@barbaras: Frankly, I don’t give a crap what YOU think. Jackson (the last time I checked) is an American citizen who has every right to express his feelings. But what you and Joe Marsh seem to forget is how Andrew Young was treated for his audacity at speaking to Palestinian representatives at the UN. The mere fact that this country’s “Jewish community” was able to force the President to fire him as UN ambassador played a great deal in Jackson’s comments.

You (and Mr Marsh) also might want to recall how the Jewish community in New York was able to easily weather a controversy over a “Jewish busing line” where a woman was forced to move because she was in the “men’s only” section of the bus. And this is a bus line that was receiving CITY FUNDING, despite the line’s obvious segregationist policy.

The fact that Israel has ignored EVERY UN resolution demanding Israel pull out of the occupied territories and demanding Israel stop building settlements and Israel has done so knowing full well it has the US wrapped around its proverbial little finger. I’m sure you’ve heard right-wingers demanding the US stop sending aid to countries that don’t do as we say but were you aware that OFFICIAL US policy on the settlement issue is that Israel has no right to build them and yet, not one single penny has been cut from aid to Israel because of the settlements?

Then, too, there was the fact that Jackson made the comment in what he thought was an “off-the-record” interview period. (You are aware that most interviewers don’t actually report EVERY little detail of an interview, right? And most good reporters do allow for such—especially in 1984. Nowadays? Not so much.) But I do commend your taking offense at a comment made nearly 30 years ago—AND apologized for.

But given the level of invective thrown around on FoxNoise, Jackson’s comment is hardly worth the sh*tstorm that some people are turning it into NOW.

If you believe Geraldo Rivera then people should be treating Coach Bill Belichick just like Trayvon Martin, since they both wear hoodies.

From Joe Marsh’s comment:

“Maybe none of you know about Sharpton’s history. Look up the role Sharpton played in the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn in 1991. Do research about the near riot at Freddie’s Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995. Both these incidents perfectly highlight Sharpton’s true feelings about Jews.”

Hey Joe — OK, I’ll admit I don’t know that much about the near riot at Freddie’s Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995, but I DO know this much about the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn in the summer of 1991: the Hasidic Jewish community that virtually RULES that community has $$$$ — that is, TONS AND TONS OF IT!! Ergo, anytime a Hasidic Jew in that section of Brooklyn bleats or snaps their fingers for help, ALL THE LOCAL POLITICIANS INSTANTLY DROP WHAT THEY ARE DOING AND COME RUNNING TO THEM ON THE DOUBLE! Case in point: former NYC mayor Adolph — er, I mean — Rudolph Giuliani. Shortly after he was sworn in as mayor in January 1994, he almost instantly BEELINED IT to the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn for a powwow with some of the chief Hasidic leaders, because he KNEW DAMN WELL that their FINANCIAL SUPPORT was the key factor in his victory over then-incumbent mayor David Dinkins.

From Ellen’s comment:

Meanwhile, co-host Tucker Carlson used the moment to take some racial swipes at Jackson and Sharpton: “They are hustlers and pimps who make a living off inflaming racial tensions…”

HALLELUJAH! For once YOU’RE DAMN F***ING RIGHT CARLSON! Your bosses Herr Goebbels II (i.e. Murdoch) and his elephant-sized toady Jabba the Ailes (i.e. Roger Ailes) have been making a GIGANTIC FINANCIAL KILLING off inflaming racial tensions for MORE THAN SEVENTEEN YEARS!

’Nuff said.

It should be obvious to all thinking people that journalist-turned-REDNECK Whore-also Rivera resembles the “thugs” portrayed in that Steve Miller band classic tune “Take the Money and Run”.

The man is just playing to his audience. He gives them red meat — exactly what Fox viewers want to hear. It’s show biz and anybody who takes it as anything more than that hasn’t been paying attention.

Joseph West… given that you countered my comments on Sharpton and Jackson with totally irrelevant points — where did I mention Geraldo’s clowning stunts? …where did I mention Carlson’s history? …and where did Ronald Reagan come from? - I’m afraid you’ve earned a D in Debating 101. Maybe an F actually.

OTOH, you’d certainly get a big pat on the back from Hannity. This is exactly how Hannity debates someone on the air: throw out a whole manure-sized pile of totally irrelevant facts when you can’t argue intelligently.

Caller: “So Sean, with all the violent storms, how can you keep denying global climate change?”

Hannity: “I didn’t have sex with that woman…”

And of course Joseph West, there’s the possibility that you truly believe that Sharpton and Jackson are true heroes of the civil rights struggle (following in the footsteps of MLK) and don’t have an anti-Semitic bone in their bodies!

@joseph West- Jesse Jackson’s Hymietown remarks were reprehensible, and left no question as to how he felt about Jews. I’m surprised to hear that a liberal like yourself would say “personally I don’t think he had any reason to apologize.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/frenzy/jackson.htm And Sharpton has completely reinvented himself since the 80s- both physically and politically. Like Joe Marsh, I remember him during the Brawley, Crown Heights, and Freddies incidents, and he was not the reasonable person you see on MSNBC
today.
That said, Carlson and Rivera are both huge tools.

Just like if a woman dresses a certain way she is asking to be raped? What a moron!

Oh, dear Lord… Wearing a hoodie in the rain — or any time — is not “dressing like a thug.” The “thug” interpretation is processed by the observer — in this case Zimmerman and (according to Geraldo Rivera) the women on the jury — and it is they who see Black+hoodie and assume thug.

I am a grad student with a job that puts me in touch with hundreds of young college students a week and loads of them wear hoodies. It does not make them thugs.

Many of them (unfortunately) also smoke pot. That also does not make them a thug.

To say that wearing a hoodie is “dressing like a thug” is to admit that you are seeing the world through your own bigoted lens.

And therein lies the problem.

Joe Marsh, given the invective your comment was filled with, I have strong reservations that you’ve ever built up ANY “liberal creds.”

How about YOU doing a little remembering? Does the phrase “Al Capone’s vault” ring a bell? Does the TV show “Geraldo” ring any bells? Does Rivera’s on-air account of being at the scene of a “friendly-fire” incident even though he was hundreds of miles away ring any bells? Does his ON-AIR (on FoxNoise, of all places) drawing a MAP in the sand of an upcoming operation in Iraq ring any bells?

As for Tucker Carlson, this is the man who got schooled by Jon Stewart over “journalistic integrity.” Carlson accused Stewart of not asking “tough questions” when Stewart interviewed John Kerry, to which Stewart responded “I didn’t realize . . . that the news organizations look to Comedy Central for their cues on integrity.” Carlson is still the same annoying little conservative twit he was when he started working at CNN in 2000.

As for YOUR opinion on Jackson’s apology about “Hymietown,” personally I don’t think he had any reason to apologize. OTOH, if you want to bring up “bad behavior,” go back to Reagan and start ANYWHERE. From his very first election (getting hold of Carter’s debate book and USING it as well as the whole plan to keep the hostages from being freed until AFTER Reagan’s inauguration) to his little “joke” that very easily could have led to WW3 (I never found joking on national television about ordering planes to bomb a foreign country very amusing, unlike Reagan who smirked through the entire appearance) to his lies about taxation to his obstinance over the minimum wage (frozen at $3.35 an hour through his ENTIRE presidency—even as the fatcats on Wall Street were living out the “greed is good” mantra and hardly suffering any real harm after the 1987 Wall Street crash).

You can “hate to admit it” all you want, but the TRUTH as I see it is that you are NOT a liberal. Perhaps you were once. But I suspect that was a LOOOOOOOONG time ago.

I hate to admit it, but Carlson’s assessment of Sharpton and Jackson has some truth to it.

Both of these “civil rights leaders” are often race-baiters themselves, who can’t resist any opportunity to show up wherever there’s some tragedy invovling black victims and in the guise of “peace and calm” contribute to further tension and sometimes violence.

It puzzles me why the hard-core progressive left has turned both Sharpton and Jackson into near dieties. Is it because those who run this blog (and many who comment here), among others, are so young they have no knowledge of the divisive backgrounds common to Sharpton and Jackson?

Both of them have shown at times their true feelings for whites not to mention Jews; Sharpton far more than Jackson (though I think Jackson’s apology for “Hymietown” [circa 1984] was disingenuous — am I going back too far for most of you?).

Maybe none of you know about Sharpton’s history. Look up the role Sharpton played in the Crown Heights riots in Brooklyn in 1991. Do research about the near riot at Freddie’s Fashion Mart in Harlem in 1995. Both these incidents perfectly highlight Sharpton’s true feelings about Jews.

Sharpton is no dummy. He probably knows very well that anytime there’s a problem of any kind in deprived disadvantaged communities, it’s so easy to point to Jews as scapegoats; there’s a history of this going back thousands of years!

And of course how many here recognize the name Tawana Brawley? That sordid fraud goes back to the 1980s. I don’t know if we’ll ever know Sharpton’s true role in this, but one fact remains that to this day, he hasn’t paid a penny of the defamation suit won against him.

Somehow Sharpton has rehabed himself far better than can be imagined. He get’s daily airtime on MSNBC, the politically-correct left worships him as a “civil rights leader” and he has made great progress in his goal of assuming the mantle of leader of the Harlem Democrat Party Machine (thus pulling strings and fixing the whole city), now that corrupt Rangel has been pushed out of his central Harlem CD.

I’m old enough (close to 70) to remember, so I don’t buy it for one second. And in those 70 years, I’ve earned plenty of liberal creds, so if you all want to bash me for this opinion, go right ahead as it won’t bother me a bit!

my 82 y.o. white mother wears a hoodie…is she a thug

Every generation has its styles, music and slang.

Come on Geraldo, you should know better. When we were growing up in the 60’s & 70’s we had long hair, and our choice of clothes were accepted by our peers in our age group but frowned upon by the World War 2 generation and those who grew up in the 50’s. Remember? To say “You dress like a thug, people are going to treat you like a thug” is not only stupid but forgetting our past as well.

It wasn’t the hoodie, nor the skittles or ice tea. Trayvon’s only mistake was walking while black through Vigilante George’s racist neighborhood.

Rivera: You dress like a thug, people are going to treat you like a thug.