Melissa Harris-Perry

MSNBC to Starbucks Baristas: Write That America Has Always Been Based on 'White Supremacy' on Coffee Cups
By Tom Blumer | March 22, 2015 | 10:45 PM EDT

Paging Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. Your "conversation about race" idea has hit a bit of a brick wall among those you seem to believe are on your side — unless your idea of a "conversation" is talking down to anyone who doesn't buy into the idea of "diversity" uber alles, or that this country's founding and history have been predominantly noble.

On Melissa Harris-Perry's show this weekend, the host resoundingly approved when a guy who said that his mission in life is to "get white people to talk about whiteness" suggested that baristas at Starbucks should write “White supremacy has been the organizing principle of America since it was founded” on customers' coffee cups.

Harris-Perry Guest: NCAA Tourney 'Organized Theft of Black Wealth'
By Mark Finkelstein | March 21, 2015 | 11:54 AM EDT

Bracket busted? How about a nice Marxist critique of the NCAA tournament? Call it the theory of surplus value in high-tops . . . 

On Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show today, David Zirin, sports guy at the far-left Nation mag, called the NCAA tournament nothing less than "the organized theft of black wealth."

MSNBC Logic: Neil Patrick Harris May Be Secretly Racist Somehow
By Scott Whitlock | March 2, 2015 | 11:48 AM EST

As left-wing as weekday MSNBC hosts can be, weekend MSNBC anchors wander off into the land of bizarre, humorless scolds. Anchor Melissa Harris-Perry on Saturday chided two celebrity liberals for possible bigotry and for not being liberal enough. After relating a comedy bit Neil Patrick Harris performed at last Sunday's Academy Awards, Harris-Perry lectured, " Not everyone appreciated the way that he did it." 

MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry: I Hope Trayvon ‘Whooped the Sh**’ Out of Zimmerman
By Tom Blumer | February 26, 2015 | 2:18 PM EST

While it's performing a long overdue housecleaning, MSNBC should point its broom in Melissa Harris-Perry's direction and sweep her off the network for her anti-democratic, violence-advocating rant earlier this week at Cornell University.

Among other things, Harris-Perry told her audience that George Zimmerman deserved whatever injuries he received at the hands of Trayvon Martin in the violent February 2012 confrontation which began with Martin pommeling Zimmerman and ended in Martin's death.

Planned Parenthood Names Two Black Female MSNBC Hosts ‘Dream Keepers’
By Melissa Mullins | February 14, 2015 | 6:34 AM EST

In recognition of Black History Month, Planned Parenthood is honoring 99 “extraordinary Black leaders” as the Top 99 Dream Keepers (99 being the number of years since the abortion conglomerate’s inception) because “they inspire us to break down barriers to opportunity posed by poverty, racism, and sexism.”   This year, the "distinguished" list included Melissa Harris-Perry and Joy Reid, both hosts on MSNBC, for their contributions in abortion storytelling.

Melissa Harris-Perry, host of her own eponymous weekend show on MSNBC, seems an obvious choice given her radical views on abortion.  After all, she once called a fertilized egg “this thing” in relation to “it” becoming a person, wore tampons as earrings on her show as a statement against the banning of late-term abortions, stated that “life begins when the parents feel like life begins,” and  recently compared an unborn baby to a cancerous tumor, or a limb that needed amputation. 

MSNBC’s Harris-Perry Asks Eric Holder To ‘Quack’ Like A Duck
By Jeffrey Meyer | February 9, 2015 | 11:33 AM EST

MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry sat down with outgoing Attorney General Eric Holder for an exclusive interview for Essence magazine that aired on Sunday morning and the MSNBC host eagerly gushed over his tenure at the Justice Department. Speaking to Holder, Harris-Perry played up how over at MSNBC “we call you the duck” because “we say you have a very sort of placid and even way of presenting, but you are just working for justice underneath." The MSNBC host proceeded to ask if he "would you quack for us?”

Lefty Sports Reporter Calls NFL ‘Brain Damage For Profit’
By Jeffrey Meyer | February 2, 2015 | 11:57 AM EST

On Sunday, MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry program previewed the upcoming Super Bowl with a panel of liberal commentators including notorious lefty Dave Zirin of the Nation magazine, to bash the sport of football. Speaking during a panel discussion, Zirin blasted the NFL and insisted that “if we lived in a sane world this sport would not exist. This is brain damage for profit, that's what it is. Science is not this sport's friend.”

Year-End Awards: The Ku Klux Con Job Award for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges
By Rich Noyes | December 25, 2014 | 11:55 AM EST

As we have all week, NewsBusters is reviewing the Media Research Center’s Best Notable Quotables of 2014, as a way to review the worst media bias of the year. Today, the Ku Klux Con Job Award for Smearing Conservatives with Phony Racism Charges.

Harris-Perry on 'Burn This B---- Down': Arson, Looting 'Not Necessarily Violence'
By Mark Finkelstein | December 6, 2014 | 12:41 PM EST

Next time you're assembling a criminal defense team, remember to forget Melissa Harris-Perry. On her MSNBC show today, MH-P commented on the news that authorities are considering charges against Michael Brown's stepfather Louis Head, who on the night the grand jury declined to indict, jumped on a car and implored the crowd "burn this mother------ down! Burn this b--ch down!" Numerous buildings were thereafter torched.

Argued Harris-Perry: "arson and looting . . . are not necessarily violence." She added that those crimes should bear a "legal difference" from violence against "bodies."   Even if you accept Harris-Perry's premise [I would argue that arson, which brings the real risk of endangering lives, is violent], so what?  Assault isn't as bad as murder, either.  That doesn't mean you don't prosecute the former, only that the punishment must fit the crime.

Lean Forward? Harris-Perry Guest Favors Prison Abolition, Tweets 'F--- The Police'
By Mark Finkelstein | October 11, 2014 | 12:43 PM EDT

Melissa Harris-Perry proudly portrays her MSNBC show as "Nerdland."  But has it devolved from a cozy academic coffee klatsch for lefties into something else?

To discuss the issue of relations between police and black Americans, with the backdrop of Ferguson and a shooting this week in St. Louis, Harris-Perry had as a member of her panel Mychal Denzel Smith. On the one hand, Denzel Smith would appear, as a writer for The Nation, to fit the Nerdland bill.  But a review of his Twitter feed reveals that two days ago Denzel Smith tweeted: 'F---.The.Police." And late last month he tweeted "I'm for prison abolition."

'Ridiculous' Spat: Harris-Perry Show Guest Claims US Soldiers 'Forced In' By Poverty
By Mark Finkelstein | September 13, 2014 | 2:02 PM EDT

Phyllis Bennis is a defender of Iran and its nuclear ambitions, and wants Israel wiped off the map, to be replaced by a single Palestinian state. So naturally she's a Melissa Harris-Perry fave.

Appearing yet again today on Harris-Perry's MSNBC show, Bennis put her radical views on display, arguing that many US soliders aren't truly volunteers, but are "forced in by poverty and lack of other opportunities."  "That's absolutely ridiculous," responded Iraq war veteran Earl Catagnus Jr. 

MSNBC Guests Deny 'Deep' Anti-Semitism in Middle East; Claim Only 'White Conservatives' Back Israel
By Matthew Balan | August 4, 2014 | 4:35 PM EDT

On MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry program on Saturday, Dean Obeidallah injected race into the debate inside the U.S. over the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict: "You saw a poll last week, young people 18 to 29: only 25 percent think it's justified what Israel is doing; 50 percent said, no. People of color, same numbers...It's really the Obama coalition versus white conservatives. That's the only group saying – the majority saying what Israel is doing is justified."

During the same panel discussion, American University's Hillary Mann Leverett made a very peculiar assertion about anti-Jewish sentiment in the Middle East – that from a historical perspective, European anti-Semitism was supposedly much worse than Islamic anti-Semitism: [MP3 audio available here; video below the jump]