Martin Luther King’s niece, Dr. Alveda King, is one of Fox News’ stable of right-wing, African American black attackers and no fan of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Yet on Friday night, she not only failed to take a host’s bait to attack Jackson or Sharpton in Ferguson, Missouri but she batted it away by saying “It’s very important” not to attack “those who are attempting to help.” Of course, her words fell on deaf ears.
The protests in Ferguson have been fertile ground for Fox justifications to engage in one of their favorite pastimes: bashing Sharpton and Jackson. On the Hannity show Friday night, substitute host Andrea Tantaros clearly intended to engage in a little more when she followed up her decently fair, 10:30-minute interview with Jesse Jackson with an interview with King.
Early in the interview, Tantaros fed King this attack opening in the form of a question when she asked whether Jesse Jackson’s presence “at these types of tragedies helps or hurts?”
In the past, King has accused Jackson and Sharpton of playing the race card during the George Zimmerman trial. So I’m willing to bet Tantaros expected King to rip them some racial new ones.
But she didn’t.
KING: I think it’s very important at this time not to challenge those who are attempting to help no matter what the reason or the method happens to be. It’s more important to focus on the family who is grieving, the people who have actually been terrorized by those tactics.
…I think it was the military presence that really alarmed people. So rather than to challenge anything that Rev. Jackson is doing, I think it’s very important to continue to urge for prayer, a peaceful resolution.
…The father and the mother, the bereaved family of Michael Brown, that should be our first concern. Justice, of course. Now, if a young man was stealing cigars from a store, then he should have lived to answer that and perhaps be punished. …Our young people are troubled and we don’t answer them with that military force.
Funny, but Tantaros ended the interview pretty quickly. The whole thing lasted just a little over three minutes. That’s a third of the time Jackson got.
But not to worry Jackson and Sharpton haters! Another African American black attacker, Deneen Borelli, took shots at Sharpton and Jackson – and for extra Fox bonus points, President Obama – in a later, five-minute interview. And “Punch” Tantaros didn’t object one little itsy-bitsy. In fact, she referred to Sharpton as “Al Tawana Brawley Sharpton.”
Watch Alveda King talk about the importance of a peaceful resolution followed by the hate-filled Borelli accusing other people of being racial agitators, both on the August 15th Hannity. By the way, I think Democrat Brian Benjamin did a pretty good job making Borelli look like the African American-hating ideologue she is.