So Fox News "serious" news person Brit Hume
talked this last Sunday on his let's-call-it "news" network that for President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder, "race has been a shield and a sword." He said this on a lily-white Fox News panel containing the likes of lily-white George Will and lily-white Chris Wallace, and that Fox News held a conversation between people like Brit Hume and George Will and Chris Wallace to talk about how mean black people were being is pretty much all you need to know about Fox News.
Now Brit Hume has a sad, because some people had a problem with his statement. He took his sad to fellow network white person Bill O'Reilly, the network expert in all things that cause wealthy, prominent news heads to have major episodes of sad, and the two of them lamented how oppressed they were and that people keep being mean to him on Twitter.
After the appearance, he said, people on Twitter accused him of racism and bemoaned the lack of diversity on the panel.
“In other words, in order to discuss this, you have to have an African-American present,” Hume complained to O'Reilly. “But if you’re just white, then discussing this is racist.”
Hmm. I've gotta admit, having an all-white Fox News panel complaining that black people are using their race against good conservative white folks does seem a little kinda bit racist. Especially, and this is key, when your movement has made a habit of saying the same thing about nearly every non-white American with a career in politics that you haven't liked over the last 40 years. The problem wasn't that your point was too daring for America to stomach, the problem was your point was so predictable that folks have the script memorized at this point.
"Look, one of the effects the great success of the Civil Rights movement, which was certainly a just cause, was that overwhelmingly Americans agree that blacks and other minorities should be treated equally in this country, they want to see blacks get ahead, and the effect of that is that being called a racist or labeled a racist, particularly if it's successful, is one of the worst things that can happen to you in America," Hume said.
Oh, I can think of worse things. Maybe not for a lily-white news pundit seeking to say silly things while still keeping his serious person credentials, a fellow who probably will not be shot for carrying Skittles into a middle class neighborhood or getting patted down by the police for buying something a little too expensive in the wrong posh New York storefront, but for much of the rest of non-Fox-News America, I can think of worse things.
