Megyn Kelly teamed up with Michelle Malkin to further Kelly’s racial obsession with smearing the Obama Department of Justice... and for dessert: a racial attack on Michelle Obama.

As I’ve repeatedly posted, Kelly is obsessed with painting the DOJ as some kind of whitey-hating gang of thug-lovers. She has been proved spectacularly wrong in the past. But that has not put much of a dent in her efforts.

In this case, Kelly cherrypicked remarks by the head of the DOJ’s civil rights division, Vanita Gupta, to suggest that she was stuck in some racial-grievance past.

Her voice dripping with disdain, Kelly summarized Gupta’s analysis of distrust between black communities and the police as, “We shouldn’t be surprised that cops are acting like this or people are against them because of slavery and Jim Crow.”

What Gupta actually said is that the historic role of police in enforcing racial atrocities is “in part the product of historical awareness about the role that police have played in enforcing and perpetuating slavery, the Black Codes, lynchings and Jim Crow segregation.” Which, by the way, Kelly never disproved. But Gupta also said quite a bit more about the problem.

It is also the product of lived experience, of negative interactions that individuals — or their family members, friends, or neighbors — have had with law enforcement. Something as quietly humiliating as being mistreated during a traffic stop, or being followed in a retail store. These stories can circulate through a neighborhood — or these days, across the nation via the web and social media — and they can build up over time into a painful narrative that divides community members and police.

The lack of trust also undeniably results from our criminal justice policies over the last few decades, and the concentrated impact they have had on communities of color and people living in poverty. Law enforcement practices such as the stopping and frisking of young black men based on stereotypes. Sentencing policies that result in mass incarceration, particularly of people of color. And the devastating consequences that convictions have had on individuals’ ability to find work, secure stable housing and reintegrate as full members of society. These are deliberate policy choices that we made over the last several decades. We bear the responsibility to confront their consequences.

Malkin sneered, “They have one filter and one filter, only: race, race, race.”

As if Kelly isn’t fixated on the subject, herself. But she murmured her agreement with Malkin.

“And really what she’s saying at base is, the cops are bad because they enforce the law as it was written by politicians,” Kelly added.

Did Kelly even read the speech? Gupta specifically noted in her comments above, how forces beyond the police are at fault. Furthermore, she also expressed a great deal of sympathy for police in her comments:

The overwhelming majority of the women and men who police our streets do their jobs with honor, pride and distinction. Most of these individuals are driven to the police academy out of a commitment to public service and a desire to make an impact in their communities. As the senseless and tragic assassinations of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu this spring, the shooting of two officers in Ferguson in March and the tragic injuries inflicted on officers in Baltimore a few weeks ago, remind us, officers do all of this at considerable risk to themselves.

I am struck everywhere I go by the wide gap in empathy and common language to discuss these problems. Because in the very same cities and rooms where I speak with folks in the community, I hear from law enforcement who emphasize their responsibility to enforce the law and how they are doing the best job they can. They feel attacked and undervalued. They talk about how the actions of a few bad actors have tarnished the whole profession. They talk about the fact that department budgets have been slashed over the last several years, resulting in drastic cuts for community policing and neighborhood patrols. They talk about how they are constantly making split second decisions and people don’t account for the thousands of times situations don’t escalate and how the daily stress of their jobs take a toll.

But Malkin called that “lip service to some of the cops who’ve died” and complained, “It was so obligatory.” She accused Gupta of putting law enforcement officers in danger (on the network that promoted rancher Cliven Bundy’s armed insurrection against the federal government, no less!) without explaining how or why.

“Straight news anchor” Kelly didn’t ask for anything like proof. Instead, she changed the subject to prod Malkin into racial attacks on Michelle Obama. Malkin wrote a venomous column about Mrs. Obama’s recent speech at Tuskegee University - that sent Fox into a racial tizzy. Kelly euphemistically described Malkin's column as “rejecting” Obama’s thoughts on race. Here’s a sample:

I don’t care what color you are: This arrogant exercise of first lady privilege — invoking false stories to stoke racial hostility and score political points — is patently offensive. There’s enough demagoguery in the public square. The Aspen ski-vacationing, haute couture-wearing, Hollywood elite-chumming first lady’s delusional discrimination fables are fuel on a raging fire her husband has failed to alleviate with billions of dollars of government “investments,” programs, summits and photo-ops.

The two started on a tear of racial malice. Some excerpts:

• MALKIN: She’s a master of this kind of social agitation….

• KELLY: We are seeing more and more a culture of victimization in this country, Michelle.

• MALKIN: It whitewashes the true root causes of the problems in these urban communities.

• KELLY: It just takes away people’s sense of empowerment. That’s how we get out of these situations. …It takes away your power to send a message you are a victim and you will remain a victim unless the man gets his foot off of your neck.

Ironically, as this festival of hate wound down, Malkin boasted about the optimism of conservatives:

MALKIN: Conservatives haven’t done a good enough job of outreach to these communities. …We have a shared principle and a shared interest in making sure that we can lift people up, that it’s a message of optimism and individualism, not this kind of dark, dank collectivism that keeps people down.

She also said inner cities have a “crab in the bucket” syndrome in which whenever one crab tries to crawl out, the others try to grab him and drag him down.

Oh, yeah, that’s real optimism, alright.

Crossposted at News Hounds.
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