Howard Dean: Fox News 'absolutely racist' in Sherrod flap (WaPo)

[jefferson_dem]

Howard Dean: Fox News 'absolutely racist' in Sherrod flap
By Matt DeLong

In a heated discussion on "Fox News Sunday," former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said that Fox's conduct during the Shirley Sherrod firestorm last week was "absolutely racist." From the transcript:

Let's just be blunt about this. I don't think Newt Gingrich is a racist, and you're certainly not a racist, but I think Fox News did something that was absolutely racist.

They took a -- they had an obligation to find out what was really in the clip. They had -- they had been pushing a theme of black racism with this phony Black Panther crap and this business and Sotomayor and all this other stuff. You -- I think you've got to be very -- I think the -- look the Tea Party called out their racist fringe, and I think the Republican Party's got to stop appealing to its racist fringe. And Fox News is what did that.

Host Chris Wallace shot back that Sherrod had already been forced to resign from her post at the U.S. Department of Agriculture before Fox News mentioned her name on the air, after a misleadingly edited videotape surfaced on a conservative website that appeared to show her telling an NAACP crowd in March that she withheld assistance from a white farmer because of his race. An unedited version of the tape later showed that Sherrod had actually used the anecdote to show how she had overcome her own racial biases in the mid-1980s. Sherrod later received apologies from the White House was offered her old job back.

Dean later appeared to cede that Fox had not aired the edited tape before Sherrod stepped down, but said it was irrelevant.

I don't think it matters whether it was before or after. The question is you played it. You didn't do your job ...

And there's been this ongoing theme about black racism in America. I agree with Newt that racism has no place in America, whether it's black, white, Latino, or anything else.

Fox has drawn criticism from the left for fueling racial tensions with its heavy coverage of a voter intimidation case involving members of the New Black Panther Party in 2008. Critics of the Obama administration have pointed to the case as an example of the White House ignoring the civil rights of white voters.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2010/07/dean-fox-news-absolutely-racis.html

[Uzybone]

1. Go Dean!

[PopSixSquish]

2. You Tell 'Em Dr. Dean!

and I'm really suprised that lightening didn't strike Newtie dead since he used comments out of context to call Justice Sotomayor racist last summer...

:crazy:

But I guess God does indeed protect drunks and fools...

[midnight]

3. Dr. Dean is a thoughtful man who knows how to keep

Mr. Wallace on topic.

[uponit7771]

4. THANK YOU!

[SunsetDreams]

5. Go Dean! K&R!