May 23, 2015

With his open contempt for African Americans, Mark Fuhrman proved he’s as racist as he ever was – and Fox News loves him for it.

The fact that Fox routinely trots out Fuhrman to comment on racially sensitive cases speaks volumes about Fox News. (If you’re too young to remember his role in the O.J. Simpson case or need a refresher, read this).

On Hannity, substitute host Andrea Tantaros brought up the indictments of six Baltimore police officers over Freddie Gray’s death. She asked her all-white panel, “What happens if they don’t get this conviction?”

Fuhrman harrumphed a few times and spoke haltingly. But his disdain and dislike for African Americans came through loud and clear.

FUHRMAN: Well, I don’t think it’s a consideration that you can actually – uh, use to actually, um, formulate any kind of a tactic or approach to the case. You have to see the case for what it is and if these officers are not prosecuted, there’s nothing you can really do. Of course they’ll riot. They rioted before the officers, they rioted and actually acted out when the officers were indicted, so they’re going to continue to do this and they were doing this long before Freddie Gray.

I stumble with this because it makes no sense, in any regard. No matter if you indict or you don’t indict, you have the same situation and now Baltimore is a bloodbath. What has changed?

Now, I do not favor rioting over anything. Nor do I think it “makes sense” to do so. But it would be nice to see even a smidgen of sympathy for an American community that feels so desperately marginalized that it would react in that way. Rather than high-handedly treat them as some kind of group of misbehaving children who "actually acted out."

Fox's Geraldo Rivera, Fox's Vice President Of Whitesplaining (serving under Bill O'Reilly) was also on hand to lecture us that we should be focused on black-on-black crime in Baltimore instead. He concluded with this kicker:

RIVERA: I believe the Freddie Gray case will mark the decline into irrelevancy of the modern civil rights movement. It seems that they are only interested – black lives matter – black lives matter only when they’re killed by cops, particularly white cops.

And on Fox, black lives matter only when they’re killed by other blacks.

Crossposted at News Hounds.
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