If there’s one thing Fox News loves, it’s an opportunity for a segment on Blacks Behaving Badly. So, naturally, the network jumped at the excuse to do just that with Black Lives Matter’s Black Friday protests in Chicago.
On Your World, host (and devoted Trumpster) Trish Regan was more interested in sneering at the protesters than in discussing the actual issues behind the protest. Her opening “question” for the totally fair and balanced panel of two like-minded tsk-tskers (plus herself) and one supporter said it all:
REGAN: They’re trying to get certain policy ideas accomplished, somehow, some way but they’re out there in the streets, protesting but … a lot of them didn’t vote. How are they advancing their cause at all?
As Raw Story noted, Stewart Acuff, a former AFL-CIO organizing director, was the panel's token liberal. He said, "The truth is that there is a specific need to protest officially sanctioned murder of African Americans in our society. There’s a specific need in Chicago to protest torture, forced confessions, police beatings…
Regan interrupted. A legitimate news host would have done so to probe what kind of horrors Acuff was referring to. But Regan didn’t even try. Her issue was that the discussion was veering away from Blacks Behaving Badly into the subject of the protests. Substance over propaganda was a no-no, apparently.
Regan insisted that studies have shown that “We have not seen African Americans suffer as a result of police officers. If anything, you know, police officers right now, Stewart, are the ones that are suffering.”
Compare Regan’s urgent desire to fact check Acuff with her utter lack of challenge to a guest who declared that if Hillary Clinton got elected, “Men will be second-class citizens in this country. They won’t be able to open their mouths.”
Fortunately, Acuff was not to be intimidated. He demanded to be able to finish: “You cut me off when I’d just started. This is ridiculous!” He responded to her contention that police officers are the real victims by saying, “Oh, come on! How many black kids need to be murdered before we see it as a problem?”
Acuff refused to back down and Regan was clearly frustrated in not being able to steamroll her Blacks Behaving Badly message despite stacking the deck against him.
I think he did a great job. My only suggestion would have been to confront Regan over her long history of bias.
Watch it below, from the November 25, 2016 Your World.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is clearly racist because it only cares about blacks and its affirmative action policies are clearly holding back the superior white males from their full potential. Not to mention diversity in America is restricting all the white males’ offensive free speech. Ah, the good old days when they could call an n-word an n-word! Hell, us right-wingers are sick of the ‘politically correct’ n-word stuff we just want to shout….
#BlackLivesMatter is clearly racist because they’re angry over the trivial matter of unarmed blacks being predominately shot and killed by police. Not to mention overwhelmingly facing legal injustice. That’s a small price to pay for whites who fear the black man getting a good night’s sleep knowing they’re all either dead or in jail.
Newhounds just needs to widen their perspective a bit. ;^)
Anyway, Acuff is right to say that those who don’t protest can expect nothing to happen. Protests have a clear purpose and that is to get people talking, grab attention.
The following story is so old it might even be in the Bible (for all I know). "A farmer goes to the market to buy a donkey and other stuff. As he needs the donkey to carry the rest, he starts with that and finds one that looks pretty good. The owner swears that the donkey is well trained and really, really, really, but really obedient: “Just a word is needed”. The guy buys the donkey, finishes his shopping list and loads everything on the donkey.
“Giddap”, he says; donkey doesn’t move. “C’mon!”, “Move!!!” Nothing on that donkey moves, let alone the donkey itself. The new owner pulls on the rope, wraps the rope around the donkey’s ass, etc.etc. Donkey doesn’t even twitch an ear. After a few minutes of this, the new owner looks for the former one and complains: “That donkey you said was so obedient won’t budge whatever I do to it”. “Oh yeah? Let’s see about that”: the former owner picks up a piece of two-by-four, bangs the donkey hard over the head; the donkey falls down, picks itself up and trots over to the new owner. He’s practically asking for directions. “See?” says the former owner: “You have to get his attention, first”.
That’s what protesting does. It gets attention (as Acuff said).
But the “Shout Down the Liberal” approach is one that Fox News is now really trying to push, particularly as inflicted by Bolling, Carlson and O’Reilly. I can’t really tell about Hannity as he’s been too toxic to watch for very long lately, and any time I’ve seen his show, he’s refused to have any non-Right guests.
During much of the W presidency and all of the Obama presidency, the Fox News approach with liberal voices was to let them say a couple of things and then take a condescending tone and cut them off. But you still usually saw Kirsten Powers get a point in when she could, particularly if it was really a right wing idea.
The current idea is to not even let the liberal voice get ten words in before a host like Bolling or Regan angrily shouts them down, saying “Hey! You’re not discussing what I asked you! This is NOT a discussion about (blank)! This is a discussion about (preferred right wing talking point)! Let’s go back to (right wing guest) and see if we can get back on topic, okay?” Having now seen this multiple times over the past week, I am forced to conclude this is the new M.O. at Fox News, and anyone who agrees to appear there really needs to be ready to be treated like that. My hat goes off to Acuff for standing up for himself. Any liberal going on Fox News for the next four years needs to be ready for the host to throw a tantrum like this, and to be able to immediately put the host back in their place.
I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a large variety of ways that the Right Wing will find to bully everyone else.