City Police officers shooting an “unarmed black college student who happens to match the description of the suspect” in the investigation of the brutal rape of a 12-year-old and her mother.
ABC's Fresh Off the Boat is a sitcom about a Taiwanese family grateful to be making the most of the opportunity American life has to offer. At least the mom and dad appreciate the U.S., the grandmother hasn't bothered to learn English and is apparently racist. In this scene, Grandma Huang is in an argument with her daughter-in-law Jessica about their relationship and money that Jessica wants to borrow to invest in a house. When Jessica tries to argue that she has been generously taking care of her mother-in-law while their white neighbor Honey doesn't even know where her own mother is, Grandma makes the valid point that it is her obligation, but then lets loose with a racist!
New York Times reporter Jada Smith celebrated "Justice or Else," an ominously named protest marking the 20th anniversary of the "Million Man March," led by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, the preacher notorious for his anti-Semitic and paranoid ravings: "Echoing Calls for Justice Of Million Man March, But Widening Audience." This year's version latched on to the harder-edged tone of the Black Lives Matter social media movement. But you wouldn't learn anything about organizer Farrakhan from Smith's adulatory treatment.
On Monday's All In on MSNBC, host Chris Hayes repeated the discredited claim that originated with a liberal blogger that House Majority Whip Steve Scalise spoke at a convention for the European-American Unity and Rights Organization -- founded by white supremacist David Duke -- in the congressman's home state of Louisiana in 2002.
Poor Gary Legum at Salon.com. How dare supporters of the right to keep and bear arms as clearly defined in the Constitution's Second Amendment push back against the gun control movement's cynical exploitation of Thursday's Roseburg, Oregon massacre?
Legum is outraged that "The right tells us (again) to ignore the elephant in the room." He must mean the fact that the area in question at Umpqua Community College was a "posted" gun-free zone with only unarmed security guards, right? Of course not. Legum is upset over Americans' "irrational attachment ... to weaponry" — so upset that he descended into profanity and name-calling that would likely end his career forever if he were a right-wing commentator.
Appearing as a guest on Wednesday's CNN Tonight, former New York Times columnist Frank Rich -- now of New York magazine -- accused GOP presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson of receiving support from a "racist, bigoted part of the Republican base," in the aftermath of Dr. Carson's comments opposing the election of a Muslim President. A bit later, he even accused GOP candidate Mike Huckabee of "bigotry" against homosexuals.
Jason Horowitz, one of the New York Times more colorful reporters, gave Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker a gleeful finger upon his departure from the Republican presidential race, suggesting Walker has advanced his career on racist appeals in "Dismal Finish Is a Fitting Result, Old Foes Say." Horowitz wrote on Tuesday: "Old political adversaries of Mr. Walker greeted his dour denouement as a fitting result for a politician who they say began and furthered his career here with a divisive style, a penchant for turning out conservative supporters rather than working with opponents, and tacit racial appeals in one of the nation’s most segregated cities. But the irony is that Mr. Walker was eclipsed by candidates who have ignited the Republican base with more overtly nativist and, their critics argue, racist appeals." Those "racist appeals"? Actually tough-on-crime proposals targeted at victims of crime in Milwaukee.
New York Times arts reporter Jennifer Schuessler wrote about an odd controversy in the poetry world -- a white poet, discouraged by multiple rejections, found success when he submitted under a Chinese-sounding pseudonym, even gaining a place in a "Best American Poetry" anthology and causing embarrassment to the editor and rancor among other poets for his "reactionary" use of "yellowface." Schuessler's account assumed the inherent righteousness of the angry liberal, multi-cultural position of hostility toward poet Michael Derrick Hudson.
The folks at the New York Times must believe not only that their reporters are entitled to inject their opinions into hard-news stories, but that they can also inject their own "facts." Oh, and they can change those facts at will over time to fit the circumstances.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg's Wednesday story about the city's $6.4 million settlement with the family of Freddie Gray appearing in Thursday's print edition is a perfect case in point. Stolberg recast events following Gray's death to claim that there was only one night of rioting, when there were clearly two — even though contemporaneous coverage at the Times itself identified two separate nights of riots.