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Fox Attacks Alan Grayson For Comparing The Tea Party To The Ku Klux Klan

Posted by Ellen -7859.80pc on October 22, 2013 · Flag

 

Grayson_Tea_party_Klan.png

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

 

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

 

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 Grayson_3.png

 

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.

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Joseph West commented 2013-10-23 15:45:06 -0400 · Flag
@thx4fish: No, they didn’t. You’re right in that both men’s districts have been redrawn (and renumbered) but Grayson’s district has been in the Orlando area while West’s former district was down in the West Palm Beach/Boca Raton area of SE Florida (just to the north of Miami).

To put the renumbering into perspective, Grayson is the current representative from FL-9, which takes in parts of Orlando and areas to the southeast (including the Kissimmee-St Cloud resort area), while his former FL-8 took in eastern Orlando, wrapped around the south and west of the city and moved north towards Ocala. The current FL-8 takes in the central Atlantic coast area from Titusville to Vero Beach, including Cape Canaveral. What’s interesting is that the OLD FL-9 used to include the northern and eastern suburban areas of Tampa and St Petersburg.

As to the current FL-22, it cuts off the West Palm Beach area but extends a bit further south into Fort Lauderdale. When West ran for re-election in 2012, he was redistricted to FL-18 (which now runs from WPB northward to Ft Pierce and inland to Lake Okeechobee) which itself used to be most of the eastern part of the old FL-16 (it also included part of SW Florida from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf Coast city of Port Charlotte).
Antoinette commented 2013-10-23 15:06:33 -0400 · Flag
Racist Tea Pots

http://youtu.be/H1AgmgDwfyM

Post this video on all social media and tell the masses the Foxies refuses to show it.
Dave Wright commented 2013-10-23 13:44:48 -0400 · Flag
First things first. it was an idiotic statement by Grayson because it stooped to their level. You cannot win a p——— match with a skunk. Don’t try. But Ellen is right that Fox is being hypocritical. However, that is what opinion TV does so well.
Sandman2 commented 2013-10-23 12:14:07 -0400 · Flag
Q-Why don’t they invite Grayson on their shows so they can ask him to justify his statement?
A-They know they would lose any argument with him. Better to sit back and take pot shots.
Thx4 Fish commented 2013-10-23 10:10:12 -0400 · Flag
Am I wrong? Didn’t Allen West and Alan Grayson at different times represent the same district in Florida? I think the district was redrawn since then.
Priscilla commented 2013-10-23 10:02:47 -0400 · Flag
Excellent post, Ellen. Fox is being so hypocritical in that they specialize in the “scary black man” meme which, as you point out, was made into a cottage industry by Megyn Kelly’s “coverage” of the Black Panther non issue. The racist Fox fear mongering has reared its ugly head, recently, with a spate of stories about a bogus epidemic of black on white crime. If Fox were so concerned about use of incendiary, racist imagery, why no outrage about the white teabagger flying the flag of the racist and treasonous Confederate nation in front of the home inhabited by our first African-American president?!

NHP
truman commented 2013-10-23 09:36:35 -0400 · Flag
Megyn KKKelly does not own a skirt short enough to make me watch this televised tripe.

I’m proud of Grayson for calling out the teabaggers for the racists they are. I wish that other Democrats would do likewise.
mlp ! commented 2013-10-23 08:06:01 -0400 · Flag
Grayson has been on the edge for many years. Maybe this is just a bit over the top, but I think that sometimes the only thing that the stoopit understand is some of what they dish out themselves. I don’t think that they understand the ‘high road’. Maybe this will be the new “Benghazi!!!!!!!!!!!”?
Ray Michaels commented 2013-10-23 07:20:20 -0400 · Flag
YA well too bad he not name Tex Cruz as GRAND WIZZRD!!! ROFLO
Joseph West commented 2013-10-23 03:44:57 -0400 · Flag
Jane, I have absolutely NO problem with what Grayson did. For the last 30 f***ing years, right-wingers have been using the vilest, the most incendiery, the most offensive, the most divisive language imaginable in the name of demonizing THEIR supposed enemies. Hell, do you remember the hatchet job done on a true American hero, Sen Max Cleland—a Vietnam Vet and a triple amputee? In the 2002 Senate race in Georgia, Republi-con nominee Saxby Chambliss (a typical Republi-con chickenhawk who got multiple deferments during the war in which his opponent lost limbs) had the f***ing audacity to run ads linking Cleland with Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Of course by the time John McCain and Chuck Hagel managed to persuade the RNC to get Chambliss to remove the ads, the damage was done.

And then, of course, there were numerous political ads for African-American candidates in the South (Democrats, of course) in which their skin tones were darkened even further and their facial features were hardened to make them seem more menacing (none of these candidates were able to make any inroads in largely white Congressional districts, much less Senate seats or gubernatorial campaigns).

And for West to be trying to hide behind Rep Lewis’s history as a civil rights pioneer, well, that’s to be expected of the sorry-ass war criminal. (I still think we need to ship his butt back to Iraq and let Iraqi authorities deal with him.) The war criminal didn’t apparently suffer too much during the Civil Rights era (he was born in 1961 and little black boys were rarely direct targets of beatings and attacks by whites; also worth noting—West was only 7 years old when Dr King was assassinated) and, as for Lewis’s being “his representative as a young man,” Lewis didn’t enter Congress until 1987 (when West was almost 26) and, prior to that, only became an active politician in 1981 when he was elected to the Atlanta City Council (at this time, West was enrolled at the University of Tennessee). If West were living in the antebellum South, most likely as an adult, he would be a “house Negro” (and, in all likelihood, he would’ve been the embodiment of “Uncle Tom” as performed in countless stage adaptations of Stowe’s novel where Uncle Tom was a more buffoonish and subservient character).
Antoinette commented 2013-10-23 03:23:39 -0400 · Flag
West called Grayson’s campaign “demeaning.” Where was this front lawn piece when that Tea Pot idiot was flying the confederate flag in front of the White House? That clown was silent on that issue. He didn’t want to upset his “overseers.”

The Fox “News” frauds have been sued for past discrimination by former employees. That’s a fact. Of course, you won’t hear Barbie Megyn bring that little gem up.

Discrimination history

http://mediamatters.org/research/2010/10/01/herridge-is-not-alone-news-corps-history-of-dis/171399

Hannocchio the RINO should use that burning cross as his image on Twitter.
Jane S commented 2013-10-23 02:27:54 -0400 · Flag
Ellen, I’m exactly the same. Her smug, “ain’t I hot” expression just sends me screaming into the night.
’
But you hit on exactly the same thing that drives me nuts about Van Susteren. Since the schedule change, I now see Hannity more than either of them, and I actually find him much less offensive — just ludicrous — because he makes no pretenses about who and what he is, unlike the two Fox primetime women.

Please keep pounding away on Kelly. She’s IMO the vilest of the Fox personalities.
Ellen commented 2013-10-23 02:21:52 -0400 · Flag
Thanks, Jane. I can barely stand to look at Kelly. But I can’t stand how Fox is trying to use her as some kind of independent when she is really the same old, same old Fox News in spiffier packaging and with a few dollops of “women’s issues” like interviewing Judge Judy. So I feel it’s very important to expose what is really going on in this show.

I’ve already seen other people in the media – who should know better – say that Fox is trying to moderate now with her. In reality, Fox is trying to LOOK LIKE it’s moderating. And, while I believe Kelly really is more moderate, that doesn’t stop her from doing what she knows will get her props from the boss. That’s why I called her the handmaiden to the GOP.

At least Hannity and O’Reilly are genuine but she’s not. And that’s why I can’t stand her.
Jane S commented 2013-10-23 02:02:15 -0400 · Flag
Well said, Ellen. I didn’t see this segment (catch me watching Kelly, and take me out and shoot me), but I’ve seen him often enough elsewhere on Fox. You capture it perfectly, and I think this is really the essence of Fox.

I also cringed when I heard what Grayson had done with this, but West just plain isn’t right in the head, IMO. Kelly knows it, Greta knows it, Ailes knows it. But the demographics of an extreme right-wing African-American, a military veteran yet, is too dazzling for them to resist.
NewsHounds posted about Fox Attacks Alan Grayson For Comparing The Tea Party To The Ku Klux Klan comments on NewsHounds' Facebook page 2013-10-23 01:38:55 -0400
Fox did more to prove Grayson's point than to debunk it.








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