Discussion for article #226865
It’s good that you bring it up, but is anyone surprised that the racist dunderheads at Fox News are using this to perpetuate their own narrative?
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Fox: You knew I was a snake when you picked me up.
LD
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If I were to have watched a movie with Joseph Stalin (who, when confronted with the news that his son had attempted suicide, stated, “He can’t even shoot straight!”) and he were to laugh at a particular segment, I would have hoped with all of my heart that I never thought that segment funny.
If any speech by Al Sharpton were praised by FOX, I would hope with all of my heart that Al would throw that speech in the wastebasket as quickly as possible.
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Actually I knew very little about Sharpton, and was surprised and impressed by this. But what’s really remarkable is that if the Fox people were genuine conservatives who really did believe in self-reliance and so-called family values, there’s much here they could embrace and say, “See, even Al Sharpton agrees with us!” But they’re so deep in their lying hypocrisy, it’s become such a habit, that they can’t actually hear what he’s saying or talk about it honestly.
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"Sharpton also said it’s wrong “that we have money to give military equipment to police forces, but we don’t have money for training, and money for public education, and money to train our children.”
just had to repost that, it goes to a fundamental question we should be asking in more ways.
It is hard to imagine what sort of nation we might be if we had spent that trillion we wasted attacking and occupying Iraq, on schools and laptops and K-12 satellites and the like.
Most (all) of these bristling war wagons they’ve converted into street-riot provoking toys, are cast offs from the Bush Wars.
They got $100/barrel oil out of the deal … we got traffic tickets.
…and a swat team in every hamlet.
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Fox needs to put on the air what the GOP base is thinking, but will not say aloud. There are no Bill Cosbys’ in the Fox viewer base. Their thug/taker caricature of the Black community feeds into their racial resentment which is one of the main tenets of Republican get out the vote tactics.
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This type of speech is not a new thing for Sharpton, or Jackson, or many other high-profile black preachers. FOX and The Usual Suspects, however, can never admit that a black leader is trying to fix the problem or even admits that a problem exists.
In their propaganda, all black leaders are race-baiting, race-pimping, race-exploiting racists who race race all day on the race race race trying to gin up The Other to rise up and Take Back “stuff” from the White Man, race race race.
It is an absolute imperative for FOX and the other mouthpieces to portray blacks as thugs/takers/no-account/criminal/useless, and black leaders as exploiters, race-baiters, riot-inciters and rabble-rousers – BECAUSE, if poor blacks and poor whites (aka the majority of both ethnicities) ever put aside mutual distrust, hate and racial tension, they’d realize they’re getting fucked sideways every day in America by the guys holding the puppet strings of FOX and the like.
In short: Keep 'em squabbling over bullshit, so they don’t notice they’re being screwed.
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I don’t understand the hatred of Al Sharpton from the right. Recently I tried looking online for the answer, and that just led to more confusion. Most comments I saw just called him a “race-baiter” and “race-pimp” without explaining how he is either of those things. The only semi-reasonable explanations came down to claims of hypocrisy because he doesn’t get involved with black on white crime - but all of the examples that were brought up were cases where police and investigators moved quickly to arrest those that committed the crimes. There isn’t any reason to protest and try to bring more publicity to crimes where the system works and the perpetrators are already arrested. Cases like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown have gotten attention from Sharpton and others because of the lack of arrest or even attempts to investigate.
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Sharpton has a very interesting personal story. He has turned his life completely around from the Tawana Bradley days. I never taulted his activism - just the way he went about it that turned so many people off. He grew up in Harlem in a pretty well to do family considering everyone else. His father was a contractor and they lived pretty well. He had one other younger brother and a sister from his mother’s first marriage. Then one day his father ran off with his wife’s daughter and left the family, leaving them destitute. His mother had to go to work and clean floors and do whatever jobs she could find to support them. The father then came back for the other brother and left Al and his mother alone. I’d say those factors contributed to a very angry young man But look at him now. A somewhat successful show on MSNBC and a determination to be better and make a difference.
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TPM, i think you have a problem. Why can’t you just report on what Rev. Sharpton had to say? Why does everything have to be presented through the lens of what FOX had to say about it? I am certainly glad the man’s remarks are covered here. But why can’t it stand alone, as it’s own story?
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I didn’t know that. I always thought of him as a self-promoter who injected himself into fraught situations, but when I hear him talk occasionally he does say incisive, worthwhile things. Good to know.
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What’s news is Al Sharpton’s remarks. But what’s news at Fox News is Fox News.
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When the media makes itself the story, that’s a story. I feel like this article also enlightened me to his evenhanded eulogy though.
I recall the civil rights marches in the south, Newark riots in the 60’s, the Watts riots, the Rodney King riots.
Each time Afr Am clergy told their flocks that they have to organize, register to vote and then vote.
Alas, each generation has to re-learn the same lessons.
We’re told that blacks are 67% (?) of the Ferguson population. With those numbers they should be a potent political force, but they’re not. That means only one thing: They haven’t been voting. Maybe they will now.
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Sharpton the foil. They’re not going to let go of that!
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Agree, he’s a hustler, but he can be a catalyst for some significant social change which is almost always difficult to bring about.
This isn’t the abolition of slavery that required a civil war.
This is a need to get a piece of the pie and political power in one community dominated by whites. Blacks have the numbers to do it.
I’m not wishing it, but I hope we don’t end up with another Rodney King type riot here.
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Fox wouldn’t care. These are the guys who’d say 2+2=5 if they needed to score a political point. Wait, they’ve already done that.
“first time we’ve heard the leadership in this minority community
really stand up and give a slap to the out-of-control demonstrators.”
That’s only because you were not fucking paying attention, on purpose. That’s your own fault. Now sit down and shut the fuck up.
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