Yesterday, I called Fox News’ Jesse Watters’ racial scolding of Oprah Winfrey hilariously hypocritical given the shocking race baiting that is so common on Fox and given that Oprah’s comments - about Trayvon Martin’s death - were very mild. And she had admonished the public not to forget “how far we’ve come.” But Watters’ reproof was nothing compared to the smears doled out on the Hannity show tonight in which they falsely accused Winfrey of racial demagoguery. And the hypocrisy was off-the-chart worse given Sean Hannity’s much more troubling record of race baiting. Especially since Hannity, like Watters, ignored Winfrey’s almost effusive praise for the United States that was made in the same interview. Nevertheless, Hannity suggested that Winfrey had successfully hidden her racial animosity until now.

As I wrote yesterday:

In case you missed it, Oprah was on the Today show yesterday where she called Trayvon Martin’s death “parallel” to Emmett Till. “In my mind, same thing,” she said. Winfrey also immediately added, “but you can get stuck in that and not allow yourself to move forward and see how far we’ve come.”

Apparently, that was just too much racial sensitivity for Watters. He explained the story of Till by saying, “14-year old black kid, in Mississippi, 1955, flirted with a white woman. A few days later, two white racists attacked him and shot him to death.” But even Watters’ description of the Till matter showed his insensitivity. Watters failed to mention that Till’s killers were acquitted by an all-white jury and that his case became a galvanizing force for the civil rights community. Surely, Winfrey had that in mind when she made her analogy. And, as Oprah made clear, at least to anyone not looking for reasons to find offense, she was not saying that the facts of Trayvon Martin’s killing were the same but that they had the same resonance for and meaning to African Americans.

Apparently, that was too much racial sensitivity for the Hannity show, too. As he sat in front of an over-sized photo of Winfrey, large letters blared, “OPRAH OUTRAGE” while Hannity detailed this latest reason to gin up racial animosity against her. It was the same reason as Watters but with an extra little dig because she had taken a jab at Fox News: Winfrey had had the unmitigated gall to say that President Obama was smart to have turned down a cameo in the movie she’ll be in:  “That’s why Obama is our president. Because he knows not to go and get himself in a movie and be on Fox News every day afterwards. Yes, Obama’s very smart.”

“Why shouldn’t he come on Fox News?” Hannity asked. And then proceeded to demonstrate exactly why not. First, he made a show of support for Winfrey – that just so happened to include a swipe at Obama: “She left Jeremiah Wright’s church. No one’s ever asked her about that. I would like to hear why she left.”

Yeah, I’m sure he would.

Also on hand for “reaction” were two African Americans, including one of Hannity’s favorite black-attackers, Michael Meyers, of the “New York Civil Rights Coalition” and Fox News contributor Deroy Murdock, a conservative African American. Just like Watters, they all seemed to completely miss the point of Winfrey’s Emmett Till analogy. Or maybe they were just too busy using it to malign her as some kind of racial crybaby to bother to try and understand what she meant.

MEYERS: Of course (Oprah's comments) are racial. And they’re errant. They’re fallacious… They’re ignorant. …She doesn’t know anything about the Emmett Till case.

HANNITY: This (Trayvon Martin) was not a race case. (I guess it didn't count how Fox News has used it relentlessly to smear African Americans).

MURDOCK: You look at these incredible homicidal white racists in the south 58 years ago vs. George Zimmerman…. (He’s) very different from the people who killed Emmett Till.

But Meyers eagerly upped the Winfrey-smearing ante:

She used to be a bridge over troubled water. These comments are so outrageous, so racially offensive, such racial rhetoric that I say she is now engaging in idiocy and racial poison.

Oh, really” Then why does Meyers tolerate the kind of race-baiting that Hannity sanctions? I have a laundry list here, which includes this comment, made by Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson:

Most blacks, not all but most in Tennessee, especially in the Memphis, Tennessee area, are still living in the 50’s and 60’s. They are so racist that they don’t even realize that white Americans have moved on. And so whenever there’s a (political) campaign like this, such as this, they always use racism in order to intimidate white America.” 

If Winfrey’s remarks were “racial poison,” I’d love to know what Meyers has to say about Peterson. Not only has he returned to the Hannity show since then (and made other racially inflammatory remarks), Hannity sits on the advisory board of Peterson’s non-profit organization.

Hannity “asked” Meyers, “You think she’s always thought this way but successfully hid this?  …’Cause I’ve never seen her - I always thought her as somebody that brought people together.”

Meyers said, yes, he thought she had always been that way. “I always regarded her as racial. …She beats that racial breast-beating drum all the time.”

Even Hannity seemed to think that a bit much. He said “I can’t think of another example, though.”

Murdock couldn’t either. He said, “I always thought of her as somebody who had kind of gotten beyond all of this. Maybe she’s just jumped on the bandwagon a lot of people are trying to get going which is, 'Nothing’s changed, Jim Crow’s still alive and well, this is like America, the American south from before the Civil Rights Act.' That whole idea, that theme is something you hear over and over and over is very poisonous, very dangerous.”

Had Murdock or Hannity  bothered to do any research into Winfrey’s actual beliefs and life experiences, they’d have known that Oprah has suffered racism quite recently. In an interview with Larry King this week she talked about not being admitted to a store on Madison Avenue because she’s black and about a salesperson refusing to show her a handbag in Zurich because the salesperson kept insisting it was too expensive. But even more importantly, they all missed or ignored the love and awe Winfrey has also expressed for her country at the same time. In her Grio interview (the one in which she expressed the parallel between Trayvon Martin and Emmett Till) Winfrey also said, “We need to give ourselves a round of applause. In this country, with all of its injustices, look at what we’ve been able to do in the span of one man’s lifetime.” With King, she said, “Look at how far we actually have come.”

Yet Meyers sneered, “She is a hypocrite.”

Hannity said he has “always liked her” but, “This was just over the top.”

Hannity was right about that. But for completely different reasons than the ones he was trying to argue.

Video available at Mediaite.