Large Overlap Again Seen Between Conservatism and Racism

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

I check out Mediaite several times a day. It's a good website to see the aggregated outrages and idiocy perpetuated by the left and the right on any given day.

I noticed two recent incidents on Fox News, and a commentary on MSNBC, which shows a confluence of anti-black racism and the conservative agenda. It goes without saying that Fox News exists to promote the conservative agenda: the Republican agenda, economic conservatism, social conservatism and foreign policy hawkishness. Yet what has also been a consistent theme on Fox News is opposition to the reporting of the seemingly racism-caused death of a black teenager and the investigation of that death. The reporting on Trayvan's Martin death by the mainsteam and the left-wing media has nothing to do with the merits of economic and socially conservative policy, nor conservative foreign policy. This indicates that the conservative agenda goes beyond those three planks of conservative policy and extends to a fourth hidden conservative policy: anti-black racism.

Here we have two rather disgusting examples of this:

Brent Bozell, the founder of a right wing media website compares the Martin case to the notorious Tawana Brawley case (which has the public reputation of being a fabricated case of racism). Hannity, the host, says nothing when Bozell makes this comparison. This is an outrageous claim and outrageous behavior by these right-wingers. Assuming the Brawley case was a complete hoax, the evidence of the Martin case leans towards the likelihood of Martin's unjust death. Furthermore, even in the unlikely event that Martin was somehow the aggressor, racism against Martin was still used:

* According to witnesses the Sanford police conducted hasty and rushed interviews and were actually pushing Zimmerman's side of the story on them
* The police made no attempt to identify the corpse they had, even though he had identification and cell phone on him. He was listed as "John Doe" and his body lay in the medical examiner's office for 3 days while the Sanford Police failed to let the parents of this 17 year old teenager know that they had his body
* The killer was not arrested despite that his killing an unarmed person was never in question, and his version of the story was doubted by the lead detective
* Zimmerman was questioned by a narcotics officer rather than a homicide officer
* The Sanford Police leaked information to the press that would damage the case for Martin
* Crucial evidence (Zimmerman's clothing) may not have been collected
* Florida's Stand Your Ground law has been revealed to at least theoretically be of use for providing a license for murder

So even in the worst case scenario for people who think Zimmerman is guilty, it can still be said that the Sanford Police improperly handled this case, if not handling it in a racist manner. A law that lends itself to legalized murder has also been revealed. So even in the worst case scenario, it is inappropriate to compare this case to the Tawanna Brawley case.

Secondly, here's another example from Fox of using racism against blacks to insult blacks:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/mrcs-bren...rawley-moment/

Again, this is really racism against blacks. This is the moderator for the panel who compares Spike Lee's tweeting of an address to the lynching of Emmit Till. What Spike Lee did was stupid, but again the comparison is inappropriate. Spike Lee did put innocent people at risk, but it was more a reckless endangerment in pursuit of a murderer than it was what happened with Emmit Till which was actual murder of a 14 year old boy for whistling at a white woman. That's very different.

This is as hateful as saying that victims of 9/11 were engaged in their own terrorism. It's taking the motives of a killer and throwing that into the face of the victim and saying that those motives are the motives of the victim too.

As for the third example, that is Joe Scarborough of MSNBC saying that he doesn't understand why the right wing media has taken up fighting against the pro-Trayvan elements of the media as a "cause." He notices it too, that it's bizarre to attach a cause to fight against forces calling for the prosecution of a killer of a black teenager to conservatism.

Lastly, I think it is interesting to go back and look at how Fox, specifically people like Hannity and O'Reilly talked about the Casey Anthony murder trial to look for a racist double standard: namely did they convict by media the assumed killer (Casey Anthony) of a white person (her daughter) but do they now say that it is wrong to convict by media when the victim is black and not white (Trayvan Martin)?

I looked up one clip on Mediaite of Hannity talking about the not guilty verdict on Casey Anthony:

http://www.mediaite.com/tv/casey-ant...-over-verdict/

Hannity shows consistency in his playing of Devil's Advocate for Casey Anthony, but I did notice he did say that he thought she was guilty. I have not heard Hannity say that he thinks George Zimmerman is guilty.


WEB

[W.E.B. Du Bois]

More Fox News going into overdrive to attack black people: http://www.mediaite.com/tv/liz-trott...sonal-stories/

When a black person talks about how they were racially profiled in the context of Martin being racially profiled as "on drugs" and "up to no good", THE BLACK PERSON is the one who loses credibility. Trotta also infamously said that women in the military who have been raped complain about "being raped too much", inferring that there is a morally expected amount of rape that women should tolerate. The logic applies here as well: black people are supposed to accept being racially discriminated against and that racism is good because speaking out about it undermines that racism which therefore makes those black journalists "lose credibility."

Fox News: Hey you, white person, you are under siege by blacks who are "up to no good" and are "on drugs or something." Listen to us only and vote Republican.