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.
In an almost completely expected decision, the Department of Justice yesterday announced that it "found insufficient evidence to pursue federal criminal civil rights charges against George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, 2012."
In reporting on the announcement, Jennifer Kay and Eric Tucker at the Associated Press were predictably selective in recounting the details of the case while ignoring or downplaying others.
MSNBC’s Chris Hayes took about a minute and a half out of his show All In on Thursday night in between guests to give his thoughts on the recent killing of three Muslim students in North Carolina and, naturally, he brought their minority status into the picture by proclaiming their deaths to be a “galvanizing” “Trayvon Martin moment” and “Michael Brown moment for Muslim-Americans.”
Fusion/Univision anchor Jorge Ramos interviewed President Obama on Tuesdayand spent the interview flaunting his liberal beliefs by constantly hitting the President from the far left on a wide range of issues, including race.
After discussing the release of the so-called CIA “torture” report by Senate Democrats, President Obama was asked if he got “angry with” the belief that “many people expected you, probably, to do more on race relations, dealing with white privilege.”
The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley used the conclusion of its Tuesday night broadcast to lament and highlight the instances in which President Barack Obama has commented on the issue of race and how the events in Ferguson, Missouri have “tested once more” the President who has “willingly shouldered the burden of a nation fractured along racial lines” despite his “unrealistic expectations of healing” these divisions.
You'd think Joe Scarborough would have learned by now to avoid inflammatory statements about the Trayvon Martin case. Back when that case first broke, Scarborough immediately branded George Zimmerman a "murderer," an accusation for which he later declined to apologize because he was not currently in office.
But there was Scarborough at it again this morning. On today's Morning Joe, he sought to contrast the Michael Brown case with that of Trayvon Martin. In Ferguson, "we don't know the evidence," said Joe. Whereas in the Trayvon Martin case, said Scarborough, "you had a guy chase a guy around a neighborhood and shoot him because he was black."
Soon after 18-year-old Michael Brown was gunned down by an unidentified policeman on Sunday afternoon in Ferguson, Mo., a suburb of St. Louis, Rev. Al Sharpton arrived on the scene to “speak up for the family of the victim” and spend a great deal of time in the spotlight.
However, the host of MSNBC's weekday afternoon PoliticsNation program quickly became the target of several critics, one of whom accused him of being a publicity-seeking “coon.” Sharpton shot back that “using a racial term tells you more about him than me.”
Along with hosting MSNBC's weekday PoliticsNation program, Al Sharpton plays many roles, ranging from community activist to harsh critic of his opponents, whom he regularly refers to in such emotion-charged terms as "white interlopers" and "Greek homos."
However, when Jason Mattera -- publisher of the Daily Surge website -- confronted Sharpton earlier this month and asked if he “should be banned from TV for the racist stuff you've said over the years,” the talkative politician tried to avoid admitting he ever used such epithets and then tried to dismiss one remark because it was directed at just one Jewish businessman.
If there was anyone in America who recklessly rushed to prematurely proclaim a position on George Zimmerman, it was Joe Scarborough. Before Zimmerman had even been arrested, at a time when even Al Sharpton was being relatively cautious with his language, Scarborough used his Morning Joe platform to brand Zimmerman a "murderer."
But there was Scarborough on today's show with the gall to condemn conservatives who "raced blindly" to embrace Zimmerman. View the video after the jump.
Just when you thought it was finally safe to watch news programs and be free of any references to slain black teenager Trayvon Martin, along comes Monday's edition of Ronan Farrow Daily in which the MSNBC host and a legal analyst linked Martin's tragic life and a new study to claim he was a victim of a system that punishes African-American preschool children three times more often than their Caucasian counterparts.
After Farrow called the report “shocking, and I really mean this, shocking,” guest Lisa Bloom declared that “Martin was suspended three times” during preschool for minor violations, which makes him “a perfect example, unfortunately, very sadly, of this trend.”
As NewsBusters previously reported, film director Spike Lee last March retweeted a posting supposedly including the address of George Zimmerman.
Now the couple who actually reside at that address are suing Lee.
As NewsBusters reported Sunday, the national news media outside of local New York outlets has totally ignored a New York man becoming brain dead as the result of an unprovoked attack by a man that shouted "I hate white people."
The victim, 62-year-old Jeffrey Babbitt, died Monday.
Will media report it now?