On Fox, one happy outcome of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members caught singing a shockingly racist song on video means we’ve already moved along and there’s nothing more to look at.
The Hannity show held a panel discussion about the public apology of Levi Pettit, one of the University of Oklahoma students on the video. As NBC News described it (but Sean Hannity didn’t) Pettit and other members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter were seen on video chanting racial slurs and referring to lynching while singing about how there would never be an African-American member of the fraternity.
I’ve been extremely critical of Hannity’s race baiting in the past but he’s been pretty decent on this story. However the booking of Niger Innis and Deroy Murdock to “balance” the more liberal Juan Williams guaranteed a certain outcome.
All four praised Pettit’s efforts – with Hannity wanting to know why nobody else had come forward to apologize.
“I think this is a day of celebration,” Innis said. According to him, state Senator Anastasia Pittman, the head of the Black Caucus, introduced Pettit to black leaders in the community, having said that Pettit made a mistake but that his life should not be ruined.
I agree that’s lovely. But Innis went on to use the occasion to take a dig at civil rights leaders – in the name of reconciliation.
INNIS: To me, this is an episode of what real civil rights is about. Real civil rights is about healing, it’s about reconciliation, it’s about bringing people together and not this type of - this thing that masquerades itself as civil rights today when it’s used as a political weapon. So I think this is a moment of celebration. I think Levi made a very good first step and I think he’s gonna continue to make up for the injury that he caused.
Murdock agreed. He said he wanted to look at the situation as a glass that’s 5% empty and 95% full. He acknowledged that the frat boys said “hideous, disgusting things.” But, Murdock continued, “Look at the reaction. Fraternity house shut down, they were kicked off campus immediately. National denunciation. Now, today, this young man came forward and apologized. There was something racist but the response was complete rejection, coast to coast.”
It was Hannity who pointed out that the song had been learned. “Who taught this?” Hannity asked. “That’s a big problem to me.”
Williams also noted that the issue is bigger than a bunch of kids singing a horrible song.
WILLIAMS: In the song, they’re talking about people swinging from trees, they’re talking about a lynching! It’s not only that they don’t want blacks in their fraternity. And you just gotta think: is this a tradition? That’s what I’m saying. I really appreciate the effort at reconciliation, and, as I said, penitence on his part but I think we have to talk about that larger culture and make sure that all of this effort that’s going into him also goes in at the university.
But for Innis, not so much.
INNIS: And I think we should keep in mind the lyrics show us that it’s a relic of the past. Blacks don’t hang from trees any more. That’s ancient history and I get the feeling that these lyrics are lyrics that have been embedded within the fraternity and just uttered over and over and over again over the years. So I don’t know that it’s a manifestation of something happening today. It’s a relic of the past and I think we’re moving forward.
Even if the song itself is not proof enough that this is something more than a “relic,” the unease among African Americans in Claiborne County, Mississippi, where an African American man was recently found hanging from a tree, ought to be enough to prove that this “ancient history” is still very relevant in the present.
Watch it below, from last night's Hannity.
What is this, 1960??? We’re congratulating ourselves that utterly grotesque, horrible racist language — and sentiment — has been widely condemned? Well, whoop-de-doo.
I hope they pay Juan Williams well because otherwise he has no excuse. He may be a squishy centrist politically, but he knows what these people are.
“Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin’ in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin’ from the poplar trees
“Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin’ eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin’ flesh
“Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop.”
That’s Billie Holiday’s classic “Strange Fruit,” written by Abel Meeropol under the pseudonym, Lewis Allan. As powerful today as it was when Meeropol first wrote it and Holiday first recorded it. (And considering black men were still being lynched well into the 1960s—and black men are still being hanged, albeit in effigy, today. Or has Niger (I can just imagine how many of his “close white friends” mispronounce his name in private) forgotten the pictures from just a few years ago of images of BLACK men being hanged from trees for “Halloween decorations?”
This Long Island Lolito is a self-serving Long Island street hustler, and people in his inner-circle know it.
NOTE TO HANNITY
Billy smacked you down on his show using Bernie as his mouthpiece. He’s right about you.
