Although even Greta Van Susteren acknowledged that there’s no reason to think that race played any role in the shocking shooting death of Australian student Christopher Lane in Oklahoma by three teenagers who said they did it out of boredom, Van Susteren brought on noted bigot Pat Buchanan to discuss the case and make insinuations about question why President Obama has not spoken out about Lane’s death despite speaking out about Trayvon Martin's death.
The 13:34 segment began like all beginnings of On The Record: with a montage that highlighted comments from Rush Limbaugh. He pretty much set the tone when he accused Obama of not speaking out because it wouldn’t advance “the left’s agenda.” Later, Limbaugh said of the three teens, “They got bored. ‘Let’s go shoot a white guy.’”
Buchanan came on at about 5:00, after an interview with an AP reporter for the latest on the case. Buchanan was introduced merely as “former senior advisor to President Reagan,” as opposed to, say, a guy who makes “subliminal appeals to prejudice,” as Fox News’ own Charles Krauthammer describes Buchanan or an “unrepentant bigot,” as the Anti-Defamation League calls him or the guy who was fired from MSNBC in 2012 over a chapter in his book lamenting “The End Of White America.”
Buchanan, at first, skirted directly bigoted statements. But he certainly hinted at it:
I think we gotta take a look at the culture that (the three alleged killers) grew up in. …Kids, when I grew up, you never heard of anything like this. …I think what’s happened to the society is that the conscience-forming institutions, the family, that’s disintegrated and collapsed. You’ve got the school, which is not doing the job it used to. The black churches and many of the white churches are – the country’s been de-Christianized. And these kids have clearly been desensitized.
…I grew up in D.C. …They had black communities here, hundreds of thousands of extraordinarily poor people, working class people. You didn’t have things like this going on.
Van Susteren pushed the President Obama angle at about 8:50: “The driver was white, passenger was black, trigger man black. …But President Obama spoke out about the Trayvon Martin, also a shooting that hit a real nerve in this country, for good reasons. Should he speak here on this one?”
Let’s not forget, even if Fox News pretends to, that Buchanan has previously said about Obama that his presidency is due to “affirmative action all the way.”
But here’s the thing. Van Susteren wasn’t saying that the death of Christopher Lane should be addressed on its merits. She was suggesting (and later overtly opined) that because President Obama spoke out about the death of a black teen, he needs to speak out about the murder of a white teen. Because why? He needs to prove he’s not too partial to African Americans?
Predictably, Buchanan thought President Obama “sure should” speak out about Lane. And maybe because they were now on the subject of Obama, Buchanan began overtly race baiting:
Now, my guess, what is going to come out of this, quite frankly, is that it is racial. Why would you pick a 22 year-old white male if you’re just shootin’ anybody?
I don’t know, maybe that’s who they encountered first? Van Susteren pointed out that the driver was white and asked, “Does that change the dynamics of this discussion?”
No. Buchanan had no information that any racism was involved other than his dubious claim that it was more statistically likely. “We’re going to find that out. But I will say this: Look, the most common form of interracial hate crime is black on white.”
Claiming that black-on-white crime is eight times greater than white-on-black crime while the black community was 1/5th the size of the white community, he said, “Add it up. The idea of racial hate crimes is 40 times more prevalent in the black community than the white community and nobody talks about it!”
Obviously, Van Susteren didn’t want to go there. But rather than challenge Buchanan on such prejudice, she went back to attacking President Obama, although on slightly milder grounds. She said, “You know, we could also … bypass this whole racial issue …if we talk about violence among young people, we could all sort of join together and have a voice and be as outraged, regardless of who the victim is, or regardless of who gets shot or who gets arrested." Then, perhaps getting into the spirit with Buchanan, she threw in a gratuitous swipe at Al Sharpton. "Where’s Reverend Sharpton? Get up there and start talking about violence among young people now!”
Buchanan continued the racial roll.
Look, I think we ought to talk about crime in general. Innocent victims of crime and people who died and shouldn’t have. Trayvon Martin. But also innocent victims of crime. But we’re gonna have to talk about this aspect of it. Which Sharpton leaps on all the time. You know, the Tawana Brawley. Why did he get on that particular rape? When interracial rape is almost exclusively black on white? (He forgot to mention that 52% of rapists are white, though.) Why did he jump on that? For racial reasons.
…The truth is, Chris Lane, he looks like a lot of people’s son,s himself. And that’s what a lot of white males would look like 30 years ago. Will (President Obama) address this the same way he got up with Trayvon Martin? It’s a test of the president.
As the discussion closed, Van Susteren said, “Because the president spoke out about other ones, he needs to speak out about this one.” She also said he needs to apologize to Australia.
But I guarantee, no matter what President Obama says, Fox News will be criticizing him for it and if they can possibly find a way, they’ll make it racial. And I guarantee that Van Susteren will help further whatever attack they come up with.
And they’ll also accuse him of politicizing a personal matter- Not seeing their hypocrisy at all.
I agree with reaching out to the family, if there’s a way to do it without injecting them into the politicizing, but reaching out to Australia as a whole is a stretch. If my friends who live there now are any indication, Australia understands that this was just a thrill killing that our country’s right are trying waaaaay too hard to make into a hate crime, despite that the GOP’s overwhelming support for people who commit hate crimes against blacks is a staple of how they see our culture.
I don’t disagree that President Obama should reach out to Australia and apologize. But if he does, won’t the right wing accuse him of “apologizing for America” again?
Among other things, what makes this killing different from Trayvon Martin’s is that these young men have been arrested, they didn’t claim to “stand their ground,” and they will most likely spend many years, if not the rest of their lives, in prison. They will be put on trial for Christopher Lane’s needless death, not Lane himself. Nobody will contend that Lane had it coming because of what he was wearing or anything he did that differentiates him from a perfect angel. And, as Antoinette pointed out, one of them is white, which muddies any racial aspect for any halfway reasonable person. Of course, halfway reasonable people are not Fox News’ audience.
More from Rush, Greta? Really?! Geez.
Yep, looks like FOX “news” is allowing him to set the tone as that’s what I’m hearing on F&F this morning too. Daddy Douchey is all riled up that Sharpton and Obama haven’t spoke out on this because it “isn’t helpful to them politically.”
Pot, kettle, black, Douchey. You and those of your ilk made a calculated decision to use this young man’s tragic death to try and inflict political damage to the left. In other words, it’s politically helpful to you, FOX “news” and the other right-wing talking heads to go after the President and others on the left on this matter.
But Obama speaks on a case that brought our already volatile race relations to a boiling point, to tell people to calm down about it, and give his personal take on the larger picture…
That makes him a racist, out of line, and it’s somehow Fox News’ job to put him in his place? That don’t fly. If anything, it proves they should be the first on trial when this hits major conflict status. Note I said “when” -I’m quite certain it will happen, and likely before Obama leaves office.
In the Trayvon Martin case, Zimmerman shot Trayvon but he was not initially arrested for the killing. Protesters wanted Zimmerman arrested and tried in a court of law for the shooting.
The three teens, two black and one white, were arrested and charged with the killing of Christopher Lane. They will be charged as adults.
Injecting race into the shooting is a weak argument. You have a white suspect who was a alleged accomplice. If those two black teens hated whites then some one explain why those teens were in the company of their white friend.
The Fox “News” bogs are trying to imply that President Obama is only concerned with black people, and trying to paint him as a racist. If Obama was a racist, most of his cabinet would be all-black. He is surrounded by a predominantly white staff.
Paddy’s articles appears in white nationalists publications. His opinions are bias.
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NOTE TO PADDY
You are not the brightest man in journalism. You are dumb as rock. Our apologies to the rock.