What a surprise -- one of President Obama's biggest critics from way over on the left is also no big fan of his administration's main apologists in media, MSNBC.
Author, activist and Princeton professor Cornel West let loose with some pointed criticism of the cable network on his weekend radio show with Tavis Smiley. (Audio after the jump).
As MSNBC's Melissa Harris-Perry made multiple appearances on Friday's MSNBC evening shows to discuss President Obama's surprise statement on the George Zimmerman acquittal, the MSNBC host declared that, after Obama became President, "every move that he made became where he ended up carrying the burden of race," during her appearance on All in with Chris Hayes.
A couple of hours earlier, as she appeared on PoliticsNation, Harris-Perry drew a parallel to the views of former confederates in the 1870s and those in modern times who dismiss liberal preocupation with racial issues. Harris-Perry:
It seems to me that almost every time President Obama talks publicly about race, he stirs things up rather than calms them down. Whether intentional or not, it's unfortunate — and damaging.
It's difficult to express opinions on race that don't conform to the politically correct narrative, because race baiters are always lying in wait to denounce as a bigot anyone who dissents from their assessment. Indeed, many leftists who call for a national dialogue on race routinely brand conservatives as racists — merely because they are conservative — even when they remain silent on racially sensitive issues.
As NewsBusters has been reporting, it's been absolutely sick-making watching Obama-loving media members gush and fawn over the President's speech Friday concerning race, the George Zimmerman verdict, and Florida's Stand Your Ground law.
But will they report to the American people that as an Illinois state senator in 2004, Obama co-sponsored and voted for legislation strengthening his state's Stand Your Ground law?
Douglas Brinkley predictably gushed over President Obama on Saturday's CBS This Morning, and hailed the Democrat's Friday speech on the not guilty verdict in the George Zimmerman trial: "It certainly was historic....I think it elevated the Trayvon Martin story, really, to the annals of DayGlo, top-tier history....it was quite memorable." Brinkley later heralded the President as a "constant grief counselor."
Substitute anchors Maurice DuBois and Vinita Nair also gushed over the address, and seconded the liberal historian's praise for Obama: "This was really a historic speech, in the sense that he also got very personal and said, this could have been me 35 years ago." [audio available here; video below the jump]
As he guest hosted the Friday, July 19, All In show, MSNBC's Ezra Klein -- also of the Washington Post -- stuck by the liberal line that all of the blame for the Trayvon Martin shooting lies on George Zimmerman, primarily because the neighborhood watchman followed Martin, without regard to who might have thrown the first punch.
Ignoring the absence of any eyewitnesses to confirm which party struck first, or even the witness who saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, Klein asserted that Martin "was not the violent one that night."
Klein began his biased analysis:
One would think that a lawyer like Joe Scarborough would refrain himself from making irresponsible statements surrounding the Trayvon Martin case. Unfortunately, it appears as though MSNBC’s pseudo-conservative is incapable of being reasonable, suggesting that in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death, white potheads are fair game for murder.
Appearing on the July 22 Morning Joe, Scarborough ranted against what he called, “really racially intolerant comments that we've been hearing from across the political spectrum” which to most rational people would bring to mind Scarborough's colleague Al Sharpton. Instead, Scarborough was referring to Sean Hannity. [See video after jump. MP3 audio here.]
Update, July 24: In audio found here at my home blog, Zimmerman attorney Mark O'Mara, in a Tuesday discussion with New York talk show host Steve Malzberg, confirmed the accuracy of the "iced tea myth"-related details in this post and in Bill Whittle's video.
Among the more outrageous aspects of the press's negligent coverage of the circumstances surrounding the Trayvon Martin-George Zimmerman confrontation is its insistence on describing Martin as having bought "Skittles and iced tea" at a convenience store roughly 40 minutes before Zimmerman, as a neighborhood watch volunteer, spotted him.
The drink was not "iced tea." It has been known that the drink wasn't iced tea for well over a year. Yet at least seven press reports since the verdict, up to and including coverage of this past weekend's demonstrations (examples here and here, at the Associated Press the day after the verdict; here; here; here; here; and here), identified "iced tea" as what Martin purchased. The actual identity of the non-caffeinated drink, AriZona Watermelon Fruit Juice Cocktail -- which appears not to contain a single drop of tea, and which the company has in its "juice drinks" category -- is extremely significant, as will be explained after the jump.
The TalkLeft blog noted last night that the American Civil Liberties Union, after encouraging U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to pursue civil rights charges against George Zimmerman the day after he was acquitted in the death of Trayvon Martin, reversed course just four days later.
Though it's no longer available at its national web site, the Associated Press ran the organization's press release. Various searches at the AP's national web site indicate that there has been no coverage of the organization's reversal. Several center-right blogs have noted the reversal, but no one in the establishment press besides Josh Gerstein at the Politico, where stories the rest of the establishment press would prefer to ignore tend to go and all too often die, has noted it. So did the organization have a change of heart? Or did it attempt to manipulate its media exposure with a politically correct initial press release followed by a legally and constitutionally correct reversal it hopes few will notice?
On Sunday, NewsBusters wondered how much heat PBS's Tavis Smiley would get for making negative comments about Barack Obama.
The answer came quickly when MSNBC's Toure Neblett tweeted, "Tavis gets value out of being the Prez of the Black Haters of Obama Club. Example: without that he wouldn't have been on MeetThePress today":
As NewsBusters has been reporting, the Obama-loving media's gushing and fawning over the President's address Friday concerning race and the George Zimmerman verdict has been nothing less than sick-making.
Potentially the most vomitous remark yet came from New York Times columnist David Brooks who actually said on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday - with a straight face, no less! - it "was a symphony" (video follows with transcript and commentary):
Jay-Z and Justin Timberlake dedicated a song to Trayvon Martin during their concert at Yankee Stadium Friday night.
In a video captured by a member of the audience, as the couple began their last song of the evening - "Forever Young" - Jay-Z yelled to the crowd, "Everybody put a cell phone and light it up. Let's light the sky for Trayvon Martin tonight in here":