Fox’s Brian Kilmeade seized on a minor error Jon Stewart made last week in order to deceptively spin his recent commentary about Ferguson and police shootings. As Kilmeade distorted Stewart's commentary to suggest that Stewart had vilified the police, Kilmeade neatly ignored that the real villains in Stewart’s commentary were the race baiters at Fox News.
In his monologue, Stewart skewered Fox by playing a series of clips of Fox pundits arguing that Ferguson was one in a series of isolated incidents. Stewart listed five examples before saying:
The point is, these shootings are clearly not a manifestation of systemic inequality and mistrust between the African American community and the somehow always-justified police American community. But these are merely an unending, bizarrely similar series of isolated incidents.
Well, it turned out that one of Stewart's five examples should not have been there. According to KTLA, Dante Parker was tasered during an arrest for attempted burglary, allegedly attempted to assault a deputy and later died in the hospital of PCP intoxication and heart disease.
After San Bernardino District Attorney Mike Ramos slammed Stewart for the error, The Daily Show acknowledged the mistake in a tweet and said there will be an on-air apology tonight.
However, the tweet also noted, “Larger point still stands.”
This morning, Fox & Friends seized on the opportunity to attack Stewart for the error. Host Brian Kilmeade neatly ducked the real substance of Stewart’s remarks – and overblew the situation by saying, “Stewart’s facts were flat-out wrong.”
The show hosted Detroit Police Chief James Craig to say that it’s time to expand the discussion to include the dangers that police officers face as well as the scourge of violence that goes with crime. Craig, an African American, nicely avoided the kind of scolding tone that Fox usually engages in when it lectures African Americans about black-on-black crime. “Let’s expand the narrative to address it all,” Craig said.
Craig also noted that he thinks it’s important to be transparent in addressing “deadly force incidents” because he feels that’s how to “build trust in the community.” He also said that that’s how it’s worked in Detroit.
But Kilmeade was so intent on attacking Stewart, he skipped the whole “build trust in the community” aspect that some might say is the most important next step for the country. Coincidentally, Sean Hannity didn’t want to hear about that either (only with a lot more hatefulness) when his guest brought it up.
Kilmeade changed the changed the subject go after Stewart a little more. “By the way, just to finish this end of the story, Jon Stewart tweeted this out,” Kilmeade said. Then, after reading the tweet, Kilmeade prompted Craig to attack Stewart with the suggestive question, “Does that make things better?”
“I don’t think so,” Craig said. “You know, Jon Stewart’s a comedian. I don’t find comedy in any of this.”
I wonder if Craig had actually seen Stewart’s piece. Stewart was not making fun of either the police or the situation. Stewart's real targets were people like Kilmeade, for their insensitive and divisive punditry.
Kilmeade piled on to Craig's criticism: “Chief, just so you know, just to put these stats, in case Jon Stewart wants to include this tonight. 85 N.Y.P.D. officers were killed after 9/11 … in the line of duty. Now, if you want to fine tune community relations with officers, fine. But now, everybody’s feasting on you guys and you women that do this on a daily basis, not to get rich, because you want to give back to the community. And it’s abhorrent.”
Yes, it wouldn’t be a Fox News discussion without some excuse for hate mongering against those with a different opinion, especially if they dare to make fun of Fox.
Watch both segments below.
Eighty-five killed in the line of duty since 9/11. Admirable and tragic. Is that some sort of justification of what is happening to black males in this country today? “Black on black crime”…..so that is somehow a factor related to the “POLICE, sworn to protect and serve…” and they are responsible for this type of conduct, these kinds of murders that we’ve seen just in the last few weeks, and NO consequences?
This little nurd doesn’t get it. You have to really have your head firmly between your buttocks to be that stupid. He is BEYOND that stupid.