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| From Left - Frank Taffee, Newt Gingrich, and Mark O'Mara: Their presence on CNN suggests an attempt to attract right-wing viewers at the expense of everyone else. |
By Ronald David Jackson
Perhaps we should have been forewarned when CNN "threw African-Americans under the bus" by hiring notorious race baiter Newt Gingrich to be a co-host for the re-incarnation of talk show "Crossfire" which had been shamed off the air by a blistering attack by comedian and social critic John Stewart (you can watch the now famous video here). The dust had barely settled from a bruising 2012 presidential campaign during which Newt Gingrich dog whistled his way through the Republican primaries in a losing bid to be the presidential candidate for the Tea Party-dominated Republicans. Outraged by the hiring of Newt Gingrich at the time, I listed eight reasons why CNN should not have hired Newt Gingrich in an online petition:
1) Newt Gingrich has implied that there was something "inherently wrong" with being African and Kenyan by suggesting that President Obama was informed by a Kenyan heritage. With this statement, Newt Gingrich also pandered to racist so-called "Birthers" who question President Obama's "Americaness." - "What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]? That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
2) Newt Gingrich has suggested that the children of poor parents were inherently inferior by implying they were lazy and prone to crime. He was race baiting in this instance, since most Americans think the vast majority of poor Americans are African-American. - “Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works so they have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash, unless it is illegal.”
3) Newt Gingrich has slandered Palestinians by suggesting there is no such thing as a Palestinian people. - "I think we have had an invented Palestinian people who are in fact Arabs."
