In case you missed it, Congressman Alan Grayson recently said in an interview with Rev. Al Sharpton, “At this point, the tea party is no more popular than the Klan.” Grayson followed that up with a fundraising email yesterday repeating his quote and including the above graphic of a burning cross. In response, Fox News pundits are in an uproar of scripted outrage – in solidarity with the Republicans. But Megyn Kelly’s choice of hate monger Allen West as her attack dog against Grayson undercut and discredited any legitimacy to the effort. In fact, as West used the occasion to make racial attacks on African American leaders, he more proved Grayson’s point than refuted it.

West was one of several segments about Grayson on Fox I caught today. Right now, West’s attack interview has the top spot on Fox Nation

and there are two more posts there about Grayson as well.

The Hannity show also attacked discussed Grayson’s email.

Allen West has no business attacking Alan Grayson over incendiary race comments

But West is hardly in a position to be criticizing anyone else’s rhetoric. He has a long history of incendiary attacks, including incendiary racial rhetoric, that ought to disqualify him from judging anyone else’s. For example, as Mother Jones wrote:

He has suggested that Democratic leaders—whom he calls “chicken men”—“get the hell out of the United States of America”; considers drivers with Obama bumper stickers “a threat to the gene pool”; and says black Democrats are trying to keep his fellow African Americans “on the plantation”—and he’s the “modern-day Harriet Tubman” helping them to escape.

But Kelly File host Megyn Kelly had no problem using West to attack Grayson. She didn’t even tell her viewers about his history. She introduced him merely as, “Fox News contributor and former Florida Congressman, Lt. Colonel Allen West.”

“Sir, your reaction to this ad,” Kelly began, as she settled her face into a look of disapproving consternation. She shook her head in further disapproval as West said he grew up in the south with the Klan as a presence. For some reason, West (and presumably Fox) thought that gave West extra cred to attack Grayson. West said, “This is despicable. This is demeaning. This is disgusting."

But without even stopping for breath or even explaining what was so wrong with Grayson's email, West immediately turned the discussion into a racial attack on civil rights leaders and Democrats.

We all know that Alan Grayson is pretty much a sensationalist and he can continue to say things that are over the top but my concern is where’s the NAACP and Ben Jealous? Where’s the National Urban League and Marc Morial? Where is Rep. John Lewis, who is from Georgia, who marched with Dr. King, who as I was growing up, was my representative as a young man in Atlanta, Georgia. Where are the voices of the Congressional Black Caucus, Reverends Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson?

Because obviously what we are seeing now is the party, the Democratic Party that created the Ku Klux Klan and also created that symbol of the burning cross is obviously still proud to have that symbol being displayed and, you know, to all of us in the black community, and those of us also as Constitutional conservatives in the Tea Party, we have to be outraged and this hypocrisy cannot continue to stand.

That’s right, Grayson should have known that only conservatives can make racial attacks!

Not that Kelly noted this hypocrisy coming from her own guest. She was too busy looking moved by his racial sensitivity. “There are certain things you don’t, you don’t touch in American politics, you don’t mess around with,” she said with a show of delicacy. “Equating somebody to a member of the KKK, that could be one of them.” Yes, if only Grayson had shown the decency to say that the Tea Party wants to keep Americans on the plantation instead!

Megyn Kelly Has Her Own Dubious Racial Record

But Kelly is not one who should be talking either. She’s the same Megyn Kelly who made countless bogus racial attacks on Attorney General Eric Holder.

But she joined in the pile on. “Where is the accountability for it?” she asked, referring to Grayson’s remarks. Which is pretty darned funny coming from her. Because I’d like to know where the accountability is for her now-discredited accusations that Holder deliberately declined to prosecute a voter intimidation case because the supposed transgressor was black? I’d also like to know why she is now looking for “accountability” for Grayson but didn’t need it when she was gushing over discredited ACORN “ho” Hannah Giles?

But it was on to attacking President Obama. “Where is President Obama?” West now demanded. “You know, here we have the guy that supposedly, the first African American president and we’re supposed to be celebrating this end of racial animosity. But I think it has gotten even worse. And I think that the president should be speaking out about this and he should reprimand and censor Alan Grayson for what he said. But I think the big difference is that the president does not share that same experience that young men such as myself and women have seen and understand, what the Ku Klux Klan represents in this country, especially if you grew up down south.”

Really? And why wouldn’t President Obama understand what the KKK represents? Because he’s a foreign-born Muslim?

Kelly was still listening raptly, though, with her brow now furrowed in concentration as West went on to attack Nancy Pelosi, Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Harry Reid for not “speaking out.”

At the end, Kelly noted that when Fox contacted Grayson, he “doubled down” and “cited a litany of examples where he believes it was the Tea Party attacking President Obama by citing his race, claims that he’s a Kenyan and a Muslim.” She said, “You can find things like that from both sides about members of the other party.”

Well, it was nice of her to finally point that out. Especially when just last week Tea Partier Sarah Palin characterized President Obama as “the enemy” right there on the Kelly File without challenge from the host.

So while I personally think the Klan graphic is over the top, the efforts by a small group of (mostly white) conservatives who would rather take down the government than see a program of democratically-legislated (and upheld by the Supreme Court) health insurance implemented is just as extremist as the KKK and at least, if not more dangerous. And it’s very telling that instead of defending the unpopular, extremist behavior of the Tea Party, Fox made racial attacks on Grayson, President Obama and other African American Democrats and liberals.

In the end, I’d say Fox did more to validate Grayson’s point than to debunk it.