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Fox News Accuses Obama of Using Trayvon Martin to Provoke Racial Confrontation
Fox News continues to demonize Trayvon Martin and President Obama by claiming that Obama is using the shooting to provoke a racial confrontation.
Here is the video from Media Matters:
Here is the transcript of Sean Hannity and Dick Morris:
Morris: He can’t give Spike Lee’s money back, because his whole goal is to provoke a racial confrontation. That’s why he intervened in this.
Hannity: Whoa, stop for a second. Are you saying the president’s goal is to spark a racial confrontation?
Morris: I don’t mean in the streets of Florida. I’m sorry. I misstated that. Take it back. The president’s goal is to heighten African American turnout by stoking a feeling of victimization in the African American community.
Hannity: It’s another way to say he is trying to energize his base…how do you think he’s doing it, by the comments he made about Trayvon Martin looking like him?
Morris: Yes. Exactly, I think what he is trying to do is rekindle the sense of black victimization which would impel an increased turnout, and I think that he’s also trying to do that with Latinos. That’s why he is changing the immigration unilaterally, implementing the Dream Act unilaterally in effect.
According to Fox News, the Trayvon Martin shooting is being made racial by President Obama who is using the killing of a seventeen year old kid to increase African American turnout for the general election. Of course, this is exactly what President Obama is not doing. Obama’s intervention has been limited to a statement of sympathy for Trayvon Martin’s family, and a plea for people to let the investigation play out so that the facts will be known.
What is really going on here is that the right is using the Trayvon Martin shooting and Obama’s comments as a racial wedge issue and as a reminder to white voters that they shouldn’t trust the African American president. Terrified conservatives are using the killing of Trayvon Martin in an attempt to reopen up the nation’s racial wounds for political gain. The hypocrisy of the right is stunning when you consider that they has said nothing about the president making similar comments about the murder of Melissa Jenkins.
The right is so terrified that African Americans will show up to vote in November that they feel the need to turn the president’s simple message of sympathy into an ugly race based political attack. President Obama doesn’t have to worry about African Americans showing up on Election Day. Polling shows that even when times have been their toughest during his first term, African Americans and Latinos have been very loyal to this president.
Morris’s whole theory is based on the fraudulent premise that African Americans and Latinos need extra motivation to come out and support this president. President Obama will certainly ask for their votes, but it has been white progressives who have been hopping off the Obama bandwagon more than women, Latinos, and African-Americans.
Hannity and Morris were doing their best to terrify aging white conservatives into coming out and voting for Mitt Romney. Just as George W. Bush terrified his supporters by raising the terror alert level before the 2004 election, people like Sean Hannity and Dick Morris are blowing their racial dog whistles in an attempt to get Republicans to the polls.
The right will use anything to attack Obama. Even the senseless killing of a teenage boy is not off limits. They are scared, desperate, and appealing to our darkest demons, but as 2008 demonstrated, we should never doubt the power of America’s better angels to prevail.
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11 Responses to Fox News Accuses Obama of Using Trayvon Martin to Provoke Racial Confrontation
Reynardine
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 12:37 am
More DARVO, as usual (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Oppressor)
fairlysharon
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 7:48 am
as Alex Pareene, @ Salon said:
“t is a simple fact that when the president takes a position on something, anything, roughly 50 percent of the nation then decides to take the opposite opinion. Once Obama spoke out, caring about Martin became a “Democratic” issue, and Republicans felt not just free but obligated to fling all sorts of shit.”
Linda Turnipseed
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 8:27 am
This is the full text of what the President said:
“Well, I’m the head of the executive branch, and the attorney general reports to me, so I’ve got to be careful about my statements to make sure that we’re not impairing any investigation that’s taking place right now.
But obviously, this is a tragedy. I can only imagine what these parents are going through. And when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids. And I think every parent in America should be able to understand why it is absolutely imperative that we investigate every aspect of this, and that everybody pulls together – federal, state and local – to figure out exactly how this tragedy happened.
So I’m glad that not only is the Justice Department looking into it, I understand now that the governor of the state of Florida has formed a task force to investigate what’s taking place. I think all of us have to do some soul-searching to figure out how does something like this happen. And that means that we examine the laws and the context for what happened, as well as the specifics of the incident.
But my main message is to the parents of Trayvon Martin. If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon. And I think they are right to expect that all of us as Americans are going to take this with the seriousness it deserves, and that we’re going to get to the bottom of exactly what happened.”
I would like someone to point out which part of this is racist because I honestly can’t seem to find it.
A Walkaway
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 10:56 am
One strong disagreement – for many people and in a sense for most of this country, the racial wounds have never closed. They’ve been covered over with a filthy and unsanitary bandage and they stink.
In a sense, this is tearing off a tiny bit of that dirty bandage so that part of the wound gets fresh, clean air. For many minority people, the racism is still strong and toxic – the ones who are protected by their SES don’t feel it as much as those who are poor.
As with a wound, the filthy bandages (lies, “racism was solved during the civil rights era”, “it’s far better now than it was before so we don’t need to deal with it”, etc.) need to be taken off and the wound cleaned and medicines applied. We may not be able to educate or “heal” (or transform into something useful) the septic bacteria – the racist bigots, but we can push them into a corner, isolate them, and keep them from spreading their poison.
BTW… if you want an eye-opening experience, examine carefully how the situation is described in regional newspapers (like ours). The words used to describe the evidence that Zimmerman was a racist bigot murderer are couched in uncertain language, while the language describing the attempts to paint him as a “local hero” are in clearer and stronger wording.
(President Obama earned even more respect with his words regarding Trayvon… if it were possible for him to have more respect in my eyes. He COULD use this to deal with the issue of race in this country, but the Republicans would all scream like stuck pigs once the reality started coming out. Silence on it after the initial statement is probably the most politically effective move he could have made.)
Rho D
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 11:20 am
Oh, guys! Give it up already, if you ain’t got it by now, you’re never gonna get it!
Sadly, young Trayvon was killed by America’s number one killer… Stupidity!
Stupid laws, stupid gun-toting idiots, and stupid policies.
Dan
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 12:44 pm
They are so scared that someone is going to finally look behind the curtain and find out that the real issue here, other than justice for Travon, isn’t race. It’s gun rights. The Democrats are ignoring it just as much as the GOP. No one is talking about the law itself. The cops botched the initial investigation of course but I believe it to be more due to incompetence than race. There is a racial component to this but I think it’s in the knee jerk reactions of those uninvolved, who assume Travons guilt just because he’s black. “He got what he deserved!” Deserved? If you poke around this too much without being distracted by the race argument, you’ll find that this law allows for a person to act like a jerk, pick a fight, then when the fight goes bad to shoot the person you just started a fight with, and claim self defense. Now what sense does that make? Zimmerman turned out to be the biggest danger to the community that he was so willing to kill for. We can’t have untrained idiots wandering around strapped with pistols, shooting whoever they deem to be a threat. That’s a job for a well trained, disciplined police force.
A Walkaway
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 4:17 pm
Uhhh… that’s not the “Stand your ground” law that I know of. The Stand Your Ground law I know of (and maybe they’ve changed it drastically since I first learned of it) protects people when they defend themselves – and I clearly remember how bad it was before that law was passed. The only change I’ve heard about was including your vehicle as a place where you didn’t have to run for your life.
Unless it’s been really changed (and I’d want to see more than rhetoric about it), the law is/was purely defensive in nature and protects people from abusive and aggressive law enforcement (the norm).
majii
Apr. 3rd, 2012 at 1:49 pm
The right has every reason to be afraid of Black Americans turning out in larger numbers than we did in 2008. We’ve watched as these hypocrites have disrespected PBO at every turn. The GOP leaders have done nothing to rein in these attacks, and in fact, in almost every instance, they have taken the lead. We’re not as stupid as many on the right think we are, and we’re more politically savvy than they give us credit for. Although they wish more of us would vote for their candidates, it’s NOT going to happen. When Cain said that he could get millions of us to vote for him, he was lying through his teeth because we don’t vote solely on the basis of race. The issues a politician embraces are more important to us than his/her race. You don’t dog us out and expect us to kiss your behind. There’s no widespread Stockholm Syndrome among the Black American population that I know of. I know many Black Americans in my city, and they, like myself, are mad as hell at the way the GOP has treated PBO, and we plan to show up at the polls in November and take as many people as we can with us.
FightThePower
Apr. 4th, 2012 at 7:35 am
I think I know why Dick Morris so despises the Clintons.
Bill rejected Morris’ sexual advances.
(Can’t you see Dick in a feather boa?)
Anne
Apr. 4th, 2012 at 12:10 pm
I believe that FOX Noise would love to see a racial confrontation, because it would play right into their sick and twisted view of race and racial relations. They also blame both Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, who were specifically ASKED for help by Trayvon Martin’s parents. The fact that they are lying about the president shows that they are projecting their own racial bigotry onto him as well. Everyone of us, including African-Americans, who are strongly opposed to the path that the Party of No and their spokespeople want to lead us down need to get out and vote in November. We need to not only re-elect the president but also change the composition of Congress in order to at least neutralize the negative influence of the GOP in its current form.
Lydia777
Apr. 9th, 2012 at 9:22 pm
If people would remember that song, “We are the world”. We weren’t brought into this world to hurt each other, but to love each other. I cannot help but get so very angry, when my own goverment covers up lies, and helps a person that not one person, with the exception of those closest to him, knows who this Barry Soetoros is. Look,he’s lied his whole life! He can’t even remember when his own birthday is! The Western Center for Journalism is the only place that portraits this liar, this thief,this wanna be, who has no business calling himself a man, non the less ,A President! He very well wants to start race wars! Then he can send the military in and call for marshal law! Nothing would serve him better! People just are not that stupid or gullable. If the media were to tell it like it is, without having thier lives threatened, then, I’d be more apt to give the guy a chance, but when I found out about all the murders that have taken place in his name, I say, I hope to hell they hang your ass Mr. Barry Soetoros! He’s even threatened 80 year old black women, who were just going to vote. This man is a sick, sick, madman, and he needs to be brought down,no matter what color he is. He can take his buddy Eric Holder,with him!I LOVE MY COUNTRY,AMERICA AND SHE’S FULL OF COLORS!