On the left is the selfie Christopher Mercer uploaded to his social media. On the right is how CNN presented the same selfie in broadcast stories about him. Why did CNN need to change the complexion (color) of their broadcast? Why is no-one showing pictures of mom, Laurel Margaret Harper.
Hi @cheerios - do you know @msnbc is using your sweet AD to ridicule half the country? cc: @comcast @comcastcares pic.twitter.com/iRVkRgvCNK
— Chic (@Nayrue) January 30, 2014
CHRIS MATTHEWS: To everybody watching, this isn’t just about guns — is about guns. It is about this war in this country, that’s gotten more divided, more polarized. And it’s about symbols like telling you you can’t have certain kinds of gun. You need certain kinds of freedoms with your gun, like no background checks. Or that you have an African-American president.
… I don’t know if he’s burning books there or not. Let me tell you, Kasie [Hunt], it’s a lot that lays on your shoulders. I have to tell you this. I see a far bigger fight than over background checks and gun shows. It’s culture war. They don’t accept an African-American president or president of color who has some antecedence in Africa. No. It has to be us or him. And our guns or him. And everything is totemic; everything is iconic; everything’s fighting words. What was it feeling like down there? Didn’t they react when they hear this kind of talk?
@papajohns Heard yr CEO fired people becuz Obama won & announced it publicly - take your pizza and shove it up your racist assholes #BOYCOTT
— nowiknoweverything (@NowIKnoEvrythng) November 10, 2012
@papajohns acting like Donald Trump! Sick of racist ass ignorant people. #BOYCOTT
— Nicole(@MzDivah67) November 10, 2012
Listening to the radio... discussion of race and racist... man said boycott Papa Johns cause the owner is racist...then proceeded to name
— Ty Williams (@TyBella85) November 11, 2012
I've never eaten Papa Johns and never will. @deb4obama #SayNoToPapa Racist un-American Bastards.TKCAL
— RB RADIO SHOW™ (@REALBROTHER0003) November 11, 2012
I don'teat Papa Johns pizza anyway. The founder is a racist.
— T Wats (@TrevorWatson1) November 11, 2012
All white people are going to hell, longtime African-American civil rights advocate Rev. Joseph Lowery told an audience at a get-out-the-vote event held Oct. 27 in Georgia.
Lowery, who gave the benediction at the January 2009 inauguration of President Barack Obama, told the audience of up to 300 African-Americans “that when he was a young militant, he used to say all white folks were going to hell. Then he mellowed and just said most of them were. Now, he said, he is back to where he was,” according to an Oct. 31 report in the Monroe County Reporter newspaper.
“I don’t know what kind of a n—– wouldn’t vote with a black man running,” Lowery also told the audience in the St. James Baptist Church in Forsyth, Ga., according to the Reporter.
“Mitt Romney. Not one of us.”
That’s the tag line to a tough new ad the Obama campaign is airing in Ohio. But it is one that, ironically, echoes a slogan that has been used as a racial code over the last half century or more.
The context of the ad is very different from the one in which the phrase “one of us” was used to divide the country along racial lines, but Conservative commentators quickly seized on it.
Obama’s critics said the fact that he would use such loaded language in the hard-fought race to win Ohio shows how much he has changed from the politician whose famous “one America” speech at the 2004 Democratic convention denounced “those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.”
Charles C.W. Cooke wrote in National Review’s The Corner blog that Obama was “moving a long way from the famous — if vacuous — ‘no red states or blue states’ speech.”
“Had Romney pulled this on him, we’d need a special two-hour episode of ‘Hardball’ to deal with the dog-whistle implications,”added Rick Moran on the American Thinker blog.
TAMPA, Fla. — Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa said that Republicans “can’t just trot out a brown face” to make inroads with the Latino community, an increasingly important growing bloc.
As the GOP prepares to showcase some of its rising Hispanic stars during the next two days of its national convention, the Democratic mayor dismissed Republican overtures toward Latinos as insincere.
“You can’t just trot out a brown face or a Spanish surname and expect people are going to vote for your party or your candidate,” Villaraigosa said at a press conference here organized by the Democratic National Committee [he's the convention chair].
VICE PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: They’ve said it. Every Republican’s voted for it. Look at what they value and look at their budget and what they’re proposing. Romney wants to let the—he said in the first 100 days, he’s going to let the big banks once again write their own rules–unchain Wall Street. They’re going to put y’all back in chains. He’s said he’s going to do nothing about stopping the practice of outsourcing…
MSNBC hosts agreed this weekend that white voters hold President Obama to a higher standard than his white predecessors because he is black.
“[Obama] now has a specific record of governing,” MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry said today on her show. “A record that, I contend, because of his race will be held to a much higher standard than it would have been for a white incumbent. Those white voters who found what they were looking for in 2008 will not necessarily be so enthusiastic in 2012.”
Alex Wagner, host of MSNBC’s NOW, agreed. “I think race absolutely has to do with the conversation about reelection,” she said.
Keep on reading…
BRIDGETOWN (AFP) — UN rights chief Navi Pillay on Thursday called for an “immediate investigation” into the circumstances surrounding the February death of an unarmed black US teen, shot by a neighborhood watchman.
Pillay made the comments about the controversial Trayvon Martin case at a press conference in Barbados, as she wrapped up a three-day visit to the Caribbean island nation.
“As High Commissioner for Human Rights, I call for an immediate investigation,” Pillay told reporters.
“Justice must be done for the victim. It’s not just this individual case. It calls into question the delivery of justice in all situations like this.”Thousands of people seeking to overthrow a dictatorship in Syria are being killed. Islamic fundamentalists are executing people for adultery and children are being used as soldiers in Africa. UN rights chief Navi Pillay should focus on those problems. We have an effective judicial system in the U.S.A.
Neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman, a white Hispanic, fatally shot 17-year-old Martin inside a gated community in the Florida town of Sanford on February 26.
Zimmerman has said he acted in self-defense after Martin punched him in the nose, knocked him down and slammed his head into the ground.
SANFORD — Miami Gardens teenager Trayvon Martin was suspended from school in October in an incident in which he was found in possession of women’s jewelry and a screwdriver that a schools security staffer described as a “burglary tool,” The Miami Herald has learned.
Trayvon, who claimed that an unnamed friend had given him the jewelry, was not disciplined because of the discovery, but was instead suspended for graffiti, according to a Miami-Dade Schools Police report obtained by The Miami Herald.
A lawyer for the dead teen’s family acknowledged Trayvon had been suspended for graffiti, but said the family knew nothing about the jewelry and the screwdriver, calling the information in the report an attempt to “demonize” the youth.
According to the report, on Oct. 21 staffers monitoring a security camera at Dr. Michael M. Krop Senior High School spotted Trayvon and two other students writing “W.T.F.,” an acronym for “What the f—,” on a hallway locker, according to schools police. The security employee, who knew Trayvon, confronted the teen and looked through his bag for the graffiti marker.
Trayvon’s backpack contained 12 pieces of jewelry, in addition to a watch and a large flathead screwdriver, according to the report, which described the screwdriver as a burglary tool.
Trayvon was asked if the jewelry, which was mostly women’s rings and earrings, belonged to his family or a girlfriend.
“Martin replied it’s not mine. A friend gave it to me,” according to the report. Trayvon declined to name the friend.
SANFORD, Fla. (WOFL FOX 35) – Investigators with the Sanford Police Department are still trying to figure out exactly what happened during an altercation which resulted in a fatal shooting in the Twin Lakes area. The shooting happened just after 7 p.m. Sunday evening on Twin Trees Lane. A man who witnessed part of the altercation contacted authorities.
“The guy on the bottom, who had a red sweater on [Zimmerman], was yelling to me, ‘Help! Help!’ and I told him to stop, and I was calling 911,” said the witness, who asked to be identified only by his first name, John.
John said he locked his patio door, ran upstairs and heard at least one gun shot.
“And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point.”
No, not at all. When Rick Santorum first announced he was running for President, in his announcement speech, he was criticizing President Obama for saying America wasn’t as great as it was until there were programs like Medicare and Social Security. But in that criticism, he said directly to the President, he said, “Mr. President, America was great before 1965.”
I called that out as a coded message. You know, I go to Selma every year, and 1965 is a sacred year in the history of this country, and a never-forgotten year in terms of the history of Alabama. When he said that, I knew exactly who he was speaking to in that coded language. So I’m not surprised at all that he won Alabama.
(Politico) — Attorney General Eric Holder used Martin Luther King Jr.’s legacy on the anniversary of the civil rights leader’s birthday Monday to emphasize the Obama administration’s dedication to protecting the American people from discriminatory voting practices.
“Despite our nation’s record of progress, and long tradition of extending voting rights – today, a growing number of citizens are worried about the same disparities, divisions, and problems that Dr. King fought throughout his life to address and overcome,” Holder said at an MLK Day event in Columbia, S.C.
Holder’s remarks in the Palmetto State come just weeks after the Justice Department blocked the state’s new voter ID law from taking effect, citing an unfair burden on minority voters.
Citing the “drumbeat of concern” he has encountered from Americans across the country about discrimination in the election systems, the attorney general vowed that the Justice Department was more committed than ever before to enforcing the Voting Rights Act.
Keep reading…
(WaPo) — Watching television coverage of the Republican caucuses in Iowa, I noticed that nearly everybody was white: white people smiling over coffee, white people applauding at candidate forums, white people singing praise songs at church. True, Iowa has so few blacks that it would probably take a hawk’s eye to spot one. But the GOP caucuses could have been held in any state, and the crowd would look the same.Here is an image of a Democrat Caucus in Iowa last night.
Which made me wonder: In a country as large and diverse as ours, how is it that one of the two major political parties has become, in essence, a white people’s party?
Polls frequently note the overwhelming whiteness of the GOP, but they never quite explain it.
