As NewsBusters previously reported, Stevie Wonder announced last Monday that in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict, he was boycotting Florida due to the state's Stand Your Ground law.
According to April Ryan, White House correspondent for American Urban Radio Networks, top stars such as Jay Z, Kanye West, Madonna, and the Rolling Stones have joined Wonder's boycott.
During his famous “I Have a Dream” speech on Aug. 28, 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. declared that he wanted people to “live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
Almost 50 years later, that dream is still a long way off, judging from the clash on Saturday in which CNN Newsroom's black host Don Lemon told conservative white guest Ben Ferguson that because he doesn't “live as a black man,” he can't understand what people of that race are experiencing. Doesn't that also mean that non-conservatives cannot fully understand and be fair to conservatives? Read on for more.
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.
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":