http://www.mediaite.com/tv/lawrence-odonnells-racially-charged-attacks-a-political-gift-to-herman-cain/

Based on his interview with GOP supernova Herman Cain, a cynical person might think that MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell is trying to push the upstart candidate over the finish line for the Republican presidential nomination. On Thursday night’s The Last Word, O’Donnell conducted an interview that surpassed unfair, sped through the tollbooth at offensive, and came to rest in the parking spot marked “Reserved For Despicable.”


If being attacked by a liberal is throwing gasoline on a fire to the conservative base, O’Donnell just threw liquid oxygen on that gasoline.

Let me start by saying this: I like Lawrence O’Donnell, and not just for his contribution to the ultimate liberal television show, The West Wing. O’Donnell is part of a new breed of liberal commentator who doesn’t talk himself into a corner, and viewers into a coma. He takes strong positions, and expresses them with aggression and clarity.

I also don’t like Herman Cain, for a variety of good reasons, some of which O’Donnell touched on in his interview. His victory in the GOP primary race would be great for America, as it would keep a party, hell-bent on fundamentally crippling the government’s ability to govern, out of the White House for at least four more years.

That’s why my reaction to O’Donnell’s interview with Cain was so shocking. I’m not the kind of person who says things out loud to himself, or to the TV screen, but throughout O’Donnell’s grilling of Cain, I found myself doing just that. “What the f***?…Are you f***ing kidding me?”


Rather than debate Herman Cain on his substantive weaknesses, O’Donnell opted to pull at symbolic threads from Cain’s own personal history. The portion of the interview that will cause most stomachs to churn will probably be when O’Donnell tried to shame Herman Cain for “sitting on the sidelines” during the Civil Rights movement.


Setting aside the fact that this would never be asked of a white candidate from either party, it was the inaction of generations of white people, who “sat on the sidelines” as black people were oppressed and murdered, that made the Civil Rights movement necessary in the first place. As anyone who lived through that era will tell you, just being black in America at that time was a militant act that carried perils that Lawrence O’Donnell will never know. He’s in no position to question, or judge, the miles walked in shoes he will never put on.

To me, though, the most sickening part of the interview was when O’Donnell tried to twist what Herman Cain’s father told his son in an attempt to keep him safe from the murder and oppression that O’Donnell invoked. I suppose it would have been fair to ask how the caution that Cain’s father instilled in him affected his choices, but O’Donnell despicably framed the elder Cain’s instinct to protect his child as racial cowardice:
 
Now, there are people with standing to question the advice Cain’s father gave him, but I doubt there were many parents during the Civil Rights era who were anxious to see their own children martyred, even to a cause they supported. Lawrence O’Donnell will never have that standing.


Cain handled the whole thing with surprising grace, and was aided by an off-camera cheering section at the Texas Barnes & Noble from which he was being interviewed. He finished off O’Donnell when the host went fishing for a “draft-dodger” meme, only to have Cain inform him that he had served his country during Vietnam, as a civilian employee of the Navy, who felt he was more valuable in that capacity.

O’Donnell owes Cain an apology, even if the effect of this interview is to make Herman Cain an even greater hero on the right. Maybe Rick Perry’s campaign ought to get on the phone to O’Donnell’s booker

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http://www.nbra.info/DYK-HistoryTest



BLACK POLITICAL HISTORY: THE UNTOLD STORY


NOTE: All answers are "b."

1. What Party was founded as the anti-slavery Party and fought to free blacks from slavery?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party

2. What was the Party of Abraham Lincoln who signed the emancipation proclamation that resulted in the Juneteenth celebrations that occur in black communities today?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party

3. What Party passed the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U. S. Constitution granting blacks freedom, citizenship, and the right to vote?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party

4. What Party passed the Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 granting blacks protection from the Black Codes and prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations, and was the Party of most blacks prior to the 1960’s, including Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth, Booker T. Washington, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party


5. What was the Party of the founding fathers of the NAACP?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party

6. What was the Party of President Dwight Eisenhower who sent U.S. troops to Arkansas to desegregate schools, established the Civil Rights Commission in 1958, and appointed Chief Justice Earl Warren to the U.S. Supreme Court which resulted in the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision ending school segregation?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party


7. What Party, by the greatest percentage, passed the Civil Rights Acts of the 1950’s and 1960’s?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party


8. What was the Party of President Richard Nixon who instituted the first Affirmative Action program in 1969 with the Philadelphia Plan that established goals and timetables?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party

9. What is the Party of President George W. Bush who appointed more blacks to high-level positions than any president in history and who spent record money education, job training and health care to help black Americans prosper?
[ ] a. Democratic Party
[ ] b. Republican Party

NOTE: All answers are "b."
10. What Party fought to keep blacks in slavery and was the Party of the Ku Klux Klan?
[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

11. What Party from 1870 to 1930 used fraud, whippings, lynching, murder, intimidation, and mutilation to get the black vote, and passed the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws which legalized racial discrimination and denied blacks their rights as citizens?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

12. What was the Party of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and President Harry Truman who rejected anti-lynching laws and efforts to establish a permanent Civil Rights Commission?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

13. What was the Party of President Lyndon Johnson, who called Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. “that [N-word] preacher” because he opposed the Viet Nam War; and President John F. Kennedy who voted against the 1957 Civil Rights law as a Senator, then as president opposed the 1963 March on Washington by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after becoming president and the FBI investigate Dr. King on suspicion of being a communist?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

14. What is the Party of the late Senators Robert Byrd who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, Ernest “Fritz” Hollings who hoisted the Confederate flag over the state capitol in South Carolina while governor, and Ted Kennedy who called black judicial nominees “Neanderthals” while blocking their appointments?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

15. What was the Party of President Bill Clinton who failed to fight the terrorists after the first bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, sent troops to war in Bosnia and Kosovo without Congressional approval, vetoed the Welfare Reform law twice before signing it, and refused to comply with a court order to have shipping companies develop an Affirmative Action Plan?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

16. What is the Party of Vice President Al Gore whose father voted against the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960’s, and who lost the 2000 election as confirmed by a second recount of Florida votes by the “Miami Herald” and a consortium of major news organizations and the ruling by the U.S. Civil Rights Commission that blacks were not denied the right to vote?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party

17. What Party is against school vouchers, against school prayers, and takes the black vote for granted without ever acknowledging their racist past or apologizing for trying to expand slavery, lynching blacks and passing the Black Codes and Jim Crow laws that caused great harm to blacks?

[ ] a. Republican Party
[ ] b. Democratic Party