Although Alex Wagner has donned new glasses for her news show Now, the liberal journalist seems unable to look beyond MSNBC’s favorite response to any Republican: bringing up race. On the July 31 edition, Wagner played a clip of Ari Melber’s July 30 interview with Senators Rand Paul and Cory Booker on their new drug law reform initiative the REDEEM Act – the Record Expungement Designed to ENhance Employment Act – and then asked the co-host of The Cycle why Paul and Booker were so “reticent to take up” the issue of “racial disparities inherent in our criminal justice system” and “plumb further depths of it.”
Even though the Senators were pushing a bipartisan bill on the traditionally liberal cause of criminal justice reform, Melber and Wagner were unable to resist weaseling race into the discussion, seemingly unhappy that both politicians were unwilling to play the race game. [See video below. Click here for MP3 audio]
Rand Paul
Oh, how the pathetic progs have fallen.
Earlier today, the Hollywood Reporter told readers that MSNBC had a horrible July rating period. For the four weeks ended July 27, the self-described "lean forward" network saw "its total day average among the news demo of adults 25-54" drop by "33 percent from July 2013," causing it come in "below HLN by 16,000 viewers for No. 4 status":
This afternoon on MSNBC's The Cycle co-host Ari Melber conducted a live interview with liberal Democratic Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.) and libertarian-conservative Republican Sen. Rand Paul (Ky.) about their bipartisan Redeem Act proposal -- Redeem standing for Record Expungement Designed to ENhance EMployment.
Unfortunately for viewers, Melber insisted on playing the Lean Forward's favorite hand, flopping out the race card twice: by suggesting Sen. Paul once opposed the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the second by pressing Sen. Booker to accept the left-wing premise that the nation's drug laws were intentionally racist by design [LISTEN to MP3 audio here; video follows page break].
The women of The View are sick and tired of people picking on Hillary Clinton. On Thursday’s episode the entire cast of Whoopi Goldberg, Jenny McCarthy, Sherri Shepherd and guest host Roseanne Barr all took turns defending the former First Lady from Monica Lewinsky, Rand Paul and Vladimir Putin.
Whoopi Goldberg, setting up the segment, noted Clinton was asked about Lewinsky in her People magazine interview and then complained that Clinton can’t get away from the Lewinsky questions: (video after the jump)
Appearing as a guest on the Saturday edition of Disrupt with Karen Finney on MSNBC, former NBC News man and New York Times columnist Bob Herbert asserted that Republicans are "hostile to the interests of African-Americans" and suggested that Kentucky Senator Rand Paul would not have a problem with a hotel or restaurant barring black customers from entering.
Herbert's comments came during a discussion of Senator Paul's recent criticism of GOP efforts to change voting laws. [See video below.]
MSNBC efforts to link conservatives to Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy continued on Wednesday, May 7, as All In host Chris Hayes suggested that endorsing Tea Party candidates was "basically one step away from endorsing Cliven Bundy." [See video below.]
In a Saturday afternoon tweet, former Bill Clinton campaign strategist and former CNN talking head Paul Begala showed that he's quite a confused guy concerning Los Angeles Clippers' owner Donald Sterling. Sterling, as noted previously (here and here), has been caught on tape chiding a person who is apparently his girlfriend for "taking pictures with minorities" and "associating with black people." Sterling sees her as a "delicate" "Latina or white girl" who shouldn't "associate with black people." He asks her not to bring black people, including NBA legend Magic Johnson, to games.
Given these developments, Begala gave a "friendly tip" to several conservatives and Republicans, specifically talk radio's Sean Hannity and GOP Senators Rand Paul and Ted Cruz. In the process, he betrayed a likely need to broaden his media consumption habits beyond the liberal bubble. Begala's tweet follows the jump:
Digby is far from the biggest name in the left-wing blogosphere, but she's one of its most influential figures. Lefty bloggers often introduce links to posts on her site, Hullabaloo, with the phrase "what Digby said" (it's sort of their equivalent of "megadittoes").
On Monday morning, Digby published a piece in a higher-profile outlet, the liberal online magazine Salon, in which she contended that because Ted Cruz "has his finger on the pulse" of evangelical conservatives, he has a far better shot at the 2016 GOP nomination than does Rand Paul, even though Paul, Digby opined, should have no problem pulling in the racist voters that are (allegedly) so common on the right.
Media Research Center President Brent Bozell and Senator Rand Paul on Tuesday participated in a question and answer session to promote the launch of MRC Latino. Appearing at the Newseum in Washington D.C., Bozell and Paul discussed the state of Hispanic journalism and took questions on bias, the future of the Republican Party and other topics.
On the subject of the immigration issue, Paul opined, "Part of where I think there is a bias on reporting on the immigration issue is that the whole thing is that the Democrats have proposed comprehensive and it's either that you take that or you're against immigration reform." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Senator Rand Paul appeared at the launch of MRC Latino in Washington D.C., Tuesday, to discuss the state of Hispanic media and what conservatives can do in response. Appearing at the Newseum with MRC Latino Director Ken Oliver-Mendez, Rand Paul asserted, "There is bias in the media. It is good that we monitor and check the media...Part of overcoming that is showing up, but part of that is also having something to say." [See video below. MP3 audio here.]
Discussing Latinos and his own Republican Party, Paul insisted, "I think that what's happened is that there is not the perception of empathy coming from the Republican Party, that we care about where they are coming from and we care about what their problems are." The Kentucky Senator insisted, "Are there many in the Latino community who go to church and believe in traditional values and are conservative? Yes. Maybe half. Maybe 60 percent."
On Tuesday morning, the Media Research Center unveiled its latest arm, MRC Latino, with a symposium in Washington, DC on imbalance and unfairness in Hispanic media, beginning with Univision and Telemundo, introduced with remarks by Sen. Rand Paul. It's time for conservatives to participate more fully in Hispanic media, and for those outlets to present both sides of the nation's most important debates.
MRC Latino director Ken Oliver-Méndez released the findings of a new report called “Hispanic Media in the Balance” (written with MRC research director Rich Noyes) that assesses how much national Spanish-language newscasts on American TV tilt to the left. Take a peek at the summary:
On Thursday’s PoliticsNation on MSNBC, host Al Sharpton was irritated that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) dared to suggest that President Obama should be more concerned about NSA spying because of our country’s history of civil rights leaders being spied upon. Sharpton thundered, “[W]ho is Rand Paul to make this point? This is a cynical use of race from some on the right.”
It was “cynical,” according to Sharpton, because some Republicans have done the opposite of Paul and criticized Obama when he does talk about race. But who is Al Sharpton to accuse someone else of the cynical use of race? The reverend has built his career by relentlessly exploiting racial issues.