The rest is here:
Bring us Your Poor, Your Tired, Your Huddled, Illegal Masses…

“I decline utterly to be impartial as between the fire brigade and the fire.”

–Winston Churchill, House of Commons, 1927

For the past 6 years, Chris Matthews has hosted a show in which guests gleefully reported the purported success of both indigenous insurgents and foreign al Qaeda fighters in Iraq.  On his network, MSNBC, that became the default setting.  They were the publicity arm of al Qaeda.  Car bombs led the news, successful American battles, infrastructure completion, or the like were not even news.  Bagdad Bob had nothing on them.

Chris would evoke the worst kind of moral equivalence by constantly posing some form of this the question, “Wouldn’t you be mad if someone invaded America and imposed a different form of government they thought was better?  Wouldn’t you fight back?”

Anyone who thought this was unpatriotic was the worst kind of scoundrel, an unquestioning lackey of the Bush Administration who was trying to quash dissent, the highest form of patriotism.

Losing a war was chump change compared to defeating evil Republicans.

Now, finally, Chris Matthews has spotted REAL anti-Americanism—people who were happy that President Obama was humiliated in his vanity-laden attempt to bring the Olympics to Chicago.

Oh, the horror.

Matthews’s Monday show intro was unintentionally revealing, though not part of the video on the MSNBC website:

CHRIS MATTHEWS, HOST: Anti-American?  Let’s play HARDBALL.  Good evening. I’m Chris Matthews in Washington. Leading off tonight:

The right roots against America. Remember how Republicans questioned Democrats’ patriotism during the Bush years, how you were either with Bush or with the terrorists? So what do we make the of the glee some prominent Republicans felt when Chicago and President Obama lost its Olympics bid? It’s one thing to argue politics and policy, what’s good and what’s bad for America. That’s what we do right here on HARDBALL. It’s another thing to root for America to fail.

Yeah, whether America wins a war or keeps thousands of innocent Americans are massacred on a normal work day—or Chicago gets the Olympics.  Same thing.  We won’t mention that more than HALF OF CHICAGO didn’t want the Olympics.

But the comparison tells us more about Chris Matthews than he meant to reveal, or wants to admit about his side of the political divide. Is he finally admitting that liberals rooted against America winning the war in Iraq so they could use it against George Bush?

Guest Terry Jeffrey did a great job of trying to bring a perspective of reality to Chris’s newfound feverish patriotism—which is really Obamism:

JEFFREY: I don’t think the city of Chicago getting the Olympics is synonymous with a vital national interest of the United States. I mean, you could be from Chicago and not want the Olympics to come to Chicago.

Exactly right.  Later, Jeffery got to the main point of who roots for America, which caused Matthews to lose it and throw out a mangled version of Churchill’s great quote.

MATTHEWS: You don’t think-just to get back to our point here, you don’t sense that on the right-well, maybe I’m asking the wrong person to agree with this-that there is a goal here that anything where there’s a contest, a chance to prove its success, whether it’s ideological, whether it’s pro-American or political or partisan, any chance for Barack Obama to fail, your side is going to root for him to fail, whatever it is. He must fail at any moment. Whether it’s health care, whether it’s the Olympics, whatever it is, you will cheer if he fails. Are you denying that now?

JEFFREY: Not any place, most places. There’s one place, clearly, where conservatives ought not want him to fail, and that…

MATTHEWS: No, but don’t be selective. Isn’t it true…

JEFFREY: No, it’s not true.

MATTHEWS: … that the evidence of this past week is, wherever he attempts to do something, you guys want him to stumble.

JEFFREY: No, actually, that’s true because…

MATTHEWS: Give me an example where you’re rooting for him.

JEFFREY: Well, let me give you an example. I’m very much rooting that what President Obama chooses to do, which he hasn’t yet chosen to do, in Afghanistan works because all Americans share an interest in our country succeeding in Afghanistan. It’s important for our national security that it happens. I hope his policy in Iraq succeeds. I hope what he does with the Gitmo prisoners, Chris, succeeds. I think conservatives are very much worried that he will not succeed because they think his policies in those areas may be wrong-headed.

On the domestic front, I think conservatives are opposed to just about everything President Obama is trying to do because he’s trying to augment the power of government over our lives and diminish our individual freedom. So to the degree that his ability to leverage the Democrats in Congress to attain his agenda is diminished, that’s a good thing for the United States of America….

MATTHEWS: … most of this began last fall under George Bush. The bringing in of Hank Paulson from Goldman Sachs, the whole works, the whole downfall of Wall Street, the attempt to bail out Wall Street, the banking industry, the failure of General Motors and those industries began long before Barack Obama came into office. He came in to clean up the mess, and I refuse not to take sides between the fire brigade and the fire. He’s the fire brigade. Your side was the fire.

During his softball interview with Alan “Republicans want you to die in the health care holocaust” Grayson, Matthews ludicrously exclaimed “I don’t always take sides, but you are right!”  Now we get it, Republicans are the fire, Barack Obama is the fire brigade.

However, when it comes to the American military versus America’s real enemies, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran—or in the case of civilization versus barbarians in, say Gaza, Chris Matthews has a lot harder time discerning who is the fire brigade.

To use Chris’s mangled analogy, he and his colleagues spent 5 years reporting on deaths and injuries to the fire brigade, but never mentioned any of the fires they put out.  But don’t you DARE call that anti-American.

ACORN boss and embezzlement coverup co-conspirator Bertha Lewis spins a yarn about ACORN at Washington, D.C.'s National Press Club yesterday.

The current chief organizer of ACORN, who was up to her eyeballs in the $1 million embezzlement scandal at the embattled radical leftist group, lied and lied and lied some more in an appearance at the National Press Club yesterday.

The contemptible Bertha Lewis, who now prefers to call herself “CEO” of ACORN, gave a “grand performance” at the press club, Glenn Beck said on his TV show Tuesday. Beck’s right. Maybe she should get nominated for an Oscar.

A small sample of the untruths that issued from her mouth:

CLAIM: After news of the embezzlement broke, ACORN “immediately hired outside professionals, no organizers. We may be brilliant organizers, but we needed real financial professionals, real legal professionals, to come in.”

FACT: If ACORN actually hired such people, it has kept evidence of those hirings under wraps. I don’t believe her.

CLAIM: Lewis says ACORN “began the decoupling of over a hundred corporations and organizations under my watch. We took apart that network with transparency and stability.”

FACT: I am not aware of any evidence supporting Lewis’s claim. Prove it, ACORN. Talk is cheap.

CLAIM: “And for nearly 40 years, ACORN has had the privilege to stand with our 500,000 member families fighting for those who typically don’t have a voice.”

FACT: ACORN’s own website says it has “over 400,000 member families,” whatever that means. Yes, 500,000 is more than 400,000, but you can’t just round up from an indefinite figure like “over 400,000.”

Those are just a few of Lewis’ lies from yesterday.

Nor did Lewis say much about her own role in covering up the embezzlement perpetrated by founder Wade Rathke’s brother. After news of the theft broke, Lewis drove out honest ACORN national board members who dared to ask questions.

Lewis, who has high-level contacts within the Marxist governments of Venezuela and Bolivia, also brought out the good ole stand-by smear yesterday, i.e. that everyone who criticizes ACORN is racist. Fortunately, now that the undercover sting videos last month showed Americans the true face of ACORN, the smear, which used to send Republicans and other ACORN critics running, isn’t working too well.

Of course the New York Times highlighted the only part of Lewis’s talk that appealed to it, namely her assertion that ACORN is somehow a victim of a new kind of McCarthyism.  Said Lewis (according to a press club transcript):

The RNC, every single day, because we’ve been inflated as the bogeyman, raises almost $2 million dollars a day every day. And this form of modern day ACORN McCarthyism has got to stop. Last week, members of Congress were asked, “Are you now or have you ever been a member of ACORN?” Everybody should take pause at that. Everybody should say, “Wait a minute. Wait a minute. This is not how we have discourse. This is not how we have disagreement in this country, by demonizing someone without due process.” This whole voting to de-fund ACORN, it’s all sensational, but it’s unconstitutional. So all we’re saying is, you know, hold us to a standard of the law. Then hold the folks that made those films to the same standard of the law.

Those irony-deficient “senior fellows” at Media Matters are at it again. Today they’re pretending to be outraged by the Washington Time’s “fabricated” accusations of “racism” — which is a little like Vice President Joe Biden accusing someone of plagiarism.

“Did the WashTimes fabricate its latest ACORN attack?,” they ask readers this morning, helpfully answering: “Yep”.

Media Matters then does what leftist apologists do when they can’t mount a substantial argument: they turn into literal-minded Rain Man types, and try to nit-pick their target to death:

…the Washington Times, in its headline and article, reports that ACORN CEO Bertha Lewis, during an address at the National Press Club on Tuesday, claimed ACORN critics are “racist.”

Slight problem: The WashTimes fails to include any quotes, any evidence, any anything, to support the “racist” angle; a specific word the daily uses three different times. Instead, it appears that the WashTimes’ Joseph Curl just invented the explosive charge of racism.

Now, it is true that on this occasion, Bertha Lewis didn’t utter the exact phrase “ACORN critics are racist.”

However, according to the Washington Times report — which Media Matters helpfully reprints in its entirety — Lewis did say the following:

“I mean we, [going back] to 2004, we now see through e-mails from Karl Rove from the previous administration that ACORN itself was targeted, targeted to go after us so that we would stop doing voter registration because it was said that we were moving too many minorities to vote, changing the power dynamics on the local election and that we needed to be stopped.”

She also labeled as racist the infamous videos that show ACORN workers advising a man and young woman posing as pimp and prostitute how to circumvent the law. “These new filmmakers, [James] O’Keefe himself, told The Washington Post, ‘They’re registering too many minorities; they usually vote Democratic; somebody’s got to stop them,’” Mrs. Lewis said.

Let’s play a game: say some conservative pundit or activist was quoted as saying, “ACORN is registering too many minorities to vote.”

Would that statement be perceived by listeners, left and right, as being racist — even though the speaker didn’t actually utter a phrase such as, “P.S., I’m a racist”?

And would Media Matters promptly denounce that conservative as a racist, regardless?

The answer is obvious.

Intelligent grownups regularly draw inferences from the statements of others, and make judgments accordingly. Otherwise efficient communication would be impossible. Only a child employs “arguments” on the level of: “But you never SAID ‘don’t write all over the walls with a marker!!’”

Hilariously, Media Matters even includes the last paragraph of the Washington Times piece, which clearly didn’t merit any condemnation or further investigation on their part:

But Mrs. Lewis did not mention that The Post was forced to issue a later correction on the story, saying the quote attributed to Mr. O’Keefe was inaccurate.

Neo-Communist propaganda artist Michael Moore’s new film Capitalism: A Love Story officially bombed in its opening weekend. It made a scant $4,447,378. Why is this after the comparative successes of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Sicko?

The answer is quite simple: the focus of his previous films was hardly so fringe. Fahrenheit 9/11 critiqued the Bush administration, the War on Terror, and the Iraq War. Sicko attacked America’s crappy health care system. (Note: One can still oppose Obamacare while acknowledging the health care status quo in our country sucks.) These were issues that could resonate with more than just the Leftist True Believers. Centrists and independents could often be engaged as well.

Not so much with this new work. In Capitalism: A Love Story Moore lets his red freak flag fly in an all out assault on the capitalist system. In an interview with fellow leftist comedian Bill Maher on HBO’s “Real Time” we see just how radical Moore really is. Even Maher (who we’ve critiqued continually here at NewsReal) isn’t buying his propaganda:

Maher: I still don’t understand what direction we are supposed to move in. I mean capitalism I agree with you has gone off the rails, it’s become cronyism, it’s become corporate welfare. But in my way of thinking, the opposite of capitalism is communism. Which was trying to make the river flow in the wrong direction. At least capitalism is using what’s in human nature, which is greed. I agree that river needs a lot of dams and locks on it, it needs a lot of regulation – wouldn’t that be better than scraping the system?

Moore: We’ve heard that now for about a year since the crash. All we need are to get those regulations. How many regulations have been passed? Zero… He [Obama] has a choice to make now. Is he going to side with the people or is he going to side with Wall Street? I’m counting on him siding with the people. I believe that’s what he’s going to do and that’s what we expect him to do.

There could not be a clearer illustration of why Moore is a Neo-Communist.

Let’s break this down nice and simply because the use of “Neo-Communist,” as confrontational as it might be, is not some slur. It’s an accurate, well-thought-out descriptor of Moore’s ideology.

One of the cornerstones of Marxist thought is the division of the world into two conflicting classes: the noble proletariat workers and the malevolent bourgeoisie owners. In the Marxist schema the bourgeoisie are perpetually exploiting the proletariat. The politically ideology then flows from this basic assumption that those with less money are being screwed by those with more money.

Does this sound familiar?

All Moore — and many other so-called “progressives” — have done is replace proletariat with “the people” and bourgeoisie with “Wall Street.” My “populist progressive” friend Pat (who recently started his own blog) does this too. It’s a kitsch Marxism that is blind to the reality perceived by the vast majority of Americans: the fates of Wall Street and Main Street are intimately linked. Those that live on Main Street work for corporations that are listed on Wall Street. One cannot succeed for long at the expense of the other. This distinction between the “haves” and the “have nots” as two separate, warring entities has been demonstrated to be a lie.

But that’s not all Moore is up to. And there’s more to understand about his fringe ideology. Come back tomorrow evening as I continue the dissection of this encounter. In the mean time, check out NewsReal’s previous refutations of Moore:

David Horowitz: “Creators and Destroyers”

Michael van der Galien: “Morning Joe Pimps Michael Moore’s New Propaganda”

Paul Cooper: NewsReal Sunday: Michael Moore uses Democracy and Finds Jesus – for socialism propaganda

The Media Matters irony detector must’ve been in the shop on September 16, when they roused themselves to mock Glenn Beck… for making a joke.

Here’s what they wrote:

Beck: [politically outspoken UK band] Muse is “brilliant,” buy their new album;
Muse: Please retract your endorsement

Then Media Matters helpfully posts five minutes of audio from Beck’s radio show. After praising the British musical group Muse at length, Beck returns after the commercial break and says:

I just got an email from representatives of Muse. They would like me to retract my endorsement. My apologies to Muse for saying that I like them. I didn’t mean to destroy all their credibility and coolness. Let me just set the record straight. Muse – I hate them. It’s an awful album and you should never go out and buy it.

Frankly, I’m a bit shocked by Beck’s fondness for Muse. I can’t believe he doesn’t know that one of the musicians in Muse is a “9/11 Truther,” who also asserts the contradictory view that “America asked for it.” After all, Van Jones, a favorite target of Beck’s before his resignation as White House “green jobs czar,” was connected to those who believe “9/11 was an inside job.”

Amusingly, Media Matters is either too lazy or too dumb to even raise those contradictions in this particular “critique” of Glenn Beck — if you can really call a web post consisting entirely of a snarky headline and a five-minute audio clip a “critique.” It’s like I’m doing their job for them. Maybe George Soros, the far-left billionaire who funds Media Matters, should cut me a check…

Now, my first clue that Beck was joshing about getting that email and his subsequent “retraction” was that you could hear his crew laughing in the background. My second clue was Beck’s sarcastic tone. (Oh, and Media Matters: if you’re reading this — now I’m being sarcastic, see? You’re welcome…)

No one paid much attention to this “news story” until yesterday, when the “controversy” hit the British press.

Earlier this week, the UK supermarket chain Waitrose pulled its ads off the British feed for FOX News, citing “customer concerns” about Beck’s statement earlier this year that President Barack Obama is “a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

So with Beck’s name making news, British reporters did weird things (sarcasm) like Googling Beck’s name, and they found the Media Matters post about Muse. Then they did something really crazy (sarcasm) and called the president of Beck’s production company — long distance, even! (sarcasm) — to ask if Muse had really sent that email to Beck

And he told the reporters the bit about getting the email was a joke.

There were around 300 stories on Google today about Media Matters’ outrage over an obvious (and forgettable) “morning zoo” gag on Beck’s radio show.

Which means Media Matters is being mocked around the world for being a bunch of humorless, hyper-vigilant, tone-deaf leftists who evidently don’t know how to dial a phone, or just can’t be bothered to do so.

A pretty nice punchline. But I doubt Media Matters gets it, even now.

Last April, after the Dalai Lama–the spiritual leader of Tibet–announced his intention to travel to the United States in October, the Communist Chinese gave President Barack Obama a stern warning against meeting with him. China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu made it quite clear that the Chinese, who invaded Tibet and have ruled it with an iron fist since 1950:

Firmly oppose the Dalai’s engagement in separatist activities in any country under whatever capacity and under whatever name. We have made representations to the United States urging the U.S. to honor its commitments and not allow the Dalai to engage in separatist activities in the United States.

This is not the first time the Chinese have threatened another country over meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader.

Last year, the Chinese issued a similar threat to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. The French President was not intimidated, however, and did not hesitate to meet with the Dalai Lama, dismissing Chinese objections as unfounded. “The Dalai Lama,” said Sarkozy, “is not dangerous and is a man of peace.” The Chinese retaliated by cancelling a major economic summit with the European Union and organized a boycott of French products.

Sarkozy did the right thing and the French maintained their pride in the face of Chinese economic retaliation.

How has Barack Obama, President of the United States and leader of the free world, dealt with the same Chinese threat? Did he emulate Sarkozy and put human rights before economic blackmail?

He did not.

He has capitulated and is going to do what the Chinese communists have told him to do.

According to Communist China’s ideological cousin Amy Goodman and her comrades at Democracy Now!:

For the first time since 1991, the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama will visit Washington this week and not meet with the President…the Obama administration’s decision to postpone the meeting appears to be part of a strategy to improve ties with China that also includes soft-pedaling criticism of China’s human rights and financial policies, as well as backing efforts to elevate China’s position in international institutions, such as the International Monetary Fund.

We should note that this is the same Barack Obama who has already met with such champions of human rights as Hugo Chavez, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, perpetual Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, Vladimir Putin, and Daniel Ortega. Indeed it is the same Barack Obama who has offered to meet with Iran’s Jew-hating president Mahmoud Ahmadenijad and North Korea’s demented Marxist dictator Kim Jung Il.  But now he has acceded to Chinese demands, broken ranks with his predecessors and told the Dalai Lama to take a hike.

Don’t be surprised by this.

As early as last February, Obama had already emboldened the Chinese when he had Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton inform them during her trip to Beijing that the United States would not let China’s abysmal human rights record interfere with “U.S.-China cooperation,” especially in economic matters.

The Tibetans, for their part, know what’s going on. Tibet’s prime minister-in-exile, Samdhong Rinpoche, lamented the United States’ appeasement of China in light of the latter’s growing economic might:

Today, economic interests are much greater than other interests.

Sophie Richardson, Asia advocate for Human Rights Watch, warned:

This idea that if you are nice to the Chinese Communist Party up front you can cash in later is just wrong. If you lower the bar on human rights they will just move it lower and lower.

Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA), an outspoken critic of China’s human rights record, wondered:

What would a Buddhist monk or Buddhist nun in Drapchi prison think when he heard that President Obama, the president of the United States, is not going to meet with the Dalai Lama? It’s against the law to even have a picture of the Dalai Lama. I can almost hear the words of the Chinese guards saying to them that nobody cares about you in the United States.

Obama, however, has already made his choice, and unlike Sarkozy’s, it’s nothing to be proud of.

On his TV show, Glenn Beck looked at the role that former ACORN official Deepak Bhargava is playing in influencing the Obama administration.

Bhargava is executive director of the radical left-wing community organizing group, the Center for Community Change (CCC). Founded in 1968, the group is dedicated to defending welfare entitlements and leftist anti-poverty programs.

CCC bases its training programs on techniques expounded by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky. Following Alinsky’s blueprint for establishing “grassroots” organizations to agitate for social change, the Center claims it has “nurtured thousands of local groups and leaders” across the United States.

Bhargava was shown giving a speech in December last year. He said that “big and bold solutions” were needed for America and that community organizers were going to be involved in “building a new economy for shared prosperity and expanding our democracy.”

Of course when radical leftists use the term democracy they don’t mean what regular Americans mean when they use the term. To the far left, it is a code word for socialism itself.

Bhargava also said that the socialist agenda is now moving forward by stealth.

The Center for Community Change is a member of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, which is led by Leslie Cagan, a longtime committed socialist who aligns her politics with those of Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba.

The Center is financially supported by such foundations as the Ahmanson Foundation, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Woods Fund of Chicago.

On his TV show, Glenn Beck looked at the role that former ACORN official Deepak Bhargava is playing in influencing the Obama administration.

Bhargava is executive director of the radical left-wing community organizing group, the Center for Community Change (CCC). Founded in 1968, the group is dedicated to defending welfare entitlements and leftist anti-poverty programs.

CCC bases its training programs on techniques expounded by the famed radical organizer Saul Alinsky. Following Alinsky’s blueprint for establishing “grassroots” organizations to agitate for social change, the Center claims it has “nurtured thousands of local groups and leaders” across the United States.

Bhargava was shown giving a speech in December last year. He said that “big and bold solutions” were needed for America and that community organizers were going to be involved in “building a new economy for shared prosperity and expanding our democracy.”

Of course when radical leftists use the term democracy they don’t mean what regular Americans mean when they use the term. To the far left, it is a code word for socialism itself.

Bhargava also said that the socialist agenda is now moving forward by stealth.

The Center for Community Change is a member of the United for Peace and Justice anti-war coalition, which is led by Leslie Cagan, a longtime committed socialist who aligns her politics with those of Fidel Castro’s Communist Cuba.

The Center is financially supported by such foundations as the Ahmanson Foundation, the Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Fannie Mae Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Joyce Foundation, the Scherman Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Public Welfare Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Surdna Foundation, and the Woods Fund of Chicago.

Harry Hay: "Safe Schools Czar" Kevin Jennings' hero

You can almost smell the flop sweat at Media Matters. They’re dancing as fast as they can, to keep new victim-hero, “safe schools czar” Kevin Jennings, from getting the hook.

Here’s Media Matters’ latest desperate attempt to steer attention away from Jennings, by playing “shoot the messenger”: “Wash. Times continues to smear Jennings with false claim that he failed to report ’sexual abuse’ of student.”

Having redeemed itself somewhat by denouncing Roman Polanski and his supporters in no uncertain terms, Media Matters is now minimizing the well-documented fact that after one of his high-school students told him he’d had sex with a stranger whom he’d met at the bus station, Jennings didn’t report the incident to authorities, choosing instead to save it as a favorite anecdote in his many books and speeches.

Media Matters’ new spin on the story is that the boy in question was sixteen years old — the legal age of consent in Massachusetts!

Fine. (I guess.) But the boy’s confession to Jennings could easily be interpreted as cry for help. Even Jennings (admittedly under considerable public pressure) now says, “I can see how I should have handled this situation differently.”

If the boy had told Jennings he was a drunk driver, would Media Matters’ have exclaimed: “So? The kid had a driver’s licence”? (Speaking of which: Media Matters even posts a copy of the student’s actual driver’s licence to prove his age at the time. And yet they make fun of “birthers”…)

For folks who regularly denigrate organized religion, it’s astonishing how often the Left reverts to Jesuitical, legalistic phariseeism when cornered.

Normal people, on the other had, read about the Jennings incident and find it troubling on many levels. Of course, in the Left’s eyes, “normal people” are just future leftists who haven’t had their consciousness sufficiently raised, and who are still hopelessly mired in backward bourgeois morality.

So what, specifically, is Media Matters’ “gotcha” today? It’s that the Washington Times:

also advanced the manufactured link between Jennings and the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) because of Jennings’ past praise of gay rights activist Harry Hay. In fact [... in] the 1997 speech in which Jennings mentioned Hay, Jennings’ praise was of Hay’s work as an early gay rights activist and had nothing to do with NAMBLA.

Media Matters stresses again and again today that the word “NAMBLA” never appears once in Jennings’ speech. And they’re absolutely right.

Yet, to borrow from Trotsky: while Jennings may not be very interested in NAMBLA, NAMBLA was of considerable interest to Harry Hay, according to his heavily footnoted Wikipedia entry :

In the early 1980s, Hay joined other early gay rights activists protesting the exclusion of the North American Man Boy Love Association (NAMBLA) from participation in LGBT social movements, most noticeably pride parades–arguably the most visible signs of LGBT culture–on the grounds that such exclusions constituted a betrayal by the gay community. In 1983, at a New York University forum, sponsored by an on-campus gay organization, he remarked “[I]f the parents and friends of gays are truly friends of gays, they would know from their gay kids that the relationship with an older man is precisely what thirteen-, fourteen-, and fifteen-year-old kids need more than anything else in the world.” In 1986 Hay was confronted by police when he attempted to march in the Los Angeles pride parade, from which NAMBLA had been banned, with a sign reading “NAMBLA walks with me.” Hay refused to participate in the official 1994 parade in New York City commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots because of its exclusionary policies.

The same leftists who were delighted to indulge in faux outrage and moral posturing over a 2002 speech that Trent Lott delivered on ex-Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday, are now unwilling to “connect the dots” when those involved are on “their” side.

Before it was known that the 2016 Olympics had been awarded to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and that Chicago had been knocked out of the selection process in the first round of voting despite President President Obama’s whirlwind visit to Olympic authorities in Copenhagen, Denmark, Glenn Beck led his audience through an exercise in calculated absurdity.

He asked, “What Would Sotomayor Do?” — a reference to the new Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. His point was this: what would a hardcore, race-obsessed leftist like Justice Sotomayor do if given the chance to decide which major world city should host the 2016 Olympics according to the fuzzy tenets of so-called social justice?

According to the “progressive logic” of social justice, Rio has a strong case, Beck said. For 200 years Brazil was raided by French imperialist pirates and buccaneers and now has a horrific crime rate that includes 30 murders per week, which are all facts that should attract the support of social justice advocates; but on the downside, the city is home to a large rainforest-destroying oil company and it has a 125-foot-high status of Jesus, he said.

Beck also looked at other world cities, including Chicago. On the “plus” side, Chicago is the 21st worst city in the U.S. for poverty, has the highest murder rate in the country, and is multicultural. But on the downside, Chicago was founded in 1833 after a series of wars with native Americans, and worst of all it is populated by — gasp — Americans. What to do. What to do.

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that Chris Matthews was confusing the sacred and the profane by calling a joint session of Congress with the President, “a sacramental, religious experience.”  He ended this week with another wholly (holy?) inappropriate analogy to faith.

In a giddy performance that eclipsed even his usual caffeinated personality, (he would later in the broadcast gush when discussing David Letterman’s sex scandal, “I love all entertainers!”) Matthews seemed almost weak-kneed with joy at landing MSNBC’s hero of the week, Rep. Alan “Republicans want you to die” Grayson.  The tingle from his leg was running all the way up to his mouth.

MATTHEWS: Sir I have to hand it to you I think you are a Martin Luther!

Say WHAT?  “Here I stand” this isn’t:

It was an odd praise coming from a supposed Catholic, even a lapsed one… but that wasn’t the end of mangled historical references:

MATTHEWS: I remember being over there when the Berlin wall fell down with my old colleague John McLachlan and he said, “How did Luther know he could stand up against the Church?” and this is an old Jesuit talking. How did you know you could stand up to the Republicans the real clowns out there, well we could start with Limbaugh and the rest of them, and you know the whole crowd, what’s his name—Beck– the rest of them, how come you knew the way to beat these guys is to put them on defense?

Grayson, grinning ear to ear, and clearly proud—and full– of himself, accepted the accolade without embarrassment and gave an appropriately sanctimonious answer:

GRAYSON: Because they’re bullies, a bully always backs down don’t we all know that?  That’s what happened here.

Really?  I haven’t noticed anyone backing down from Alan Grayson.  I’ve heard ridicule.  I’ve heard liberals back away from his comments.  I’ve seen Democrats on the defensive trying to explain by Grayson saying Republicans want you to die and are responsible for an “American Holocaust” is not as bad as Joe Wilson blurting out “You lie.”

I’ve seen Republicans jump on the chance to sway Independents by protesting Grayson’s extreme rhetoric.  As Ben Johnson pointed out in a recent post, even Newsweek’s uber-lib Jonathan Alter thought the rant was not appropriate.  (I haven’t seen the usual suspects who generally jump on any trivializing of the word “holocaust” have anything to say here, however.)

What is not in evidence is that Alan Grayson accomplished anything other than to be a constant presence on MSNBC for 2 days.

Chrissy did not really ask anything of substance in the segment, it was more of a Tiger Beat fan club affair, like a teenaged girl in the 70s getting her chance to chance to interview Donny Osmond.  So, we got probing questions like: “Did you get any mean looks from the Republicans like Boehner… by the way Beohner, doesn’t Boehner look like a golfer who has just blown to put all the time?  Doesn’t he?”

Wow.

It may be just a coincidence, but the most famous person to misapply the notion of what’s  “holy” was named Grayson…

Maybe Chris was just auditioning for the part of Robin in Batman Retires: The Case of the Missing Medicare.

Glenn Beck has become a hot topic of discussion lately on the cable news programs. Branding him as the new leader of the conservative movement and the Republican Party, many competitors are looking to destroy the man. On her new CNN program, for instance, Joy Behar made another in a long line of direct attacks on Beck during a September 30th interview with Ann Coulter; Coulter’s response was brilliant:

Behar: People hate [Beck] more than they used to hate you.

Coulter: There is a liberal obsession with “tell us who your leader is.”  And you realize why liberals want to know is because this is how they argue: they find who the leader is and they destroy him…. We’ve decided we’re not going with a leader this time, so you’re going to have to argue with us on the facts.”

Indeed, members of the media, and leftists generally, have begun to attack Beck with a vengeance.  NewsReal has repeatedly shown that Beck is a prime target, now that he has helped take down the self-avowed communist Van Jones and the criminal enterprise known as ACORN.  While NewsReal has had some differences with Beck, our bloggers have found themselves on his side in most battles and have defended him.

But now, a number of prominent conservatives and Republicans – among them MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, radio host Michael Savage, and Senator Lindsey Graham — have begun taking swipes at Beck as well. Scarborough, for his part, has advised that Republicans running for President in 2012 ought to publicly repudiate the broadcaster. Savage repeatedly refers to Beck on his show by such smears as ”the hemorrhoid,” ”a fraudster,” and a “rip-off artist.” And on the latest Fox News Sunday, Senator Graham made it very clear that Beck has nothing to do with the Republican Party, and that he (Graham) doesn’t watch Beck’s show.

Conservatives don’t do themselves any favors by turning their backs on a person who is helping to shed a bright light on so many of the left’s hidden agendas and corrupt activities. Certainly anyone is perfectly entitled to disagree with Beck — but let’s not dump him. Coulter is correct in saying that while Beck is not the leader of the political right, neither is he its enemy.

From marineseabee on Claude Cartaginese’s post from yesterday:

“the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” To me, this means that ANY law telling us what firearm we can and cannot buy, own, use for self defense, use for hunting, and use in target practice, is one law too many. Having said that, if a law abiding citizen can buy a semi automatic rifle, he/she should be able to buy, own, and shoot a fully automatic weapon.
I realize that cetain people in the country (convicted felons and the mentally unstable) should not be able to perform any of the above listed applications of any firearm.
Because the person I met at a gunshow in 1989, who was selling an M-60 machinegun on a tripod and with 1000 rounds of ammo, did not accept credit cards, I would have owned that since then. All I would have had to pay extra was the federal tax stamp in order to own an automatic weapon. I contend that having to pay that tax is the same as a gun control law.

I responded in brief:

Does the 2nd amendment include nuclear weapons and VX poison gas?

And let me follow that up by saying that I consider myself a staunch defender of the second amendment — and have been even when I was a leftist. It’s important for citizens to have the right to bear arms (for all the usual reasons that gun rights advocates give.) But an absolutist interpretation of the second amendment does have its problems. When the Founding Fathers wrote the constitution I’m not sure they had M-60 machine guns in mind. Though, that’s not to say that a citizen should not be able to own such a weapon. I open the subject up for discussion and debate. How far does the Right to Bear Arms go?

AIM’s Cliff Kincaid had another top-notch column yesterday which presented further research into the radical politics of Fox News Contributor Marc Lamont Hill. Kincaid highlighted the following quote from a February 2008 op/ed by Hill:

For whites, an Obama victory would serve as the final piece of evidence that America has reached full racial equality. Such a belief allows them to sidestep mounds of evidence that shows that, despite Obama’s claims that “we are 90 percent of the way to equality,” black people remain consistently assaulted by the forces by white supremacy. For many black people, Obama’s success would provide symbolic value by showing that the black man (not woman!) can make it to the top. Although black faces in high places may provide psychological comfort, they are often incorporated into a Cosbyesque gospel of personal responsibility (”Obama did it, so can you!”) that allows dangerous public policies to go unchallenged.

(I’ll leave aside that Hill does not specify the “mounds of evidence” demonstrating “black people remain consistently assaulted by the forces by white supremacy.” He also fails to note what public policies would be “dangerous.” There’s a bigger ideological fish to fry here.)

For poor children — of all races — born into the ghetto, what is the path out of poverty? Who are the symbols and role models they should embrace to inspire them? Are they anti-capitalist, anti-American figures like Assata Shakur, Fidel Castro, and Mumia Abu-Jamal which — until recently — Hill trumpeted from his websites? Or do the life stories of Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Condoleezza Rice, Oprah Winfrey, Thomas Sowell, Jay-Z, and, yes, Marc Lamont Hill himself present more useful narratives?

Hill can mock the idea all he wants but a “Cosbyesque gospel of social responsibility” works. The American Idea — that in this country one can achieve personal success as a result of taking responsibility for oneself and participating in the free market system — has been demonstrated time and time again to be true no matter the skin color or gender of the person engaging in it. And Hill’s personal success is evidence of this whether he can realize it or not.

Part of this “gospel” of personal responsibility is honesty. Now that his previously expressed radical views have been exposed Hill has a few options:

1. He can risk his lucrative position as a Fox News contributor by defending the politics and leftist symbols which the majority of the country finds repugnant. (The “Free Mumia!” cult is marginal even among leftists. When Michael Moore of all people admits that a “progressive” movement is off base — as he did in Dude, Where’s My Country? — then perhaps that should cause some reflection.)

2. Hill can reexamine his politics. He can have his own “second thoughts” and explain how he no longer holds the same views he once did. He can do the same thing as Obama – throw his radical friends and symbols under the bus in order to engage the American mainstream.There’s nothing wrong with changing one’s political opinions.

The above two options are intellectually honest. The third, which Hill has chosen to pursue thus far, is not:

3. Hill can hide his actual views by changing his twitter page’s background, deleting his myspace, and trying to ignore his critics. In this fashion Hill can “have his cake and eat it too.” He can collect his Fox News money and present center-left views on The Factor while retaining his radical credibility in the leftist culture of the uxniversity.

This third option is not acceptable. The intellectual culture cannot function if its participants are deceitfully hiding their true political convictions.

Kevin Jennings, "Safe Schools Czar"

On the left, using so-called scare quotes has become a favored polemical trick. You know what I mean: they put quotation marks around words or phrases, either to denote sarcasm and cynicism, or to engender doubt about a concept’s value and accuracy.

Scare quotes are a kind of hipster secret handshake — a shorthand way of saying, “Of course, superior people like you and I ‘get’ how self-evidently silly XYZ is…” To normal folks, it’s a tiresome tactic that wore out whatever welcome it had, around the time Douglas Coupland published his third novel.

Now Media Matters is at it again, with a new post on their site: “Conservative media unleash anti-gay rhetoric in attacks on Jennings”

“Jennings” being Kevin Jennings, the Obama administration’s “safe schools czar.” Recently, FOX News reported that:

President Obama’s “safe schools czar” is a former schoolteacher who has advocated promoting homosexuality in schools, written about his past drug abuse, expressed his contempt for religion and detailed an incident in which he did not report an underage student who told him he was having sex with older men.

(…)

Jennings was appointed to the position largely because of his longtime record of working to end bullying and discrimination in schools. In 1990, as a teacher in Massachusetts, he founded the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN), which now has over 40 chapters at schools nationwide.

During the incident regarding the underage student (who confessed that he’d had sex with a strange man he’d met at the bus station) Jenning’s only concern seemed to be whether or not a condom had been used during the encounter. We know this because, although the incident occurred twenty-one years ago, Jennings has related the story as a major turning point in his life, in two books, and in many speeches, including the one recorded below:

“In their attacks on Jennings,” says Media Matters today, “numerous conservative media figures have resorted to thinly veiled homophobic appeals to paint Jennings, who is gay, as a ‘radical’ ‘gay activist’ with an ‘agenda’ of ‘promoting homosexuality in schools,’ and have misrepresented or distorted Jennings’ previous comments about religion and tolerance.”

See what I mean about scare quotes?

Now let’s see: if Kevin Jennings cannot accurately be described as a “gay activist,” I don’t know who can. My first clue was that he founded an activist organization twenty years ago with the word “gay” in its name.

But is Jennings a “radical”? Well, some people would say, based upon their sincerely held religious, moral and political convictions that, by definition, any “gay activist” is a “radical” one.

However, let’s stick to the more serious accusation about Jennings and his group “promoting homosexuality in schools.” Let’s look at one program sponsored by GLSEN. Readers can decide for themselves if the word “promoting” is or is not accurate.

At this point, credit is due to Pamela Geller and a handful of other bloggers, who’ve been posting information about Kevin Jennings and GLSEN for a long time. (WARNING: in its entirety, the post below contains sexually explicit language which may be disturbing):

The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN) is a national homosexual activist group targeting children in the public schools. Its founder, Kevin Jennings, was recently appointed to a high position in U. S. Department of Education by Barack Obama. GLSEN is part of the tax-supported Massachusetts Commission on Gay Lesbian Bisexual and Transgender Youth. (In fact, GLSEN’s membership in that commission is mandated by law!)

On March 25, 2000, GLSEN put on a conference called “TeachOut” for kids across and public school teachers across Massachusetts. This conference was co-sponsored by the Massachusetts Department of Education.

At this conference children as young as 12 years old were taught by state employees how to engage in various extremely dangerous (and disgusting) homosexual sex acts.

Again: the rest of that blog post contains sexually graphic language.

I’ll let Ann Coulter have the last word. In the segment below, she calls Jennings “another Bill Ayers” (who, besides being a terrorist, is also an educator), and then suggests that “Obama make Roman Polanski the safe schools czar [instead], which would satisfy the Hollywood Left“:

Widespread classroom showings of Moore’s films Bowling for Columbine, Farenheit 9/11 and Sicko – without critical commentary — provide a useful index of the decline of intellectual standards documented in Indoctrination U. These showings are naked attempts to persuade students of the correctness of the instructors’ personal views and could not occur without the similarly widespread acceptance of political agitation as a suitable form of classroom instruction. These and other events described in this preface provide a benchmark of the success achieved by the entrenched opponents of academic freedom. As Indoctrination U. documents, and as books such as Closed Minds demonstrate, the denial that there is even a problem remains the prevailing attitude in the university community. In the bitterly contested atmosphere created by the opponents of reform, little progress is likely to be made, and the decline of academic standards will continue, which is unfortunate for both liberal and conservative students alike, and is why Indoctrination U was written.

– Indoctrination U

If you have a favorite Horowitz quote you want to highlight for others then please email it to DavidSwindle {@} Gmail.com. Please include:

1. “Horowitz Quote of the Day” in subject line.
2. A link to where the quote is from. (No need to include this if it’s from a book.)
3. Any remarks you’d like published explaining what value you take from it.
4. Your preferred name and a link to your blog or homepage (if you have one.)

My recent NewsReal blog on Naomi Wolf and female genital mutilation (FGM) – also posted at Frontpagemag.com and Jihadwatch.org — has triggered a heated debate in the blogs’ comments sections on all three sites. The key arguments in these three sections personify some of the Left’s key tactics in its romance with tyranny and terror. It is crucial to shed light on these arguments in order to crystallize the malice, dishonesty and heartlessness which lie at the center of the leftist agenda. It also helps strengthen our efforts to fight on behalf of tyranny’s victims, which, in this case, are the hundreds of thousands of young girls who face the barbarity of female genital mutilation yearly around the world.

The recent controversy surrounds a Frontpage interview I did with Ines Laufer, an anti-FGM activist. Along with Lucy Mashua, a Kenyan victim of FGM, she is presently leading a new campaign, sponsoredgirl.com, to protect girls from this barbarity.

In my NewsReal blog, I raised the question of whether Naomi Wolf, who postures as a feminist concerned with women’s rights, will be at all interested in joining Laufer’s and Mashua’s campaign. The issue at stake here is that leftist feminists pretend they care about women, but when it comes to women who suffer under adversary cultures, they refuse to act, since doing so will legitimize their own societies which they despise and work to destroy. Thus, millions of women under Islamic gender apartheid have been abandoned by  leftist feminists, whose devotions lie with their anti-Western and anti-American faiths. The scholar and true feminist Phyllis Chesler has documented this phenomenon powerfully in her book The Death of Feminism.

To stress the main essence of this problem regarding Wolf and the hypocrites in her “feminist” camp, I asked in my blog:

“Will Naomi Wolf join the battle? For instance, will she denounce the Islamic theology and teachings that lead to the mutilation of Muslim girls in Islamic countries?”

My critics who seek to delegitimize my main point have now come forward and think they are scoring a powerful blow against me by, typically, pointing out that FGM is not exclusively Muslim. This is a key traditional tactic of the Left. In order to whitewash the barbarity of adversary cultures, they consistently exonerate it by pointing out that some kind of injustice exists somewhere else — and, especially, of course, how it exists in our own society and civilization.

Thus, some of the critics revel in how Lucy Semiyan Mashua, who is leading the new campaign against FGM, is from Kenya and comes from the Massai, a Christian African tribe. This is how their mental gymnastics work: FGM is not just an Islamic practice, so we can’t say anything critical about Islam when it is connected to FGM. This way we can’t say that anything is really better than anything else, and we especially can’t say that our civilization is better than Islam’s or that we have anything to teach Islamic societies.

This kind of thinking deliberately incapacitates any action that could be implemented on behalf of Islam’s victims. If you try to do something on behalf of the victims, which begins with honesty about who is perpetrating the crime and why, the critics come forward and say: “Hey, but it isn’t just Muslims that do it.” Then the critics feel really good about themselves for pointing this out and, yes, go home and do nothing about the subject at hand. So in the case of FGM, the leftist feels self-satisfied that he’s pointed out that it’s not just Islam that does it, he engages in no action to help the victims and the mutilation of girls under Islam continues.

Naturally, Muslims are not the only ones who perpetrate FGM. Of course, FGM is practised outside of Islam, including under non-Islamic African tribal cultures. I never said anywhere that FGM is only practiced by Muslims. But the key issue here is that Muslims are the principal religious group that practices this sexual violence against women. And the reality is that if you are a victim of FGM, then the chances are very high that you live in a Muslim household and in a Muslim culture.

Now within the context of Islamic FGM, the barbarity is kept alive and legitimized by Islamic theology. This is the case in Egypt, where this crime against girls is waged on a massive scale. The Egyptian government banned FGM in 1996, but an Egyptian court overturned the ban in July 1997 because of the ferocious uprising of the Islamic clerics, who fervently pointed to Islamic teachings to re-implement this war against women’s sexuality. The Muslim mutilators pointed to traditional Islamic teachings that sanction FGM, which include the Prophet Muhammad’s instruction that circumcising girls is “a preservation of honor for women.” Also, a legal manual of the Shafi’i school of Islamic jurisprudence, ‘Umdat al-Salik, which is endorsed by Al-Azhar University of Cairo — the oldest and most prestigious university in the Islamic world — states that circumcision is obligatory for both boys and girls.

Keeping FGM institutionalized also helps the Islamic mutilators keep the structure of Islamic gender apartheid in place. Keeping FGM legitimized and at work is one of the most effective means of keeping women subjugated and caged. After all, the strategy behind amputating the clitoris is clearly to kill the woman’s sexual desire and pleasure, which, in this diseased misogynist mindset, reduces the chances that she will ever toy with the notions of autonomy, equality and self-determination.

Question: How can we possibly help Egyptian girls, and other girls who are targeted for FGM under Islam, if we do not confront the philosophy behind the institutionalization of this violence? You cannot save Muslim girls from FGM without crystallizing what it is within the religion that gives fertile soil and legitimization to FGM. The way to save human beings from this violence is to isolate those teachings and to have them nullified – and this involves confronting certain Islamic teachings.

Nowhere am I saying that we don’t work against FGM in non-Muslim environments. We do that too. We do it all. But we can’t save the victims of Islamic mutilation if we are not honest about the Islamic impulses for that mutilation.

So the main point of my Newsreal blog, where I asked whether Naomi Wolf would join the battle against FGM, was to point out the hypocrisy of the Left’s silence on this matter. It’s a silence that stems from the fact that leftists like Wolf know that admitting the inferiority of an adversarial culture will legitimize Western civilization, a recognition that they cannot make without risking their entire identities as social critics. That’s why the leftist forces in our society do their best to excuse FGM with the tired old mantra: it’s not only Muslims that do it – as if inaction to save human beings from evil is somehow justified because a sin might exist somewhere else.

What a revolting image: the smug leftist turning his or her back on the victims of Islamic FGM because a non-Muslim somewhere perpetrated FGM. How does this self-satisfied inhumanity save the Muslim girls who will be mutilated in the future? How does it help the non-Muslim girls?

Hypothetical question: if we could have saved the Jewish inmates from Auschwitz before they were murdered, would it have been right to abort the rescue operation (which would have involved an honesty about Nazi doctrine) upon discovering that someone, somewhere, in some other place, said or did something anti-Semitic? Hey, it’s not just the Nazis that do it. Would that have sufficed to justify not lifting a hand to rescue Auschwitz’s inmates?

Some other connected tactics surface in the debate in the comments sections on my blog.  One critic thinks he is making a big point by stating that Morocco, one of the countries that Wolf visited during her political pilgrimage, does not practice FGM. But whatever the extent to which FGM is practiced or not in Morocco, the point is that it is practiced in Egypt and Jordan – where Wolf visited and says she found a vibrant sexuality lurking under the veil.

Another critic thinks she has scored a knockout blow against me by revealing that she did a Google search and found that Wolf has written about FGM. The issue is not whether Wolf has written about FGM. The issue is whether she has condemned the societies and cultures within which it is practiced, and whether she has done so on the premise that our society is more humane and has something to teach those societies and cultures. She has not. In The Beauty Myth, for instance, Wolf makes a critique of FGM only in passing, with a “everyone is guilty” theme that ends up comparing FGM with modern-day breast surgery.

The core issue is that Wolf does not voice her moral indignation against Islamic FGM and the Islamic theology that serves as its fertile soil. She does not condemn African tribal FGM for its African tribal roots, but in the context of how a universal misogyny is somehow responsible.

Thus, in the Islamic context, for instance, it is clear that someone like Wolf will never act, because protecting little girls’ genitals is less important for her than protecting herself from the charge of being Islamophobic. Her anti-Americanism, ultimately, has to be prioritized in a sacred and protected place.

In essence, because of Naomi Wolf and her like-minded feminist comrades, here is the situation: if you are a victimized girl being abused in a Muslim culture, then you have the unfortunate distinction of being part of a group that the West and FGM activists have difficulty helping, because the lib-Left has made sure that the Muslim culture and religion can never be criticized and, therefore, that its victims can never be protected or saved.

This is just another chapter of a long, dark and grotesque story – the story of the Left, with its hands drenched in human blood, sacrificing human beings on the altar of utopian ideals.

[Editors' note: Read more about the Left’ complicity in Islamic gender apartheid in Jamie Glazov’s new book, United in Hate: The Left's Romance with Tyranny and Terror]

Remember this?

JIMMY CARTER, FMR. U.S. PRESIDENT:  I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he‘s African-American.  I live in the South, and I have seen the South come a long way and I have seen the rest of the country that shared the South‘s attitude towards minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans.  And that racism inclination still exists.  And I think it‘s bubbled up to the surface because of the belief among many white people—not just in the South but around the country—that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country.  It‘s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply.

Apparently, you only think you do.

CNN’s Candy Crowley thought so too.  Check out this exchange she had with Jimmy Carter this morning, while she was at the Carter Library to do a puff piece on the occasion of the regrettable 39^th President’s 85^th birthday.

Crowley, who was very deferential, nonetheless asked the reasonable question about Carter’s controversial remarks, which had been disavowed pretty thoroughly by the President and his spokesman:

CROWLEY: Mr. President, let me ask you first, domestically, you made some remarks recently about how you felt about the protesters that were protesting against President Obama. You said, overall, you thought the protesters, were upset that there was a black president, that there was racism involved. You said that many people…

J. CARTER: By the way, that’s not what I said.

CROWLEY: OK…

J. CARTER: I said, those on the fringe element that had the vituperative personal attacks on president Obama, those were the ones that I included…

CROWLEY: Your first remarks were that overall…

J. CARTER: No, it wasn’t. If you read the remarks carefully, you’ll see that’s not what I said. I said those that had a personal vituperative attack on president Obama as a person, that was tinged with racism, but I recognize that people who disagree with him on health care or the environment, that the vast majority of those are not tinged by racism.

CROWLEY: So you think they were taken out of context. You didn’t mean that most of those protesters out there were racist…

J. CARTER: I meant exactly what I said. What I actually said, if you look at the transcript, is just what I just repeated to you.

Well, look at the transcript.  I don’t see the words, “fringe,” or “minority” anywhere.  There are no limitations in his remarks.  In fact,” many white people—not just in the South but around the country” and “overwhelming portion” DO make an appearance.

In fact, the next day, Carter repeated his main point (along with some embellishments and additional slanders, which Ben Johnson covered here.)

CARTER: There is an inherent feeling among many people in this country that an African-American ought not be President

Again, “many people,” not a “vituperative fringe.”

Mr. Carter, I believe you.  You DID mean what you said.  It was the culmination of a week of Democrat spokespeople and surrogates for the President floating this trial balloon and hoping that the “You lie” outburst by Congressman Joe Wilson would give you the opening to make this slander.  It backfired, and the White House was nimble enough to see it wasn’t working, and they threw you under the bus.  (For a list of the FOOs — Friends Of Obama — under the bus, check out Paul Cooper’s excellent post.)

And what you said clearly and plainly was that the majority of anger directed at the President came from racism.  Don’t give us this read the transcript “carefully” garbage.  You are a public speaker with decades of experience.  You knew what you were saying, and the general public is not expected to read between the lines to see if you left any wiggle room.  Had the public saluted when you ran this garbage up the flagpole, you would today be taking credit for having been the first person with your stature to sound the alarm.

So, Jimmah, is that bus heavy?  Good luck trying to crawl out from under… Of course your outrageous and predictable remarks near the end of this interview, saying that Iran is only reacting to Israeli and American aggression to “defend” itself, won’t help you in that effort.

Hat tip to JDamn at the Force of Reason.

Of course David Horowitz has written about this a few times.

A note to NewsReal’s readers: if you ever have a clip from a recent cable show that you find amusing or interesting then please email it to me to be posted or blogged about. DavidSwindle [AT] Gmail Dot Com.