Fox News Won’t Fire Black Racist Commentator

May 8, 2012 04:22


“Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and other Fox News personalities have been vilified in the mainstream media and threatened in their personal lives for exposing ACORN. It is an insult to them and average Americans to have a former ACORN insider using Fox News to espouse her liberal bias.”

 

 

By Cliff Kincaid

 

Fox News contributor Jehmu Greene, a black feminist, says on her Twitter page that “love can build a bridge.” But racism, not love, was on display last Thursday when she called conservative Tucker Carlson a “bow-tying white boy.”

 

Greene, a Democratic Party operative who was the national director of Project Vote, a group with close ties to the corrupt ACORN organization, has not offered a public apology. There is no indication that her financial relationship with Fox News has suffered as a result of the racial outburst.

 

“Jehmu apologized to Tucker by phone after the segment,” Irena Briganti, Group Senior Vice President at FOX News Channel & FOX Business Network, tells Accuracy in Media.

 

This is apparently the end of the matter for Fox News.

 

Robert Lifson of American Thinker pointed out that if Tucker Carlson had ever called Louis Farrakhan “a bow-tying black boy,” he would be out of a job.

 

What’s more, Greene said on the air that she had not done anything wrong.

 

“Hey, hey, hey,” reacted Carlson, at the slur. “You can’t, wait. Whoa, whoa, whoa…You can use name calling all you like, but you’re ignoring the truth.”

 

“I didn’t call you a name,” replied Greene.

 

So calling somebody a “white boy” is acceptable to Greene.

 

As a Fox News Contributor, Greene is on the Fox News payroll and is paid to be a regular commentator on different programs.

 

At the time she was hired, ACORN whistleblower Anita Moncrief called Greene a Fox News “infiltrator,” saying, “Michelle Malkin, Glenn Beck and other Fox News personalities have been vilified in the mainstream media and threatened in their personal lives for exposing ACORN. It is an insult to them and average Americans to have a former ACORN insider using Fox News to espouse her liberal bias.”

 

Moncrief asked why black conservatives were not being hired by the channel to be commentators.

 

Conservative media critics of Fox News were subsequently cheered by the channel’s hiring of Deneen Borelli, a black conservative, as a Fox News Contributor. She wrote the excellent book, Blacklash: How Obama and the Left Are Driving Americans to the Government Plantation, and was recently interviewed by Roger Aronoff of AIM.

 

 

But Greene is one of several left-wing commentators also hired by the channel, reflecting what Fox News CEO Roger Ailes has called a “course correction” from the days when it was considered a platform for outspoken conservative opinions.

 

Other left-wing commentators hired by Ailes include Sally Kohn, a lesbian feminist, and Santita Jackson, daughter of race-baiter Jesse Jackson.

 

Glenn Beck came under strong criticism when he said on Fox News that he considered President Obama a racist. Beck was forced to apologize and later lost his program on the channel.

 

Greene’s hiring by Fox News came after sustained criticism by liberal groups such as Media Matters of the conservative programming at Fox. Ironically, one of the Media Matters complaints against the channel was that its commentators too often used “racially charged commentary” and “race-baiting” in criticizing the Obama administration and liberal policies.

 

“There is an obvious double standard according to which blacks needn’t worry about showing the kind of ‘racial sensitivity’ that is always required of whites,” says Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, an organization that is often criticized by the Left for examining racial issues from the point of view of white self-interest. Taylor’s book, White Identity, argues that whites should not be afraid to exercise the same rights as other racial and groups.

 

Taylor told AIM that the double-standard that guides media coverage of racial controversies excuses racially-charged comments like those of Jehmu Greene as well as Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC. “Last year,” he noted, “Harris-Perry complained that it was ‘racist’ merely for a white person to point out that only 53 percent of Americans pay income taxes.”

 

“I think that’s just racism,” Harris-Perry had said, arguing that calling attention to such figures is an effort to designate poor black women as the new “welfare queens.”

 

The Heritage Foundation points out that the percentage of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes “now accounts for nearly half of the U.S. population” and that “most of that population receives generous federal benefits.”

 

The explicit racial slur from Greene came during an exchange with Carlson, who sometimes wears a bow tie, about Massachusetts Democratic candidate Elizabeth Warren claiming American Indian status at one point in her career but later dropping the designation.

 

Carlson, co-founder of The Daily Caller and a Fox News Contributor, ridiculed Warren’s claim of being an Indian and came out against racial preferences in hiring, saying, “…no one should gain advantage because of his ethnic background, period.”

 

Greene responded by saying, in part: “To question this woman [Warren] on her qualifications is going to be something that does appeal to…folks like you, voters like you, bow-tying white boys. But at the end of the day it is going to backfire…”
Fox News host Megyn Kelley said Greene’s slur was “an inappropriate name,” after the exchange on her show “America Live.” She said, “I want to apologize to Tucker and to our viewers for that. I wasn’t sure I heard what I thought I heard. And now I have confirmed—it was that. It wasn’t consistent with our standards and I do apologize on behalf of the program.”

 

AIM had asked Fox News spokesperson Irena Briganti if Greene would be fired for making the racist remark. That is when Briganti informed us about the private apology, which is apparently supposed to suffice.

 

Greene learned the art of public speaking and punditry at the Women’s Media Center founded by “Hanoi Jane” Fonda. Greene is the former president of the organization, which is said to be “devoted to making women visible and powerful in the media.”

 

She has accomplished that goal, with the help of Fox News, which is sticking by her.

Cliff Kincaid is the Director of the AIM Center for Investigative Journalism, and can be contacted at cliff.kincaid@aim.org

Jehmu Calls Tucker Carlson A “Bow-Tying White Boy”–Megyn Kelly Apologizes;

 
 



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