Justin's Political Corner
Since Jason Collins became the first male player in American professional sports to come out, he has received both disdain and attacks from pundits, coaches and players, but also plenty of encouragement.
On Meet The Press Sunday, former Ravens linebacker Brendon Ayanbadejo — who has used the spotlight to advocate for marriage equality — said he hopes that one day gay male athletes will no longer be surprising or big news to fans. Ayanbadejo highlighted the need to reform hyper-masculine sports culture to be more accepting of all people:
AYANBADEJO: People think gayness has something to do with femininity when really we just need to erase that stereotypes from our minds. LGBT people come in all different types and shapes and forms. So I think that’s really what we’re fighting. But the beautiful thing about what Britney Griner did, it barely made a splash. That’s what we’re trying to do in men’s sports when people announce they’re gay. We don’t want it to change the climate in sports. We want everybody to be accepted and people can go out there and love who they want to love and be who they are so they cannot only be better people but they can also be better athletes.
From the 05.05.2013 edition of NBC’s Meet The Press:
(via Muslim Congressman Ellison Slams GOP’s Call For Religious Profiling After Boston | ThinkProgress)
During an appearance on Meet The Press Sunday, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) repeated his call for profiling Muslims in the name of public safety, stating that although most Muslims are “outstanding people,” the threat of terrorism still stems from “the Muslim community.” Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN), America’s first Muslim congressman, quickly shot down that line of thinking, arguing that blanket profiling doesn’t serve the needs of law enforcement and actually undermines effective investigations by unnecessarily straining public resources.
Ellison detailed the shortcomings of King’s approach, stressing that individual behavior and actionable evidence should form the basis of terrorism investigations. He also compared King’s strategy to the similarly misguided policies that the American government adopted towards Japanese Americans during World War II.
King also asked why law enforcement hadn’t made interrogations of the Boston bombers’ mosque a higher priority, prompting host David Gregory to ask what, exactly, investigators could have asked before the bombings had occurred. King responded by repeating that such interrogations had not occurred due to “political correctness” concerning the treatment of Muslims in America.
(via Worst First Day Ever? TV Anchor Fired After Profane Debut : The Two-Way : NPR)
I’m sure many of us have had pretty bad first days — at school, at a new job, a bad first date. But this weekend, we got word of a case that may take the cake.
A.J. Clemente was making his debut as weekend anchor for KFYR in Bismarck, N.D.
Just before his co-anchor made the big introduction and obviously unaware that he was live, he let a series of bad words fly, apparently because he was not succeeding at pronouncing the name of the London Marathon winner, Tsegaye Kebede.
h/t: NPR.org
Jimmy Fallon will host The Tonight Show in 2014. NBC confirmed the news Wednesday morning.
Jay Leno will leave conclude his 22-year run headlining Tonight in spring 2014, at which point Fallon will move to the 11:35 slot. The move will also see Tonight return to 30 Rockefeller in New York, where wit will be executive produced by Fallon’s former Saturday Night Live boss Lorne Michaels.
The announcement comes just weeks after The Hollywood Reporter revealed NBC was preparing an exit plan for Leno. THR further reported on Tuesday that Fallon had signed the Tonight deal and that Saturday Night Live stalwart Seth Meyers is being eyed as his Late Night replacement.
“Jay Leno is an entertainment icon, making millions of people laugh every weeknight for more than 20 years,” said NBCUniversal CEO Steve Burke. “His long reign as the highest-rated late-night host is a testament to his work ethic and dedication to his viewers and to NBC.
With the exception of the seven-month lapse in 2009-10 when Leno lost The Tonight Show reins to Conan O’Brien, he’s hosted the show since taking over from Johnny Carson in 1992.
Concerned Women for America blogger Christian Shelby wants everyone to know that she is definitely not a bigot for being angry that Jenna Wolfe of The Today Show and her girlfriend Stephanie Gosk are expecting. She said it is “just sad” and “selfish, and supremely so,” for the two women to raise a child, which she claims is not “fair to the overall development of a child.”
In 2006, CWA also attacked Mary Cheney after she announced that she was pregnant and planned to raise the child with her partner.
h/t: Right Wing Watch
NBC is hyping an “interview,” to be aired Monday, with convicted child rapist Jerry Sandusky. But what they don’t tell you is the interview wasn’t conducted by NBC. Rather, NBC is airing excerpts of an interview by John Ziegler, right-wing documentarian and propogandist. Ziegler has been publicly skeptical of the charges against Sandusky, who was convicted of 45 counts of child sexual abuse, writing that at the time the grand jury was convened “the legal case against Jerry Sandusky was actually remarkably weak.”
Ziegler insists he is “not supportive” of Sandusky and does acknowledge he engaged in “criminal behavior.”
The interview being aired by NBC as news content is part of a larger documentary called “The Framing of Joe Paterno.” On his website, Ziegler lambasts the Freeh Report of the Penn State scandal, which concluded Joe Paterno “failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade.” Ziegler attacks the testimony of assistant coach Mike McQueary who said he observed Sandusky sexually assaulting a child in the shower. Ziegler says “the evidence indicates that McQueary did not witness an assault, but rather a botched ‘grooming’”
Previously Ziegler has produced films such as “Media Malpractice: How Obama Got Elected” and “Blocking The Path to 9/11,” a film defending an error riddled mini-series seeking to pin blame on Bill Clinton for the 9/11 attacks.
Ziegler is also defending Reno Saccoccia, the Steubenville football coach who “knew about the rape of a 16-year-old girl by two of his players, but didn’t say a word about it to school administrators or local law enforcement.” On his website, Ziegler asserts Saccoccia is “not culpable” and reveals he has been “advising him for the past several months on how to handle the media firestorm.”
Scott Paterno publicly opposes Ziegler’s efforts to defend his late father.
h/t: Think Progress
PPP’s annual poll on TV news finds that there’s only one source more Americans trust than distrust: PBS. 52% of voters say they trust PBS to only 29% who don’t trust it. The other seven outlets we polled on are all distrusted by a plurality of voters.
When it comes to asking Americans which single outlet they trust the most and least out of the ones we polled on, Fox News once again wins both honors. 34% say it’s the one they trust the most, compared to 13% for PBS, 12% for CNN, 11% for ABC, 8% for MSNBC, 6% for CBS, and 5% each for Comedy Central and NBC. Fox News is the choice of 67% of Republicans, while Democrats basically split their allegiances four ways between ABC and CNN, both at 17%, and MSNBC and PBS, both at 16%.
Even more Americans identify Fox News as the outlet they trust the least- 39% give its that designation to 14% for MSNBC, 13% for CNN, 12% for Comedy Central, 5% for ABC and CBS, 3% for NBC, and 1% for PBS. 60% of Democrats give it their lowest marks while Republicans split between MSNBC (24%), CNN (19%), and Comedy Central (14%) on that front.
On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, Colin Powell condemned the GOP’s “dark vein of intolerance” and the party’s repeated use of racial code words to oppose President Obama and rally white conservative voters.
Without mentioning names, Powell singled out former Mitt Romney surrogate and New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu for calling Obama “lazy” and Sarah Palin, who, Powell charged, used slavery-era terms to describe Obama:
POWELL: There’s also a dark — a dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party. What do I mean by that? I mean by that that they still sort of look down on minorities. How can I evidence that?
When I see a former governor say that the President is “shuckin’ and jivin’,” that’s racial era slave term. When I see another former governor after the president’s first debate where he didn’t do very well, says that the president was lazy. He didn’t say he was slow. He was tired. He didn’t do well. He said he was lazy. Now, it may not mean anything to most Americans, but to those of us who are African Americans, the second word is shiftless and then there’s a third word that goes along with that. The birther, the whole birther movement. Why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?
From the 01.13.2013 edition of NBC’s Meet The Press:
Powell added that the Republican Party is “having an identity problem,” noting that its significant shift to the right has produced “two losing presidential campaigns.”
The Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office has declined to prosecute “Meet the Press” over host David Gregory’s alleged display of a high-capacity gun magazine on-air, the Washington Post’s Erik Wemple reported Friday:
D.C. Attorney General declines to prosecute David Gregory for mag display on “Meet the Press.”
— ErikWemple (@ErikWemple) January 11, 2013
(via Sahil Kapur at TPM: Obama Blames GOP For Fiscal Cliff On NBC’s Meet The Press (VIDEO))
President Obama appeared on NBC’s “Meet The Press” Sunday to ratchet up the pressure on Congress to act to avoid the fiscal cliff — and repeatedly blamed Republicans for the impending crisis in the event of failure.
“So far, at least, Congress has not been able to get this stuff done,” Obama said. “Not because Democrats in Congress don’t want to go ahead and cooperate, but because I think it’s been very hard for Speaker Boehner and Republican Leader McConnell to accept the fact that taxes on the wealthiest Americans should go up a little bit as part of an overall deficit reduction package.”
Although congressional leaders say discussions are ongoing, the prospects for a deal have diminished since Friday afternoon when Obama issued his ultimatum to Republicans. He again dared them to filibuster his middle class tax cut in the new Congress come Jan. 4 if they fail to reach a deal by then.
It was Obama’s first “Meet The Press” appearance since 2009. Asked by host David Gregory if he, as president, has an obligation to make sure Congress acts, Obama pointed the finger at Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
“At a certain point, if folks can’t say yes to good offers, then I also have an obligation to the American people to make sure that the entire burden of deficit reduction doesn’t fall on seniors who are relying on Medicare,” Obama said. “There is a basic fairness that is at stake in this whole thing. And they listened to an entire year’s debate about it. They made a clear decision about the approach they prefer.”
“It is very important for Republicans in Congress to be willing to say, ‘we understand we are not going to get 100 percent. We are willing to compromise in a serious way to solve problems as opposed to being worried about the next election.’ … The offers I have made are so fair that a lot of Democrats get mad at me,” he said, naming the entitlement cuts he has proposed, including Medicare cuts and Social Security cuts via “Chained CPI.”
Don Stewart, a spokesman for McConnell, chafed at Obama’s claims.
“While the President was taping those discordant remarks yesterday, Sen. McConnell was in the office working to bring Republicans and Democrats together on a solution,” he told TPM in an email. “Discussions continue today.”
NBC pre-empted the first quarter of tonight’s 49ers-Patriots game to show President Obama’s speech at the Newtown memorial for victims of the Sandy Hook shooting. As you might expect, many football fans didn’t take kindly to this. (So, too, some Bob’s Burgers fans.) Here are those idiots, led by someone who claims to be a Division II football player in the state of Alabama. [Update: UNA says he’s no longer a member of the team.]
h/t: Deadspin.com
NBC host David Gregory allowed former Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA) to get away with making false and misleading claims about Sharia law and President Obama’s stance on radical Islam. Speaking on Meet The Press’ web supplement Press Pass, Santorum claimed that the President has never condemned “radical Islam,” an assertion that Gregory simply lets stand without challenge:
Sharia law means women have to have head coverings, have no rights — and you don’t hear the President say a word about Sharia. You haven’t heard him condemn Sharia law or radical Islam.
Obama hasn’t aggressively attacked “Sharia law” because, in the most basic sense, Sharia is the code of conduct that defines how Muslims ought to live, somethign reasonably similar to the same religious ethical codes that people of all faiths hold to. It doesn’t say that women “have no rights.” Hyperbolic rhetoric about the dangers of Sharia law is commonly employed by an Islamophobic activist network that has pushed through discriminatory anti-Sharia legislation in several states.
On Sunday, during an appearance on Meet The Press, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell confronted Newt Gingrich for falsely predicting in 1993 that the economy would suffer if then-President Bill Clinton raised marginal tax rates.
Republican are making a similar argument against President Obama’s call to raise marginal tax rates on the richest Americans, even though the economy and jobs grew exponentially during the Clinton years when the top marginal tax rate was at 39.6 percent for the top income earners.
O’Donnell read off Gingrich’s false prediction and asked him to apologize to Americans:
O’DONNELL: Who said this? ‘The tax increase will kill jobs and lead to a recession, and the recession will force people out of work and onto unemployment, and actually increase the deficit.’ That’s Newt Gingrich, in 1993, on the Clinton tax increase, and those of us who were working on the other side of that tax increase, Newt, have been waiting for your apology for 20 years for being completely wrong about that.
GINGRICH: I don’t agree with you.
O’DONNELL: But the economy soared. No one lost a job because of that tax increase.
GINGRICH: Baloney.
O’DONNELL: There was no recession, you said there would be a recession. There was no recession.
GINGRICH: The fact is, if you look at all the indicators when I was elected Speaker, virtually all of the economic growth occurs after the Republicans take control. Virtually all of the increase in the stock market, in fact all of the increase in the stock market is after the Republicans take control.
O’DONNELL: You did not reduce the rates, Newt. You said the rates would cause a recession.
GINGRICH: When we balanced the budget, we balanced the budget with a tax cut, not a tax increase. Four consecutive balanced budget with a tax cut, not a tax increase.
O’DONNELL: A tiny tax cut compared to the biggest tax increase in history, which is what Bill Clinton did. You didn’t dismantle it.
From the 12.09.2012 edition of NBC’s Meet The Press:
They were proven wrong. The country experienced the “longest period of economic growth in U.S. history, increased business investment, 23 million jobs added, and, of course, budget surpluses.”
(via Bob Costas Was Right To Talk About Gun Violence During Sunday Night Football | ThinkProgress)
Immediately after the suicide of Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher, who police say murdered his girlfriend at their home before driving to the Chiefs’ practice facility and shooting himself in front of the team’s coach and general manager, thoughts turned to the role concussions and brain injuries may have played in the tragedy.
But during halftime of last night’s Sunday Night Football broadcast, NBC’s Bob Costas brought up another angle: the role guns, and our nation’s lax gun laws, played in the tragedy. After a brief introduction, Costas quoted Kansas City-based columnist Jason Whitlock, who wrote yesterday that he believed both Belcher and his girlfriend, Kasandra Perkins, would be alive today were it not for Belcher’s possession of a gun:
‘Our current gun culture,’ Whitlock wrote, ‘ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy. And more convenience store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead. Handguns do not enhance our safety. They exacerbate our flaws, tempt us to escalate arguments and bait us into embracing confrontation rather than avoiding it. In the coming days, Jovan Belcher’s actions and their possible connection to football will be analyzed. Who knows? But here,’ wrote Jason Whitlock, ‘is what I believe — if Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.’
Conservatives and gun advocates are, of course, angry at Costas’ insinuation, via Whitlock, that gun control could have prevented the murder of Kasandra Perkins.
Fox & Friends blasted Costas this morning, with co-host Brian Kilmeade relying on the tried-and-true point that follows every outbreak of gun violence this country has. “I just don’t know if it’s appropriate enough on a Sunday night, less than 24 hours after this guy took his own life and killed his girlfriend and the mother of his baby, to make that stance,” Kilmeade said. “I don’t think we needed to hear that last night.”
When, then, is the appropriate time to talk about gun violence? According to gun advocates, it wasn’t after another black teenager was shot in a parking lot because he was listening to loud music. It wasn’t after another mass murder at one of our schools, shopping malls, or movie theaters. It wasn’t in a year when another 11,000 Americans lost their lives to firearms, or in a country where 1,800 women like Kasandra Perkins are killed in gun disputes and another 5,000 are treated for assault-related gunshot wounds every year. It wasn’t during presidential debates. It wasn’t after Trayvon Martin was killed for wearing a hoodie, after Jared Lee Loughner shot a member of Congress in the head, after the Dark Knight Rises theater shooting, or after the latest murderous weekend in one of our nation’s biggest cities. So if those weren’t the right times, and this isn’t either, when? Which high-profile murder, suicide, or mass killing will be the one that gets us to talk?
Perhaps, if Jovan Belcher didn’t own a gun, he would have found another way to kill Kasandra Perkins and himself. Or perhaps he wouldn’t have. Having a gun in the home, after all, increases both the risk of homicide and suicide, and 60 percent of our nation’s homicides are committed with guns. Studies have shown that guns in the home increase chances of homicide two to three times, and gun death rates are seven times higher in states that have high household gun ownership (Missouri is 21st, and considered a high-ownership state), according to the Brady Campaign.
Right-wing media, including Fox News and the Drudge Report, are attacking NBC’s Bob Costas for daring to question America’s “gun culture” in the wake of the tragic murder-suicide committed by a Kansas City Chiefs football player. The Drudge Report characterized Costas’ comments as a “gun control rant” while Fox criticized him for “lecturing America on gun control” in the wake of the tragedy.
On December 1, Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Jovan Belcher killed his girlfriend at the house they shared before subsequently killing himself in front of his head coach and other members of the Chiefs organization. The following evening, during halftime of NBC’s Sunday night football game, Costas endorsed part of a column by sportswriter Jason Whitlock who criticized the gun culture in America.
Costas said: ” ‘Our current gun culture,” Whitlock wrote, ‘ensures that more and more domestic disputes will end in the ultimate tragedy, and that more convenience-store confrontations over loud music coming from a car will leave more teenage boys bloodied and dead.’ ” Costas later added: ” ‘But here,’ wrote Jason Whitlock, ‘is what I believe: If Jovan Belcher didn’t possess a gun, he and Kasandra Perkins would both be alive today.’ “
In the wake of previous tragedies, conservative media figures have advocated against gun laws and evendenied that gun violence is a serious problem in the United States. Now they’ve turned their focus to Costas who brought up the subject of America’s gun culture in the wake of the latest high-profile example of gun violence.
h/t: MMFA
