When basketball star LeBron James criticized Donald Trump, Trumper Laura Ingraham described his comments as “barely intelligible” and advised him to “shut up and dribble.” Yet, when newly-minted conservative Kanye West made a clearly unintelligible comment about slavery, Ingraham, aided by guest Kevin Jackson, gave West some nice Fox rehab!
As you probably know by now, West said on TMZ, “When you hear about slavery for 400 years. For 400 years?! That sounds like a choice.”
Ingraham played that clip and another one, in which a TMZ staffer confronted West about his comments, then made it clear she doesn’t think West deserves the “slaughter” he has had to endure on social media.
Ingraham asked guest Michael Starr Hopkins, a former Hillary Clinton campaign staffer, if West really meant, “in this kind of casual conversation,” that “the horrific act of slavery was a choice that people were making.” She continued, “Do you think that’s what he actually was trying to convey, honestly?”
Hopkins said he didn’t know what West was trying to say, but that his “flippant” words make it harder for African-Americans to talk about conservatism. He added that “Kanye is playing everyone” and that his language, about a horrific experience for African-Americans, "inflames.”
Ingraham then tossed to her other guest, Kevin Jackson. As NewsHounds' Ellen points out, he is one of Fox’s favorite African American racial black-attackers. In Ingraham's newfound role as Kanye West whisperer, she said that she thought she knew what West was saying: “I think he was saying people get imprisoned in the past and they let that define themselves. I think. I have no idea…”
Jackson, as expected, jumped to West’s defense. But he did so with a bizarre and unfounded claim: “There came a point where there was some choice. For example, once we got out of slavery, during Reconstruction, there were many blacks who did want to stay in that environment because they had been conditioned for that.” He continued the crazy talk with the comment, “Today, we have more blacks enslaved than we ever had in the 1860s.”
Hopkins interjected but was shouted over by Jackson: “I don’t really care what you think about what I say.” He suggested that our history of slavery was not so bad because, "Today we have young blacks who are taught that slavery is such a bad thing, for things that they haven't been through.”
When Hopkins said that slavery was a bad thing (ya think?) Jackson continued the rant: “Let me finish, Michael. They’ve been taught that the lack of civil rights, by the way, all things done by the party that Michael supports and votes for are such bad things, when in fact…”
Hopkins responded that Jackson was full of crap because the parties have “flipped,” to which Jackson retorted that Hopkins was full of crap.
Jackson wrapped it up with more, uh, slavery-minimizing crap: “Let me just say this: The issue is, we've got to get out of this mentality that everything in America is anti-black, relating back to something that's 150 years old. It's ridiculous.”
Jackson’s ridiculous comment seemed to say that because slavery has ended, racism is over and blacks should just move on and stop whining about things like, you know, a racially-biased criminal justice system, police brutality, voter suppression, and so forth.
West’s comment was offensive and wrong, as was Kevin Jackson’s unintelligible rhetoric. Perhaps Ingraham needs to tell Kanye to shut up and rap?!
Watch the crap below, from the May 1, 2018 The Ingraham Angle crap, via Media Matters.
I’d never heard of Kanye West before this story hit the waves. Like President Trump, he’ll do anything and everything to improve his ratings. Kudus to that other guy who took him down.