If Juan Williams keeps this up, his next invitation to Fox News will be lost in the mail.
On Fox News Sunday, Fox News analyst Juan Williams called the conservative outrage over last week’s suspension of Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertsonhypocritical, given the right’s history of hounding MSNBC host Martin Bashir and others—which is notable as Williams, as he himself pointed out, is a Fox News analyst because he was fired from NPR for a remark about Muslims made in 2010.
“The right goes after Martin Bashir, they wanted Martin Bashir fired,” Williams said. “Remember Dixie Chicks, or Tim Robbins, or Bill Maher? All of that, the right says get them out of here. But then they want to cry foul when people are intolerant of them.”
“The reason that the right is so strongly backing this is because they think this is a potential wedge issue, especially with older, white, evangelical voters,” Williams said.
“When I got fired, it was part of an honest debate about terrorism in our society. My employer didn’t like it and fired me. But this is not about honest debate. What was said actually shuts down debate. It was ugly language about homosexual acts. It invites bigotry. It invites people to hate people who are gay. And this is amazing, because it is not in the Christian tradition to make judgments about them and to put them in a box.”
The woman who Martin Bashir described as “America’s dunce” went to the safe confines of Fox News and commented about Bashir’s resegnation from MSNBC. Palin, who usually have too many words coming out of her mouth before her brain actually formulate the thought, was true to form today when asked about Bashir’s resignation.
“My role is to accept his apology and be humble enough to accept it and move on,” Sarah said. “But I just hope that unprovoked attacked like that don’t result in people being hesitant to jump in the arena anyway. To get out there and serve the public or start a business or commit themselves to changing within their family their community their world doing whatever that they can despite the fact that in this world you are gonna be hurt and attacks will come your way. I don’t I just hope that an attack like that doesn’t make people hesitate.”
Egged on by the hosts at Fox News to comment on why MSNBC didn’t fire Bashir instead of allowing him to resign, Palin stated that she was indeed happy that the same “lame stream media” she attack every chance she gets, came to her rescue.
Well it was refreshing to see though that many in the media did come out and say ‘look our standards have got to be higher than this.’ Those with that platform with a microphone a camera in their face they’ve got to have more responsibility taken.
The entire interview felt like a victory lap for those sitting on the Fox News set, as Palin took the bigger person role in a battle she quite frankly started.
Back in early November, Palin equated the national debt to “slavery,” proving that she knew nothing about slavery or what the slaves actually lived through. Martin Bashir tried to educate Mrs Palin, by quoting life stories from a diary of a slave owner. Bashir’s goal was to show Palin that if she really had any idea what slaves lived through, she would not have made such a dumb comparison.
Personal Note: I disagree with Bashir decision to resign today. His accurate and insightful take on the disfunction in today’s politics and the Republican party will be greatly missed.
MSNBC host Martin Bashir resigned Wednesday following controversy surrounding remarks he made on his show in November about former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.
“Upon further reflection, and after meeting with the president of MSNBC, I have tendered my resignation,” Bashir said in a statement. “It is my sincere hope that all of my colleagues, at this special network, will be allowed to focus on the issues that matter without the distraction of myself or my ill-judged comments.”
In a segment that aired on his show in November, Bashir called Palin a “world class idiot” after she equated the United States borrowing money from China with slavery.
Citing a diary item describing various punishments for slaves, Bashir added that Palin should be forced to eat excrement.
The host later apologized on air for his remarks and took a leave of absence.
“I deeply regret what was said, will endeavor to work hard at making constructive contributions in the future and will always have a deep appreciation for our viewers – who are the smartest, most compassionate and discerning of all television audiences,” Bashir said in his statement Wednesday.
MSNBC President Phil Griffin said in a statement: “I understand his decision and I thank him for three great years with MSNBC. Martin is a good man and respected colleague — we wish him only the best.”
And that is the problem with liberals. We are quick to apologise, even when we are correct.
On Friday, Martin Bashir responded to a Sarah Palin statement that compared America’s deficit to slavery. Sarah Palin obviously knows nothing about slavery or the unthinkable things that happened to the human beings who suffered and died in its name. So on Friday, Martin Bashir tried to educate Palin on some of the experiences slaves went through, and suggested that if she had any experience even remotely close to what the slaves suffered, she would not be throwing around the “slavery” analogy so easily.
But on Monday, Martin offered an apology, calling his Friday’s segment “wholly unacceptable.”
“Last Friday, on this broadcast, I made some comments which were deeply offensive and directed at Governor Sarah Palin. I wanted to take this opportunity to say sorry to Mrs. Palin, and to also offer an unreserved apology to her friends and family, her supporters, our viewers, and anyone who may have heard what I said. My words were wholly unacceptable. They were neither accurate, nor fair. They were unworthy of anyone who would claim to have an interest in politics, and they have brought shame upon my friends and colleagues at this network, none of whom were responsible for the things that I said.”
“In the battle of ideas, America leads the world in whole-hearted discussions and disagreements, and these arguments can be heard on a daily basis. But what I did on Friday had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with that great tradition, and I am deeply sorry. Upon reflection, I so wish that I had been more thoughtful, more considerate, more compassionate. but I was not. And what I said is now a matter of public record.”
“But if I could add something to the public record, it would be this: That I deeply regret what I said, and that I have learned a sober lesson in these last few days. That the politics of vitriol and destruction is a miserable place to be, and a miserable person to become. And I promise that I will take the opportunity to learn from this experience. My hope is that it will renew in me a spirit of humility and humanity, that looks for the good and that builds upon the great things that this country has to offer to all of us, regardless of our political persuasion. This will be my guiding light and compass in the days ahead. But once again, I am truly sorry for what I said on Friday.”
Now I know there are those who would say that Martin is right for apologizing. That stooping to their level is not the way to go. But I do believe that sometimes, the only way to reach the low hanging fruit, the low thinking people is to reach down to their level. The Republicans live on this low level, and have been cutting the legs out from under the nation with their lies and dumb anology and misrepresentation of the truth for far too long. Sometimes, you have to stoop down and swing back.
For the record, since making her dumb statement, Sarah Palin has actually doubled down, repeating the slavery analogy at different settings.
Ah Martin! I am on your side obviously, but sometimes… sometimes, you… you say things the rest of us wish we could say.
Such was the case when Martin gave Sarah a lesson in slavery. You see, Sarah, trying to bring more attention to herself and her new book, spoke last weekend to an audience and compared Obamacare and the deficit to slavery. “Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China,” Palin told a crowd of supporters in Iowa on Saturday night according to a report in The Des Moines Register. “When that money comes due – and this isn’t racist, but it’ll be like slavery when that note is due. We are going to beholden to the foreign master.”
Yes folks, Sarah is not too bright. Or maybe she is. Because those in her base loved her dumb statement and probably rushed to the store to get her book. But as I watched and listened to Palin, I couldn’t help but wondered if she would make that same slavery statement if she experienced anything close to what some slaves had to live through.
Martin Bashir must have felt the same way, because on his “Clear the Air” segment on MSNBC, Martin told the story as told through the diary of Thomas Thirstlewood, a British overseer at a sugar plantation in Jamaica in 1750. Based on his own writing, Thirstlewood was a crude evil man, and treated the slaves he watched worse than anyone would treat an animal. Bashir told of two of Thirstlewood’s diary entries, where he wrote about making a slave defecate in the mouth of another slave and in another entry, Thirstlewood wrote about making a slave “piss” in the eyes and mouth of yet another slave.
After pointing out some of these horrendous treatments some slaves went through at the hands of Thomas Thistlewood, Martin Bashir concluded, “I could go on, but you get the point. When Mrs. Palin invokes slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, she would be the outstanding candidate.”
Russell Simmons, who recently wrote an article demanding that the rich pay their fair share in taxes, is beginning to take another look at the 12 day old protest on Wall Street. In an interview today on MSNBC, Simmons, worth almost $350 million, told Martin Bashir;
… if I get involved really heavily in this one, we find the agenda and have a common ground… we can bring hundreds of thousands of people… small seeds are planted, but it could grow into something very big.”
Occupy Wall Street began as a small grassroot protest meant to send a message to the wealthy that middle class Americans are mad as hell, and they’re not gonna take it anymore! Since it started, the money controlled Media have totally ignored the protesters until recently, when unnecessarily aggressive crowd control measures by the New York police department got an entire segment on The Last Word on MSNBC.
Russell Simmons and a few hundreds of thousands more protesters will be a nice little addition.
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