Another day, another racist attack on Obama from the right wing:

mediaite.com/tv/sean-hannity-resurrects-lie-that-barack-obama-spoke-with-new-black-panthers/

As part of a despicable years-long attempt by conservatives to associate President Obama with the fringe New Black Panther Party, Fox News’ Sean Hannity resurrected a smear that President Obama “spoke with” the designated hate group at a 2007 event, and chirped, “There’s a picture of that!”

It’s a lie, as surely as Fox News contributor Deneen Borelli‘s contention that the President and Attorney General Eric Holder have “involvement with the Black Panther movement.”

First of all, the New Black Panthers are not part of any “Black Panther movement,” they are a tiny fringe group that has not only been denounced by the original Black Panthers, they’ve also been sued by them.

When Deneen Borelli states, as fact, that President Obama, while running for president in 2007, “spoke with the Black Panthers (sic),” Hannity chimes in “There’s a picture of that, by the way! With Malik Zulu Shabazz!”

Really? There’s a picture of then-Senator Barack Obama speaking with the New Black Panthers, and/or with Chairman Malik Zulu Shabazz? Did any Fox viewers wonder why Hannity, then, decided not to show this picture?

Maybe because that picture would have looked like this:



The fact is, then-Senator Obama didn’t “speak with” the New Black Panthers, he spoke at a commemoration of the 1965 Selma, Alabama march, which Shabazz and Co. also attended and spoke at, . It wasn’t a campaign event, it was open to the public, and that supposedly damning “photo” is a screen cap from a YouTube video that shows Malik Zulu Shabazz among a crowd of thousands marching behind then-Sen. Barack Obama and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton. In a radio interview, Shabazz claimed to have “met” Obama at that event, but never to have spoken with him.

This is nothing new, and it’s part of a campaign, to paint Barack Obama as a puppet of some looming Black Menace, that’s as desperate as it is persistent. Here’s a quick recap of the right’s long history of trying to scare white people by implying some sort of relationship between the New Black Panther Party and Barack Obama. During the 2008 campaign, reports surfaced that the Obama campaign had posted an endorsement of the candidate, by the NBPP, on its website. But what really happened was that an NBPP member posted a blog in a user-controlled forum (kinda like our comments section), and it was later removed.