Posts Tagged ‘bigotry’

“They’re brothers … they’re happy and they’re singing and they’re colored.”The Wayans Brothers opening.

That was the joke opening from the old television show, but it could be thought of as the way some on Fox News Views sees President Barack Obama.

Here are some words from bigoted Fox News Views anchor Eric Bolling, who has a comforting environment at a network that is often hostile to black folks.

“So what’s with all the hoods in the hizzy? A month after the White House hosted the rapper Common, who glorifies violence on cops, the president opened his doors to one of Africa’s most evil dictators. Here’s Ali Bongo, the Gabonese president, who’s been accused of human rights violations and plundering billions of his country’s dollars.”

The words “hizzy” and “hood” should give you a major clue about where his heart and mind are with respect to black people.

This is beyond mere partisan politics, here. The message is a window to what is in the heart of Eric Bolling, a man who seems hostile to black people on Fox News Views. Bolling knows that when he says “hoods” to his audience they think of undesirable black people. This is all beyond the scope of mere coincidence.

During the segment, Human Events editor Jason Mattera declared that “Barack Obama likes to defecate on American allies,” and Bolling had this exchange with Fox Business reporter Sandra Smith:

REP. JOHN GARAMENDI (D-CA): There are good guys. There are bad guys out there. We’ve got to stay engaged.

SMITH: We don’t have to have them at home, though.

BOLLING: Thank you, Smitty.

SMITH: We don’t have to have them in our White House and entertaining them.

BOLLING: Where? Where? Where? Go ahead, say it. Where?

SMITH: In the hizzy.

BOLLING: In the hizzy. Thank you, Smitty.

SMITH: Do we really have to have them in the White Hizzy?

“Hizzy,” as I said before, is a way of reminding you that President Obama is black and he is turning the precious White House into, as Smith describes it, the “White Hizzy.”

What is the real message, here, to Fox News Views watchers? They want their viewers to vote his black ass out of their precious White House.

“Barack Obama likes to defecate on American allies,” was a line from Mattera. That is absolutely disgusting and indicative of the hatred toward Obama coming from the far right.

Sorry to put it that harsh and real, but the message from some of these individuals at Fox News Views is unmistakable.

Source: Media Matters for America

A still fairly recent release of a Harris poll that put into sharp focus how ignorant some Republicans are when it comes to their views on President Barack Obama. Some of the revelations in the poll show the depth of the hatred that some close-minded Republicans have for this president. And, that hatred started long before he was president and long before he became the official nominee for the presidency in 2008. The hatred started before this nation knew much of anything about Barack Obama.

The findings of the Harris poll continue to reflect the hatred that exists in the dark hearts of some of these Republicans. Below are summaries of the Harris poll results as compiled by Media Matters for America.

According to the Harris poll, conducted of 2,320 adults between March 1 and March 8, a majority of Republicans believe President Obama:

  • is a socialist (67 percent);
  • wants to take away Americans’ right to own guns (61 percent);
  • is Muslim (57 percent);
  • wants to turn over the sovereignty of the United States to a one-world government (51 percent); and
  • has done many things that are unconstitutional (51 percent).

It goes on:

  • large minorities also believe Obama was not born in the United States and is therefore ineligible for the presidency (45 percent);
  • many believe he is a racist (42 percent);
  • and many believe he is doing many things Hitler did (38 percent)

There is your Republican party (still believing in thoroughly vetted and debunked garbage. It basically shows that everyday Republicans and tea baggers are like storm troopers from the Star Wars movies. They operate like robots taking their marching orders from right-wing extremists like Roger Ailes, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity.

You’ve probably heard about Tea Party members shouting “Nigger!” at Black Congressmen during a protest in Washington, D.C. last weekend. One of the protesters spat on Congressman Emmanuel Cleaver, while another called openly gay Representative Barney Frank a “faggot” as the laughing crowd imitated his lisp.1

But Saturday was just the most recent example of the intolerance and hate coming from right-wing extremists this past year. At times it’s been instigated by Republican leaders. When not, it’s usually condoned and seen as part of a strategy to score politically. Either way, it’s completely unacceptable and has to stop.

It’s time to confront Republican leadership and force them to take responsibility for the atmosphere they’ve helped create. Join us in drawing a line in the sand, and ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1651-835564

We’re calling on RNC Chair Michael Steele, House Minority Leader John Boehner, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to publicly do two simple things:

  1. Unequivocally condemn bigotry and hate among their supporters, and make clear that those who embrace it have no place in their party.
  2. Make clear that they will not tolerate fear-mongering and coded appeals to racism from officials in the Republican party, at any level.

Republican leaders publicly denounced Sunday’s ugly scene, but they failed to acknowledge that this is only the latest incident in a pattern of violent rhetoric, racially charged imagery, and paranoid conspiracy theories at Tea Party rallies.2 Many Tea Partiers aren’t simply about dissent — they use fear and hatred to assault the very legitimacy of our elected leaders. It’s the worst America has to offer.

Despite this, Republican leaders court the Tea Party movement while methodically supporting, exacerbating and exploiting their fear and anger for cynical political ends.3 This is nothing less than a betrayal of American values, and it’s up to us to force the Republicans to stop aiding and abetting this enterprise:

http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1651-835564

The Tea Party movement has been marked by racially inflammatory and violent outbursts since its inception a year ago. GOP leaders are trying to pass off this weekend’s assaults on Congressmen Lewis, Cleaver, Clyburn and Frank as isolated incidents. But when so-called “isolated incidents” crop up again and again, a pattern starts to emerge. The examples are numerous.

At rallies held to protest tax day last year, Tea Partiers carried signs that announced “Obama’s Plan: White Slavery,” “The American Taxpayers are the Jews for Obama’s Oven,” and “Guns Tomorrow!”4 The Republican National Committee had endorsed the rallies, and RNC Chairman Michael Steele encouraged Tea Partiers to send a “virtual tea bag” to President Obama and Democratic Congressional leadership.5 After reports of the fear-mongering signs surfaced, Steele did nothing to distance his party from the lunatic fringe. He has even gone so far as to say that if he didn’t have his current position, he’d be “out there with the tea partiers.”6 Some Republican governors even planned a “Tea Party 2.0″ for the following month in an effort to build on the rallies’ momentum.7

The Tea Party’s venomous rhetoric picked up steam over the summer, when angry mobs flooded town hall meetings legislators had organized as sites for rational, civil debate on health care reform. After one meeting in Atlanta, a swastika was painted on the office of Congressman David Scott (D-GA), who had also received a flier addressed to “nigga David Scott.” 8 Some protesters showed up at town hall meetings carrying guns, including at least one man who was armed at an event where the President was speaking.9 Again, Republicans responded to these tactics with silence, doing nothing to denounce them.

Similarly, there was no public outcry from Republican leadership when Mark Williams, a leader of the Tea Party movement, was exposed for having described the President as “an Indonesian Muslim turned welfare thug and a racist in chief” on his blog.10 Instead, members of the GOP continued to show up to and endorse Tea Party rallies. And as recently as Sunday — the day that the historic health care bill passed the House — Republican members of the House riled up the same Tea Party crowd that had earlier harassed their fellow members with hate and bigotry.

Our country deserves better than this. No matter what party one supports, we should all take strong action to support civil, honest, and respectful public debate. Can you take a moment to call on Michael Steele, John Boehner, and Mitch McConnell to denounce the racist rhetoric and fear-mongering that have been ongoing, significant characteristics of the Tea Party movement, and tell those who embrace these divisive and un-American beiefs that they have no place in their party, as members or leaders? And when you do, please ask your family and friends to do the same:

http://colorofchange.org/hate/?id=1651-835564

Thanks and Peace,

– James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Milton and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
March 23rd, 2010

1. “Tea Party Protests: ‘Ni**er,’ ‘Fa**ot’ Shouted At Members Of Congress,” Huffington Post, 3-20-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/127?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=7

2. “10 Most Offensive Tea Party Signs And Extensive Photo Coverage From Tax Day Protests,” Huffington Post, 4-16-09
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/128?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=9

3. “Memo Reveals GOP Plan to Exploit Fear of Obama,” AOL News, 3-4-2010
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/137?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=11

4. See Reference 2

5. “Tax Day Tea Parties Officially Endorsed By Republican Party,” Huffington Post, 5-15-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/138?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=13

6. “Steele: I’d join the tea parties,” Politico, 1-15-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/136?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=15

7. “GOP govs plan Tea Party sequel,” Politico, 5-12-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/131?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=17

8. “Rep. David Scott’s (D-Ga) office spray-painted with Swastika,” Daily Kos, 8-11-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/132?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=19

9. “Armed and Dangerous?” Talking Points Memo, 8-11-2009
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/133?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=21

10. “Tea party leader calls Obama a welfare thug,” The Loop, 9-15-09
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/134?akid=1397.868165.igiepL&t=23

Far-right extremist Rush Limbaugh is taking another shot at black people and attacking them for what he sees as “black dialect” as far as the way he hears blacks.

LIMBAUGH: Did you catch — you catch that, sir? What did you — did you catch that? No, you missed it, you missed it. See, you’re listening to the substance here, you missed it this. Play it again, Mike.

[...]

LIMBAUGH: This is what Harry Reid was talking about. Obama can turn on that black dialect when he wants to and turn it off. The president of the United States just said here as a condition of receiving — and I wonder if this was on the teleprompter. Did somebody put this on the prompter? As a condition of receiving access to Title I funds, we will ax all states. Who’s he trying to reach out here to? The Reverend Jackson? The Obama criticizer? Who’s he — who’s he — now, if I used the word “ax” the rest of the day, am I going to get beat up and creamed for making fun of this clean, crisp, calm, cool, new, articulate president? Maybe we should do it and see what happens. I’ll ax my advisers, and I might even ax Governor Coomo [Cuomo], as the Reverend Jackson pronounced his name.

As we have seen over the years, Limbaugh rarely misses an opportunity to take shots at black people and to try and portray them as second-class citizens and as inferior.

And, as always, his supporters (who in privacy chuckle at such shots at black people) follow him and make excuses for his bigotry.

Media Matters for America:
http://mediamatters.org/limbaughwire/2010/02/22#0039

Fox News right-wing commentator and religious expert Brit Hume (on the Sunday, Jan. 3 edition of Fox News Sunday) offered golfing phenom Tiger Woods, experiencing no shortage of marital problems these days, some religious advice. Hume, reminiscent of Europeans who went into Africa to colonize and civilize blacks (by introducing and imposing their religious beliefs), was strong in his words of advice toward Woods.

HUME: Tiger Woods will recover as a golfer. Whether he can recover as a person, I think, is a very open question. And it’s a tragic situation. . . . But the Tiger Woods that emerges once the news value dies out of this scandal, the extent to which he can recover, seems to me to depend on his faith. He’s said to be a Buddhist. I don’t think that faith offers the kind of forgiveness and redemption that is offered by the Christian faith. So my message to Tiger would be, ‘Tiger, turn to the Christian faith and you can make a total recovery and be a great example to the world.’

Hume seems to be engaging in what is little more than religious bigotry by taking it upon himself to define Buddhism and suggest Woods just abandon it and embrace Christianity.

Check out this video of the historic Alex Haley film “Roots.” Fast forward to about 6:55 of this clip to see the relevance (below the video is the transcript).

Hume’s comment made me think long and hard about this particular scene from that film.

CAPTAIN DAVIES: What are they like…the blacks?

MR. SLATER: They’re just a different kind of breed, sir. A man breeds a dog for hunting…and breeds another sort of dog for his family. Blacks are slow-minded but strong. They’re made for slavery like you’re made to run this ship. The natural order of things, eh?

DAVIES: Yes. Yes, I could understand that, I suppose.

SLATER: It’s good for them, us taking them like that. They’re better off for it, sir.

DAVIES: I’m not sure I understand that part, Mr. Slater.

SLATER: For one thing, there’s Christianity. We’re bringing them to a Christian land. That’s got to be better for them than the heathen Allah they got now. That’s the first thing. Second is…we’re saving them from being eaten by their own kind. They do that, you know. Cannibals, all of them.

DAVIES: As I said before, Mr. Slater…below decks, you’re the expert.

Maybe Hume feels like he is civilizing Woods by trying to convert him to Christianity … much like Mr. Slater believed in “Roots.”

The religious bigotry from Hume, however, displays a shameful form of ignorance and bigotry. It also shows that Hume has learned nothing from the bigoted beliefs (symbolic of intolerance) of some people 400 years ago.

It’s not to say Hume is exactly like slave masters, but it is sad he has not learned a little something about religious bigotry from that horrible legacy.

Check out how a few conservatives are predictably coming to the defense of Hume: http://mediamatters.org/research/201001040038

Fox News takes a story about the small drop in in the jobless rate and spins in the worst possible way with this irresponsible headline that screams: RIGHT-WING BIAS.

This is the kind of bias and prejudice that makes Fox News look like a second-rate tabloid magazine.

Join me for a moment of laughter and take note of the phony-ass Fox News slogan: Fair & Balanced.

President Obama spoke out strongly against the tragedy that took place at Fort Hood, Texas and expressed sympathy for the victims and families of the victims of this violent and terrible crime that has shaken our nation at its core. But, as I read an opinion piece posted through the Fox News Web site, I quickly realized that political opportunists who are haters of the president will let no opportunity to attack the president pass unexploited.

Dan Gainor, who is the Boone Pickens Fellow and the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture, also is a contributor to Fox News with regard to opinion pieces. It is crystal clear, however, that his latest entry to the Fox News right-wing effort is a desperate attempt to exploit the Fort Hood tragedy as an opportunity to attack President Obama utilizing the weakest and most flimsy of material imaginable.

The headline reads, “Obama on Ft. Hood — Not Even ‘Shocked’” to get things started. Then, the sub headline reads,  ”While President Obama called the murders at Ft. Hood  ”horrible” and a “tragedy” and urged “prayers,” the response seemed understated compared to the other incidents.” So, it is not enough that he called the murders at Fort Hood “horrible” and a “tragedy” as far as some right-wing nuts are concerned. Because he did not specifically use the word “shocked” it seems he now is again being attacked.

Here is how hater Dan gets started:

How a president responds to a crisis defines him. President Obama has shown how upset he was after the murder of abortion Dr. George Tiller and after the attack on the Holocaust Museum. But when it came to the Ft. Hood shootings, the president twice gave the incident a limited response …devoting little more than 4 minutes over two separate appearances to the 13 dead and 30 wounded.

In the Tiller case, the president was “shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning.” In the case of the museum attack, Obama was “shocked and saddened by today’s shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.”

But when it came to the horrendous Ft. Hood shootings, the term “shocked” was nowhere to be found. Instead, the initial response was shoehorned into comments he made opening the White House Tribal Nations Conference. First there were a couple applause lines to Native Americans and Obama’s “shout out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner,” who appears not to have won the medal. (Joe Medicine Crow won the Medal of Freedom — the nation’s highest civilian honor.)

What is striking about Gainor’s comment is he (in true right wing form) comes back to one of their key issues (taking away the reproductive freedom of women … abortion). It shows the obsession on the part of many conservatives with the issue of abortion and how upset a large number of right wingers were that the president and others were outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller.

Gainor is actually counting the minutes devoting to the president’s responses to different tragedies. That is just weak, silly and insulting to the victims of all the aforementioned crimes to use it as a tool to launch a politically-motivated attack.

If President Obama had held a press conference to express his feelings he probably would have been accused of exploiting the tragedy to put himself in the spotlight.

Actually, Gainor goes on to attack President Obama anyway for putting himself into the spotlight.

Then the president addressed the shooting. While he called the incident “horrible” and a “tragedy” and urged “prayers,” the response seemed understated compared to the other incidents. Then, in true Obama fashion, he did manage to make the shootings at least in part about him. “I want all of you to know that as commander in chief, that there’s no greater honor but also no greater responsibility for me than to make sure that the extraordinary men and women in uniform are properly cared for and that their safety and security when they are at home is provided for us.”

To some, that statement is taking responsibility, but two a right-wing political bigot it is about putting yourself in the spotlight. The writer ignores the positive as President Obama salutes the brave men and women who fight for our country and instead chooses to politicize the statement to portray the president in a negative light. Many conservatives have attacked President Obama for not saluting the troops enough, but when he does many of these same conservatives essentially accusing him of grandstanding.

How pathetic can it get from Gainor?

He busts out the stopwatch again.

Two minutes and 39 seconds later he was done and without even taking a breath back to talking about the Native American event. Nowhere in his speech or his remarks the next day did he even acknowledge that the attacker was a Muslim. In his statement after the museum attack, he correctly criticized “anti-Semitism and prejudice” but made no mention of religion in the latest incident.

The Nov. 6 appearance took up just 1 minute 30 seconds and this time it was paired with his remarks on the bad unemployment numbers. In all, he spent 4 minutes 9 seconds to address the attack on 43 Americans …less than 6 seconds per person.

This is beyond childish.

Then, notice the bigotry reveals itself again as Gainor bashes the president for not acknowledging that the accused attacker in the Fort Hood massacre was a Muslim.

Far-right blogger Michelle Malkin has long been an extremist nut who thrives on the hysterical and controversial to earn herself a place on these talk shows as she trashes the leader of our country. Crooks and Liars is on the case.Political hate speech is nothing new for Malkin who, actually, has made a nice career for herself with such talk. Malkin was in the right place at the right time as she made an appearance on the far-right Sean Hannity’s hour of hate on Fox News Wednesday night. The venom was flying all over the place as Malkin started to get her hate on before a national conservative audience on Fox News as she cried about President Obama’s speech before the United Nations.

Predictably, Malkin’s words took a familiar track:

MALKIN: He doesn’t like this country very much.And I think you did a great video tour there of all of his wonderful hits on his “We Suck ’09″ tour, ah, so far. And this latest speech before the United Nations and its cast of villainous characters — it was really a Legion of Doom parade that he dignified with his presence — and he solidified his place in the international view as the Great Appeaser and the Groveler in Chief!

Ha, that was almost clever. Only to the far right can building bridges be considered groveling and less favorable then running roughshod over worldwide neighbors. More and more, Malkin is revealing herself as a hater of America (when it is not run by a Republican). She also reveals herself as an elitist who expects President Obama to go around the world and tell other countries to kiss his ass. President Obama is smart enough to know that our neighbors around the world need to be our friends and they deserve a level of respect that does not come when a president is running around the world like a cocky cowboy telling dumb foreigners they should kiss his feet.

More from Malkin:

MALKIN: With this speech, and over the last eight months with his policies of retreat and surrender, he has solidified his place as the weakest of weak leaders of modern American history. There’s no question about it! They laugh at us! He is a laughingstock.

Uh, I think this truly is projection as Crooks and Liars points out. The real laughingstock are these far-right zealots who seem to become haters of America when there is not a Republican president. The more these hate-driven right wingers continue to spew this kind of venom the more they will see their party shrink as multiculturalism grows stronger and stronger.

Crooks and Liars:
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/malkins-venom-knows-no-bounds-obama

Here is a Media Matters for America-produced video that I have published on here before. I am posting it again as I think it has again become relevant in the current political climate.

When you see these videos it becomes a bit easier to put together the puzzle and see the pattern that begins to come into focus.

Far-right Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly brought in one of the few people he would have to turn to the right and use binoculars to see, the nutty Glenn Beck.

This is an excerpt from The O’Reilly Sucks Blog:

Next up was Glenn Beck, Billy had Beck on to cry about the liberals who are attacking him. Beck said he dont care, and called them communists. O’Reilly mentioned Van Jones and the colorofchange group, but never once mentioned that 36 sponsors have pulled their ads from the Glenn Beck show. They just ignored it like it never happened, then claimed it was only liberals who are mad at Beck. Earth to Billy and crazy Glenn Beck, when 36 major Corporations pull their ads from your show, including wal-mart, Sprint, Farmers Insurance, and UPS, etc. it’s more than just liberals mad at you.

Andnot once has O’Reilly ever mentioned why those sponsors have pulled their ads from the Beck show, because Beck called Obama a racist who hates white people.So they ignore all the facts to claim that only liberals are mad at him. Hey guys, wal-mart is hardly a liberal company. O’Reilly even said the left is against freedom of speech, and they just want to shut him and Beck up. Which is just ridiculous, and total right-wing lies. The left supports free speech 100%, all we want from you right-wing stooges is for you to tell the truth, and stop putting out all the right-wing propaganda and lies. We dont want to shut you up, we just want you to tell the truth. So we report on your lies, and that is not violating your free speech rights in any way.

O’Reilly called Van Jones anti-American, then admitted he knows nothing about the man. Beck called him a communist, and repeated the same crap he reported about him on his Tuesday show. Beck even talked about the Obama FCC diversity czar, he claims the man is a radical who wants to limit how many kids you can have, and that he is going to shut down all the right-wing talk radio shows. Which is all lies, none of that is going to happen, but O’Reilly sat there and agreed with Beck like it was true. Finally beck said he feels sorry for the Kennedy family, but that he did not agree with Ted Kennedy on anything.

It shows how sad things are that these cable news commentary shows have hosts interviewing other hosts so they can promote each other and use a little help to advance their extremist agendas. O’Reilly seemed to have Beck on to do little more than to help the ridiculous talk show host try to rehabilitate his damaged image in the wake of his insanely-nutty and racial charges against President Obama that has caused sponsors to distance themselves.

That great American Glenn Beck has fun making fun of a woman’s handicap. The compassion-challenged Beck never misses an opportunity to make fun of someone’s handicap while people in the background laugh him on.

Just in case you didn’t think anti-Muslim racism and anti-Islam hatred continues in the United States of American then you have been asleep at the wheel. A Florida high school student came in with a hateful T-shirt and was sent home by the school. This is a highly disturbing story I initially spotted on the Web site Think Progress shirtwhere it initially caught my attention. The hateful, bigoted message on the shirt (as you can see in the photo) reads “ISLAM IS OF THE DEVIL.”

Students have a right of free speech, and we have allowed students to come to school wearing clothes with messages,” Wittmer said. “But this message is a divisive message that is likely to offend students.” [...]

He said there also has to be equal treatment of different faiths.

“The next kid might show up with a shirt saying ‘Christianity is of the Devil,’” Wittmer said.

This kind of speech is hateful, bigoted and the school district was proper in its decision to send these individuals home to hopefully think about the ridiculous nature of their actions and their clothing choices. This is a dangerous time in our society where hate, bigotry and racism can spark unspeakable acts of violence. In the years since 9/11, the anti-Islam and anti-Muslim hate has only grown stronger in this nation. The good people of this country have to decide that they are going to stand up against this kind of hatred that creates a hostile environment for people.

Here is a passage with a quote from the young lady in question:

Wayne Sapp’s daughter, Emily Sapp, 15, was the student sent home from Gainesville High on Tuesday. Both Faith and Emily Sapp said it was their decision, not that of their parents, to wear the shirts to school in order to promote their Christian beliefs. Emily Sapp said the “Islam is of the Devil” statement was aimed at the religion’s beliefs, not its members.

“The people are fine,” she said. “The people are people. They can be saved like anyone else.”

Sadly, Emily simply doesn’t get it.

While trying to excuse herself from the disguised racism that is virtually unmistakable, she is trying to say it’s just about religion. However, condemning an entire religion (which is up for interpretation since some would say the same things about Christianity. That too is wrong) is no less hateful, stupid or wrong than condemning an entire race.

Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/08/26/islam-devil-shirt/

The Gainesville Sun:
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090825/ARTICLES/908259940/1002/NEWS01?Title=More-students-wear-Islam-of-the-Devil-shirts-to-school

OAKLAND, Calif.—Facing increased pressure from ColorOfChange.org members, 16 new companies have pledged not to run additional ads on Fox News Channel’s Glenn Beck Program. Thirty-six companies have now committed not to support Beck’s show since ColorOfChange.org launched its campaign three weeks ago.

The defections come as ColorOfChange.org members mobilized last week against corporations who still refused to pull their ads from Glenn Beck by placing thousands of phone calls to company executives. By the end of the week, three of these companies – Clorox, Lowe’s and Sprint – had pledged not to run additional ads; Red Lobster and Vonage have not yet responded.

The new companies distancing themselves from Beck include Airware Inc. (makers of Brez anti-snoring aids), Ancestry.com, AT&T, Blaine Labs Inc., Campbell Soup Company, Clorox, Ditech, The Elations Company, Experian (creator of FreeCreditReport.com), Farmers Insurance Group, Johnson & Johnson (makers of Tylenol), Lowe’s, NutriSystem, Sprint, The UPS Store and Verizon Wireless. They join twenty other companies who previously pledged not to run additional ads on Glenn Beck. The moves come after the Fox News Channel host called President Obama a “racist” who “has a deep-seated hatred for white people” during an appearance on Fox & Friends.

Comments from advertisers recently distancing themselves from Beck:

“…Sprint ads appeared as part of a broader rotational package of advertising purchased on the Fox Network,” said Kathleen Dunleavy, a Sprint spokesperson, in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “They were not specifically targeted to the Glenn Beck Show nor should they air during this program going forward.”

“…I wanted to let you know that we have taken steps to make sure that [Sprint] will not be advertising on the Glenn Beck show,” Dunleavy later reiterated in a phone message to ColorOfChange.org.

“While we will continue to advertise on news programming, including FOX News, there are certain programs on the FOX Network that do not meet Lowe’s advertising guidelines, including The O’Reilly Factor and Glenn Beck Program,” said Meliski Cox, a spokesperson for Lowe’s, in an email to ColorOfChange.org.

“Per our advertising standards, we don’t advertise in programs that display exploitive sex or violence, treat ethnic, religious, or political groups in a disparaging manner, present facts inaccurately or distort them to blatantly partisan advantage, and treat individuals or groups in a demeaning manner”, said Adam Oberweiser, a spokesperson for Clorox, in a phone message to a ColorOfChange.org member. “We have had limited advertisements on the Glenn Beck Program in the past, however the statements he made during that show would not adhere to our programming standards. Furthermore, we will not be advertising on his program in the future since he did violate our own advertising standards.”

“We have addressed the issue,” said Rich Hallibran, a spokesperson for The UPS Store, in a phone message to ColorOfChange.org. “You will not see our ads on The Glenn Beck TV program.”

“We are no longer advertising on Beck’s program,” said Susan McGowan, Senior Director of Public Relations at NutriSystem, Inc., in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “You can now include us with the other companies that have stopped advertising.”

In a phone conversation with ColorOfChange.org, a spokesperson for AT&T, Daryl Evans, said that their company already had Beck’s program on a ‘Do Not Air’ list for their ads, and if an advertisement was seen during ‘Glenn Beck’ it was placed in error. Evans pledged to call Fox News and correct that error.

In a phone conversation with ColorOfChange.org, Marcy Smith, Director of Advertising for Experian Consumer Direct, confirmed that due to the number and frequency of complaints they have received, they have specifically asked Fox News to pull any of their ads from Glenn Beck’s program and distribute their ads to other shows in the rotation.

“We obviously neither condone nor endorse Mr. Beck’s comments,” said Anthony Sanzio, a Campbell Soup Company spokesman, in a phone conversation with ColorOfChange.org. “We were not pleased when we heard them [the comments] and they certainly don’t reflect the views of this company. We have no advertising currently slated for Mr. Beck’s program and don’t have any plans for the future.”

“In light of the consistency of comments that are made, we don’t plan to advertise there in the future,” Sanzio continued. “We have communicated to our media buying agency that we will not be advertising on that show.”

“Thank you for bringing this to our attention,” said Marc Monseau, Director of Corporate Communications for Johnson & Johnson, in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “These advertisements ran on Glenn Beck as part of a rotational advertising package on Fox News, and I have shared your thoughts with those in our organization responsible for making those rotational buys. We have now informed the network to not include it in our rotation moving forward.”

In a phone conversation with ColorOfChange.org, Jim Gerace, Vice President of Corporate Communications for Verizon Wireless, confirmed that they added Beck’s show to its “Do Not Air” list based on Beck’s controversial track record. “We, on our own, looked at where we’re spending our advertising,” Gerace said. “We made a decision that we don’t want to be advertising on that program for a lot of reasons.”

“We hear your concerns and are no longer advertising on the Glenn Beck show,” said Cindy Thomas, Chief Marketing Officer for Ditech, in a phone message to ColorOfChange.org.

“Ancestry.com buys television advertising on many networks, including Fox News, but does not sponsor any specific content or program,” said Mike Ward, Public Relations Director for Ancestry.com, in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “However, once this issue surfaced, we instructed Fox News to exclude our advertisements from the Glenn Beck program.”

“I wanted to let you know that AirWare Inc., the manufacturer of Brez anti-snoring aids, has instructed its advertising agency to insure that none of our advertisements run on the Glenn Beck show,” said David Green, Director of Public Relations for AirWare, Inc., in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “Because of the way TV advertising is purchased, company executives were not aware in advance that our ads would be running on the show.”

“We have requested that the ads not appear on the Glen [sic] Beck show,” said Dr. Robert Blaine, President and CEO of Blaine Labs, Inc., in an email to ColorOfChange.org. “Our contract is essentially a, ‘fill in where there is empty space’, [sic] and lately, I guess there has been a lot of empty space on the Beck show due to your organization. Our new contract comes up sometime in September and that show will be stricken from the rotation. We do not support [G]lenn [B]eck and do not support his show.”

“What we did last Thursday was our advertising department requested of Fox News Channel that they no longer place a portion of our ads on the Glenn Beck Program [sic],” said a spokesperson for Farmers Insurance Group in a phone message to ColorOfChange.org.

“Just want to let you know that we will no longer be advertising on that [Glenn Beck’s] program,” said David Silver, a spokesperson for The Elations Company.

Last week, ColorOfChange.org began emailing the 150,000+ people who signed their initial petition, asking them to call five major advertisers who continued to refuse to pull their ads: Clorox, Experian (creator of FreeCreditReport.com), Lowe’s, Red Lobster and Vonage. Members utilized background materials prepared by ColorOfChange.org during their calls, and had access to a calling tool that made it easier to report the result of each conversation. Hours after members began making calls, Lowe’s contacted ColorOfChange.org, pledging not to run additional ads on Beck’s programs. Clorox followed suit Thursday, and Experian did the same on Friday.

Color of Change:
http://colorofchange.org/beck/more/release-36.html

The racism hits just keep on coming as more imagery from tea parties pop up. These were from a poster who left a comment at Media Matters for America.

teapartysign1sm1

Below, check out the guy’s shirt and imagine what must have been censored on it …

NOTE: As correctly pointed out … the one image is from a McCain-Palin rally. But, as I say below, it all kind of blends together.

Protestor_Allowed

I spotted this from a blog posted by Crooks and Liars regarding idiotic comments made by nuts on the far right comparing President Obama to Hitler and likening the Democrats to the Nazis. This is from a segment of Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC evening show (as she interviewed author Franklin Schaeffer.

MADDOW: Do you think that calling the president a Nazi, calling the president Hitler, is an implicit call for politically-motivated violence?

SCHAEFFER: Yes I do. In fact, this rings a big bell with me, because my dad, who was a right-wing evangelical leader, wrote a book called A Christian Manifesto — it sold over a million copies. And in that book he compared anyone who was pro-abortion to the Nazi Germans, and he said that using violence or force to overthrow Nazi Germany would have been appropriate for Christians, including the assassination of Hitler. He compared the Supreme Court’s actions on abortion to that. And that has been a note that has been following the right wing movement that my father and I helped start in an evangelical context all the way.

So what’s really being said here is two messages. There is the message to the predominantly white, middle-aged crowds of people screaming at these meetings, trying to shut them down, but there’s also a coded message to what I would call the loony tunes — the fruit loops on the side. It’s really like playing Russian Roulette — you put a cartridge in the chamber, you spin, and once in awhile it goes off.

And we saw that happen with Dr. Tiller, we’ve seen it happen numerous times with the violence against political leaders, whether it’s Martin Luther King or whoever it might be. We have a history of being a well-armed, violent country. And so really, I think that these calls are incredibly irresponsible.

The good news is that it shows a desperation. The far right knows they have lost, they’ve lost the hearts and minds of most American people, for instance, who want health care. But they also know that they have a large group of people who are not well-informed, who listen to only their own sources, who buy the lies — for instance, all this nonsense about euthanasia being mandatory, and all the rest of it. And these people can be energized to go out and do really dreadful things.

And we’ve seen it in front of abortion clinics, I’m afraid we’re going to see it with some of our political leaders. And the Glenn Becks of this world literally are responsible for unleashing what I regard as an anti-democratic, anti-American movement in this country. It is trying to shut down legitimate debate, and replace it with straight-out intimidation.

The talk has become very dangerous, and the good people on the right need to step forward, listen to conscience and tone it down.

Persuasiveness comes not necessarily from who talks the loudest, but who talks smartest.

Far-right commentator Pat Buchanan, with a history of racist comments about people of color, is up to his old tricks, again. Writing for Human Events.com, is making yet another vicious and race-based attack on Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who is President Barack Obama’s nominee to serve on the U.S. Supreme court. Buchanan has repeatedly attacked her because of her race and marginalized her accomplishments by portraying her as some kind of affirmative-action fraud (an attack most typically used by white supremacists when they make their complaints about how tough the U.S. government has been on white men).

Here are some of Buchanan’s comments:

BUCHANAN: Thus, Sotomayor got into Princeton, got her No. 1 ranking, was whisked into Yale Law School and made editor of the Yale Law Review — all because she was a Hispanic woman. And those two Ivy League institutions cheated more deserving students of what they had worked a lifetime to achieve, for reasons of race, gender or ethnicity.

This is bigotry pure and simple. To salve their consciences for past societal sins, the Ivy League is deep into discrimination again, this time with white males as victims rather than as beneficiaries.

One prefers the old bigotry. At least it was honest, and not, as Abraham Lincoln observed, adulterated “with the base alloy of hypocrisy.”

While Pat Buchanan may prefer the old bigotry that includes slavery, slave plantations, lynchings, legalized murder, the Ku Klux Klan in political power, women being treated as servants of their husbands with few rights of their own and other remnants of a best-forgotten period of U.S. history, rational people do not.

Following Pat Buchanan’s logic: white males succeed because they work harder, they’re smarter and they’re better … people of color succeed because of affirmative action, white guilt and reverse racism.

Human Events.com:
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=32264

Fox News is neither fair nor balanced, and most reasonable people recognize these truths. The latest example of Fox News bias is promoting the idea that Democrats voted to protect pedophiles, but did not want to offer special protection to veterans. The whole idea is absurd and you only need to know that someone like Sean Hannity, a conservative fountain of misinformation and hateful bias, is pushing it to know that it can’t be trusted at face value. No reputable organization would give someoneSean Hannity a whole hour, every weeknight, to spew one-sided hatred.

Check out this passage:

Fox News hosts Sean Hannity and Bill Hemmer, and The Fox Nation, have all recently advanced the false claim that House Democrats voted to “protect” or “defend” pedophiles by voting against an amendment to the bill by Rep. Steve King (R-IA) stating that “the term ‘sexual orientation’ shall not include pedophilia.” In fact, as Rep. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) noted during an April 23 House Judiciary Committee hearing, the term “sexual orientation” is already defined by federal statute as applying only to “consensual homosexuality or heterosexuality,” thereby excluding pedophiles, who engage in nonconsensual sexual relationships with children. In providing her reasons for opposing King’s amendment, Baldwin said that it “is unnecessary and, I would add, inflammatory in terms of insinuations.”

What Rep. Steve King, a Republican from Iowa who is a throwback to an era of politician that most of us are glad we never had to experience, is showing his bigotry with his proposed amendment. He is trying to act as if pedophilia and homosexuality are somehow related. It is a disgusting, but all too typical ploy used by many far-right conservative extremists. This is pure and simple homophobia disguised as an unnecessary amendment to a bill. The above Media Matters passage shows you why this amendment he tried to slip in the bill is driven by hate.

Media Matters:
http://mediamatters.org/research/200905060016?f=h_top