KeepHip.com

This guy is just reading Republican talking points too. Not at all interesting - and way worse than Hannity.

His first guest is billionaire Lynn Tilton who tells the hardscrabble story of being a single mother having to make her own way in the world as an investment banker. (I'm not really being sarcastic here, this is presented as a "pulled herself up by her bootstraps story".) Then they rag on TARP, but never mention that Bush was responsible for that. Everything Obama did, however, gets pinned on the President by name.

They just ran a bit on a black Republican, Michel Faulkner, who's challenging Charlie Rangel. Rangel, represents Harlem in the House. They let him go on for just a minute about how bad Rangel is, but the only thing he said about his own candidacy is that he wanted to stop black folks from being so "dependent on the government." No comment on whether white folks, being better and all, need such weening.

How he ranked his own segment when is karaoke fund-raiser was empty and he has no chance of winning is, you guessed it!, beyond me.

Beck is a horrible actor.

Beck is starting off with the leaders of four Tea Party organizations. It's as lily white as you might imagine. The Tea Party believes in "physical responsibility." I did not know that!

Beck disses the NAACP for their comments regarding the Tea Party, then a few minutes later says the Tea Party needs to repudiate racism - which is exactly what the NAACP asked the Tea Party to do.

I'm totally unsurprised by the junk science advertisements.

Evan Bayh is useless.

Listening to Hannity is like listening to a book of RNC talking points, and yes, that means it's just as boring as it sounds. What's the appeal of this guy? I'm going to have to find a right-winger and ask about that.

He shows 20 seconds of a 60 Minutes clip and says it only showed one side of the story. I guess I should take his word on that?

This Brent Bozell segment is pure lunacy. They had the nerve to talk about the president whining about the media to "shut them up." And what was his life's work again?

I can't pay attention to this Carol Channing segment. I can't pretend to care.

FOX News is incredibly consistent in their naming schemes. The estate tax is never the estate tax, it's always the "death tax."

The same with "Obamacare."

Also, Dana Perino is doing a show now and the "we report, you decide" motto is nothing more than a joke. She keeps ranting on how sad and pathetic Joe Biden is, and asks how long before Democrats own up to being in charge of the economy, and how clearly it wasn't Bush's fault. This is all rendered as opinion with no facts to back it up.

They also keep showing Anthony Weiner (D-NY) bitching out Peter King (R-NY) just like they did Howard Dean's video during his campaign, but it doesn't look all that horrible to me. I don't get how you turn getting pissed off over denying heath care to 9/11 victims against him.

"Only 1.38 percent of Fox News’ primetime viewers are African-American."

The Onion A.V. Club presents an interview with "Marc Maron."

"Obstruction of Justice: A Century of USDA's Institutionalized Racism Subjects African American Farmers to Dramatic Land Loss."

Hey, do you think FOX News is going to put this story at the top of their next news cycle? It's got all the specifics of the Shirley Sherrod story they covered incessantly: racism, the USDA, white farmers losing their land.

Earlier this week, Shirley Sherrod was asked to resign from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for her alleged racism. I'll let Rachel Maddow fill in the whole background:

The White House's involvement in this story is just too cowardly for me to stomach.

I'm glad to see people rallying around Shirley Sherrod, even if it gives Glenn Beck the chance to be an opportunistic twat. Conversely, Brent Bozell commented on the manufactured controversy, and showed himself to be on the other side of Glenn Beck's same coin:

The bigger problem for the NAACP is that it has its very own racists. Andrew Breitbart’s Big Government website revealed video of a NAACP banquet where U.S. Department of Agriculture appointee Shirley Sherrod talked about how she didn’t want to help a white farmer because he should be helped by “his own kind.” The contempt in her voice, in her face, and in the audience’s laughter is unmistakable.

What an lying idiot. There entire point of the speech was dismissive of having contempt at all for anyone, especially Bozell's beloved white folks, the only people he can see bias against. Shirley Sherrod, in the very speech he refers to, said it best:

That's when it was revealed to me that it's about the poor versus those who have. It's not so much about white. It is about white and black, but it's not, you know, it opened my eyes.

Previously, here on KeepHip, I've discussed the controversy over the NAACP asking the Tea Party to repudiate any racism within its ranks. In response, many conservatives have denied any racism at all within the Tea Party movement. Several black conservatives have released statements over the matter, which brings us to "Project 21 Members Speak Out About Mark Williams/Tea Party Express Controversy"'s quote of Joe Hicks:

Facts matter very little to leftists and liberals. The NAACP recently passed a resolution calling on the tea party to reject the racist elements within its ranks. This resolution ignores the fact that various tea party figures have consistently made it clear that racist behavior is not welcome at tea party events.

I hate to overdo the sarcasm, but it would actually do wonders for the discourse here if he, you know, documented, even with one example, how the Tea Party "figures" have "consistently" made that clear. Hicks immediately continues:

Now, Mark Williams, a self-described tea party “leader,” has been quickly denounced by a national “federation” of tea party activists for comments as racially crude as they were dumb. Ah, but the liberal hypocrisy continues. Not only has the NAACP continued to be mute about anti-white and anti-Semitic comments from members of the New Black Panther Party, but they also allegedly lobbied the Justice Department on behalf of this hate group. They supposedly asked that the federal lawsuit for voter intimidation against the Panthers be dropped.

"Facts matter very little to leftists and liberals." Really? The date on that post was July 19th, 2010.

But, for the record, NAACP president Benjamin Jealous tells TPM that racism by the new Black Panthers has to go, too: "Our message to them is the same thing. They should not tolerate racism and bigotry in their ranks. Move those people out of your organization."

-- NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, "Flea On The Dog", July 14th, 2010

The NAACP's [Hilary] Shelton [Senior V.P. of policy at the NAACP] on Wednesday condemned statements by New Black Panther Party members who have been videotaped using insults such as "cracker" and "white devils."

"There's no room for that kind of vitriolic language in a civilized Democratic society," Shelton said.

-- "NAACP-Tea Party battle an emblem of 2010 race", L.A. Times, July 14th, 2010

You know, bigots come in all colors. We absolutely denounce the New Black Panther Party. But they aren't in our group. These folks are in your groups.

-- NAACP President Benjamin Jealous, "Tea Party Leader: NAACP Is Playing the Race Card", July 18th, 2010

This isn't a new gambit for black conservatives. I can't think of a black conservative who hasn't whined about being called names. Watch Deneen Borelli try it:

That's one hell of a failure as a "gotcha" question, a more politically savvy operative would have realized that he would have answered that way. But when you've got nothing, nothing is all you've got. One can hope that this is the best they can do.

Expect to see this strategy tried again in the future.

"A short history of Activision Blizzard or how B.Net 2.0 came to be."

Damn.

After all the overreacting and hand wringing over the NAACP's request for the "Tea Party" movement to repudiate racism, the Tea Party ends up being forced to do exactly that.

"Scientist Says U.S. Wanted to Swap Him for Hikers."

I'm still trying to figure out whether I believe Shahram Amiri or not. While there's no "gotcha" factoids I'm aware of that say he's lying, and what facts that are in evidence are on his side, I find the bit about his kidnappers laying out their entire scheme to him borderline unbelievable. Would real life villains really explain their schemes to the captured hero? Ming the Merciless did it, but would a CIA agent?

"Federal court struggles with California DNA collection case":

Nearly half the states and the federal government now take DNA samples during arrests. Rulings nationwide on the constitutionality of the practice have been divided, and the issue is expected to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court.

Among those named as victims in the ACLU's class-action lawsuit was a woman arrested during an antiwar protest but never charged. The state continues to hold her DNA, and her genetic profile is in a criminal database.

And when it does, I'd like individual rights to win out over state power, but I have little hope that will happen.

An amazing case of cognitive dissonance by Larry Elder in "Jesse: LeBron James Was Treated Like a 'Runaway Slave'":

In post-Obama-election America, Jackson and Al Sharpton (the Robin to Jackson's Batman) struggle with a declining market share. They are rabble-rousers in search of rabble to rouse, race-card players in need of race cards when anti-black racism has become an inconsequential matter. With their dark view of "race relations" in "White America," they never saw Obama coming. They lacked the awareness to see that America had changed and that Obama's election was possible.

So Jackson's flying on fumes. Consider this:

In Oakland, Calif., a white transit officer shot and killed a black passenger. The officer claims that he shot accidentally, that he intended to reach for his Taser and instead pulled out and fired his gun.

A jury — with no blacks — found the former officer guilty of involuntary manslaughter rather than second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter. The sentence can range from probation to 14 years with the gun enhancement charge. The minimum for second-degree murder is 15 years. Post-verdict riots in Oakland resulted in the arrests of over 80 people.

The idea that racism is "inconsequential" is in and of it itself ridiculous, but the idea that Elder both knows and notes that an all white jury made the decision to acquit doesn't strike him as being the result of a racist jury selection process (pdf) is astounding. There's solid evidence that prosecutors have been trained to exclude black jurors. The level of denial involved here is pathological.

It could be that Elder thinks that it's coincidence that an all white jury ending up deciding this case exists, but this has happened far too many times for him to keep going to that well.

"Rush's race-baiting on Steinbrenner death: 'That cracker made a lot of African-American millionaires'"

I think a lot of people in the NFL just got reminded that they made a wise decision to keep Limbaugh from buying the Rams a year ago.

"Are Cameras the New Guns?"

This is highly illegal activity on the authorities part. This is begging the Supreme Court to strike this down. The lawmakers who voted this in need to be out of office.

"President Obama, the Black Panthers, and the Coming Racial Explosion" by Robert Morley:

Even some black leaders have spoken out against the Justice Department’s new racism-based policy. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder and president of bond Action, notes that any racism is wrong. “It wasn’t good when it happened to black people in the past way back when, and it’s not good to happen to white Americans today,” he says. “I just hope white Americans really wake up and realize that they are under attack because of their color.”

GLAAD is upset (and rightly so) with The View for this segment where the panelists and guest, comedian D. L. Hughley discussed AIDS in the black community:

Hughley: When you look at the prevalence of HIV in the African American Community, it's primarily young women who are getting it from men who are on the down low. That's the thing.

Shepherd: The down low is black men who've been going out. They are having sex with men and they're not telling their girlfriends or their wives that they're gay and their husbands, as well. And it's very prevalent with African American women because they come home and have sex with their wives or their girlfriends. And they're not telling them that they're gay.

Shepherd: It's so big in the Black community with women because they're having unprotected sex with men who have been having sex with... with men.

While it's not true that closeted gay black men are the cause of HIV spreading among black women, I have yet to be convinced that "the down low" itself exists:

Using a content analysis of more than 170 articles written between 2001 and 2006, sociologist Richard N. Pitt, Jr. concluded that the media pathologized black bisexual men’s behavior while either ignoring or sympathizing with white bisexual men’s similar actions. He argued that the "Down Low" black bisexual is often described negatively as a duplicitous heterosexual man whose behaviors threaten the black community. Alternately, the "Brokeback" white bisexual (when seen as bisexual at all) is often described in pitying language as a victimized homosexual man who is forced into the closet by the heterosexist society around him.

My Google searches for "down low" myth invariably discussed AIDS, making me realize these two concepts are almost invariably linked in the public consciousness. The popularity of this "down low" myth is nothing more than a bigot two-fer: the blacks and the homosexuals, spreading deadly diseases.