In Fox News' pantheon of scary black men, Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama, who accrued much of his scariness from his association with the pastor, top the chart. Ever since Obama's 2008 campaign, Fox News has used Rev. Wright, whose "God damn America" video was played 24 and 7 on Fox, to denigrate Obama at every turn. As late as 2012, Fox wall of genius Steve Doocy predicted that Wright would derail Obama's re-election. Flash forward to 2014 and Fox News is still playing the scary, black Jeremiah Wright card  in order to attack the president and, as a special bonus, defend GOP Rep. Steve Scalise who palled around with white supremacists. 

Tuesday night, on the alleged fair & balanced Special Report, right wing tool host Ed Henry started off the segment by reading GOP Speaker John Boehner's statement on Scalise's awesomeness. Henry asked if l'affaire Scalise comes at a bad time when the GOP, LOL, is trying to reach out to minorities. After Charles Krauthammer said that if Scalise wanted to help the leadership he could have stepped down from his position as majority whip, he began his defense of Scalise.

Krauthammer noted that this happened twelve years ago and it is "plausible that he didn't know who these guys were" because the name of the group didn't indicate anything about white supremacy. In keeping with the standard GOP script, Henry played the patented GOP talking point about how Democratic Senator Robert Byrd had been a KKK leader but the oh, so amiable GOP said, in essence, no big deal.  Krauthammer said that was because Byrd, since his departure from the KKK, acted in an honorable fashion. He defended Scalise with the assertion that "as far as I can tell there is not a shred of evidence that there is anything in the intervening twelve years which would indicate any evidence of racism, hostility or ill will or anything of this nature..."

So far so good but then

 Krauthammer pulled out the Rev. Wright card: "There is a double standard. Obama became didn’t just wander into Jeremiah Wright’s church one time twelve years ago. He sat in it for twenty two years as the man who is a racist raved against America and talked about 9/11 being chickens coming home to roost." Henry framed the propaganda message: "So if there's guilt by association, there will be difficulties for both parties." Krauthammer kept with the script: "There should be and these aren't even comparable." He whined that the GOP will "get hit with this a few times." (awww)

 As a multi-faceted piece of agitprop, this was priceless. Krauthammer resurrects a tired old attack on Obama as well as create a moral equivalency between Obama and Scalise with Obama's past connection seeming far more sinister. Ed Henry declares "guilt by association" without benefit of trial. And in a classic case of Fox alternate reality projection, Krauthammer claims, with nothing substantive other than racist right wing ideology, that it's really Wright who is a racist whose racism was supported by Obama. The irony here is that Fox News provides a national platform for racism and race baiting.

Gotta love that Fox fairness & balance!

(3/11/20 Update: video is no longer available)