Fox News’ Brit Hume echoed colleague Bill O’Reilly – with help from Fox host Chris Wallace – when he snubbed the anniversary of the Civil Rights Act in favor of a racial attack on President Obama and Eric Holder. In this case, Hume complained, “Both Eric Holder and Barack Obama have benefited politically enormously from the fact that they are African-American.” Hume later added, “(T)o those two men race has been both a shield and a sword that they have used effectively to defend themselves and to attack others.”

On today’s Fox News Sunday, host Wallace "forgot" the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act yet still found time to raise racial questions about Obama and Holder. Twice. In the first instance, Wallace played a clip of a testy exchange between Holder and Congressman Louis Gohmert, followed by a brief clip of Holder speaking at National Action Network. There, Holder suggested he has been held to a harsher standard because of his race. Wallace turned to his colleague for a response, not any of the supposedly neutral journalists also on the panel. “Brit, does he have a point?”

Hume answered:

I don’t think so. And I think, you know, first of all, it’s false that no attorney general and no president have been subjected to this kind of treatment. After all, Bill Clinton was impeached. Think about that for a moment. John Mitchell went to jail. I mean the list is long of attorneys general and other officials who have been subjected to some very rough treatment on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

And this strikes me as kind of crybaby stuff from Holder. My sense about this is that both Eric Holder and Barack Obama have benefited politically enormously from the fact that they are African-American and the first to hold the jobs that they hold. And this, I don’t know if he specifically meant race or not. I suspect perhaps he did. But to those two men, race has been both a shield and a sword that they have used effectively to defend themselves and to attack others. And I think it is depressing at this stage in our national life after all we’ve been through on this issue and given the overwhelming consensus on the issue of civil rights that this kind of stuff is still going on.

Later, Wallace just happened to pick out a viewer’s “question” that made the same point, albeit more explicitly. Then Wallace chose Fox News contributor George Will to respond:

WALLACE: We asked you for questions from the panel, for the panel, rather. And we got this on Twitter from Michael Dagan. “Why is it that if you oppose their position and you’re white, you are  branded a racist? Both Attorney General Holder and POTUS, (president of the United States) race bait.” George, is that what’s going on here?

WILL: Sure. Look, liberalism has a kind of Tourette’s syndrome these days. It’s just constantly saying the word “racism” and “racist.” It’s an old saying in the law. If you have the law on your side, argue the law, if you have the facts on your side, argue the facts. If you have neither, pound the table. This is pounding the table. There’s a kind of intellectual poverty now. Liberalism hasn’t had a new idea since the 1960s except ObamaCare and the country doesn’t like it. Foreign policy is a shambles from Russia to Iran to Syria to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the recovery is unprecedentedly bad. So what do you do? You say anyone who criticizes us is a racist. It’s become a joke among young people. You go to a campus where this kind of political correctness reins, and some young person will say looks like it’s going to rain. The person listening will say, “You’re a racist.” I mean, it’s so inappropriate. The constant implication of this that it is, I think, becoming a national mirth.

Playing the white racial victim as cover for pointing race-baiting fingers at Holder and Obama – and, incidentally, ignoring a major civil rights milestone - perfectly mirrors Bill O’Reilly’s tactics just a few days before. On April 10, O’Reilly also snubbed the 50^th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act – even though four of the five living presidents spoke at a summit to commemorate it – while using the same kind of "unfair shield" language.

(T)he heavy evidence is that Eric Holder is using his skin color as a shield to avoid explaining to the American people why he has been so ineffective on a variety of fronts.

...It’s long past time to stop this kind of nonsense. Richard Nixon was treated far more harshly by Congress than Barack Obama. And his attorney general, John Mitchell was ruined over the Watergate investigation.

The truth is that Eric Holder has been treated gently by the national press and has not been subject to much scrutiny by the public.

As I pointed out in my O’Reilly post, it has become something of a Fox News tradition to “recognize” civil rights moments by race baiting. Instead of showing real independence, Fox News Sunday made a concerted effort to join the club. Check out its top political headline today:

Video below by Media Matters: