Racism

Race-obsessed Hardball host Chris Matthews seems to have used the occasion of his February 11 interview with David Axelrod to puff up the former Obama campaign strategist as a gallant white liberal riding to the rescue of black Democratic politicians.

To understand the literary elite's simplistic grasp of politics, look to whom they get their opinions from: Veteran political contributor Elizabeth Drew, a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, explained the Republican takeover of the U.S. Senate for the Review's February issue under the headline: "The Republicans: Divided and Scary." And purist. And nativist. And racist....

Max Fisher writes that Obama’s comment was “so banal it could be an after-school special. That it has provoked national controversy goes to show that there is still a mainstream thread of thought in America that Islam is an inherently violent religion, that the world's 1.6 billion Muslims are somehow different, and that non-Muslims are superior human beings.”

In an interview with former Obama White House aide David Axelrod on Monday's NBC Today, co-host Savannah Guthrie tossed a softball on "whether racism animated some of the President's critics." She read an inflammatory quote from Axelrod's new book: "Some folks simply refused to accept the legitimacy of the first black president and are seriously discomforted by the growing diversity of our…

Esquire blogger Pierce alleges that right-wingers have turned the civil-rights movement “into a weapon against issues on which Dr. King surely would have come down on the progressive side,” and declares that the movement “no longer can be used as history's truncheon against the legitimate social, cultural, and political aspirations of the people who are its truest heirs.”

On Monday night, Comedy Central’s newest late-night comedy show, The Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, premiered as the replacement for the recently departed Stephen Colbert. The former Daily Show correspondent spent the entirety of his debut episode talking about race in America and even brought on Senator Cory Booker (D-N.J.) to ask him “do you feel like you're just a hoodie away from being face…

Arsalan Iftikhar made a bigoted attack on Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal on Monday's Now with Alex Wagner on MSNBC. Iftikhar asserted that the minority Republican politician was trying to make himself more white by hyping "no-go zones" in Europe: "He might be trying to scrub some of the brown off of his skin as he runs to the right – you know, in a Republican presidential exploratory bid."

MSNBC plays the race card 365 days a year, but on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, you can be sure they'll really ham it up. Witness MSNBC.com writer Jane Timm's pathetic attempt to bash the GOP as racist by bringing up decades-old votes on whether or not to make the civil-rights leader's birthday a federal holiday. "GOP haunted by anti-MLK Day votes," blares a teaser headline on the msnbc.com home…

Last week, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences released their nominations for the 87th Academy Awards and many have criticized the academy for shutting out the film “Selma” from the four biggest acting categories. With the so-called controversy over the film’s lack of nominations continuing, on Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources brought on actor Gbenga Akinnagbe, star of HBO’s “The Wire”…

Monday is Martin Luther King Day, a federal holiday signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1983, and on Sunday morning, ABC’s This Week decided it was the perfect opportunity to scold the Republican over his civil rights record. During the show’s weekly “powerhouse puzzler” segment, guest host Martha Raddatz asked the This Week panel “which president signed a law making MLK’s birthday a…

For more than three decades, international correspondent Jim Clancy reported the news and anchored several programs for the Cable News Network. That long-time record came to an abrupt end on Friday, when he left CNN more than a week after he got into an angry Twitter argument in which he claimed that people who disagree with him regarding Mohammed cartoons are “agents for Israel” and used a…

Denise Oliver-Velez argues that Love is merely “another brown face to shove in front of the cameras” as supposed proof that the Republican party cares about non-white people, but “she certainly isn't going to convince any black folks who aren't Teapublican patsies already.”

Soon after the nominations for the 87th Academy Awards were announced on Thursday morning, a torrent of hostile messages began filling social media websites with the concept that the movie about Martin Luther King, Jr., was overlooked in many categories because “the average Oscar voter is a 63-year-old white man.” Some tweeters even went so far as to claim the few accolades the movie received…

"'Selma' Snubbed" lamented the teaser headline on msnbc.com for Joseph Neese's Academy Awards nomination story. "Director Ava DuVernay doesn't make Oscar cut," complained the subheader. But in fact Selma was not completely "snubbed," garnering two nominations, including the top prize, Best Picture.