“Despicable: MSNBC’s Bashir Wishes Sarah Palin Would Be Defecated, Urinated On,” Noel Sheppard writes at Newsbusters:
MARTIN BASHIR: It’s time now to clear the air. And we end this week in the way it began – with America’s resident dunce, Sarah Palin, scraping the barrel of her long deceased mind, and using her all-time favorite analogy in an attempt to sound intelligent about the national debt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SARAH PALIN: Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children, and borrowing from China. When that note comes due – and this isn’t racist, so try it. Try it anyway. This isn’t racist. But it’s going to be like slavery when that note is due.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASHIR: It’lll be like slavery. Given her well-established reputation as a world class idiot, it’s hardly surprising that she should choose to mention slavery in a way that is abominable to anyone who knows anything about its barbaric history. So here’s an example.
One of the most comprehensive first-person accounts of slavery comes from the personal diary of a man called Thomas Thistlewood, who kept copious notes for 39 years. Thistlewood was the son of a tenant farmer who arrived on the island of Jamaica in April 1750, and assumed the position of overseer at a major plantation. What is most shocking about Thistlewood’s diary is not simply the fact that he assumes the right to own and possess other human beings, but is the sheer cruelty and brutality of his regime.
In 1756, he records that “A slave named Darby catched eating canes; had him well flogged and pickled, then made Hector, another slave, s-h-i-t in his mouth.” This became known as Darby’s dose, a punishment invented by Thistlewood that spoke only of the slave owners savagery and inhumanity.
And he mentions a similar incident again in 1756, this time in relation to a man he refers to as Punch. “Flogged Punch well, and then washed and rubbed salt pickle, lime juice and bird pepper; made Negro Joe piss in his eyes and mouth.” I could go on, but you get the point.
When Mrs. Palin invoked slavery, she doesn’t just prove her rank ignorance. She confirms that if anyone truly qualified for a dose of discipline from Thomas Thistlewood, then she would be the outstanding candidate.
“This is a host for a so-called cable news network saying these astonishingly vile things about a former governor and former vice presidential candidate,” Noel Sheppard adds. “Is there no limit to what people are allowed to say about conservatives on this disgrace of a network?”
[jwplayer config=”pjmedia_eddriscoll” mediaid=”68841″]
Bashir’s timing is fortunate; with Alec Baldwin given a two-week timeout, the odds are reduced that Bashir will be suspended as well. As if that would ever happen in the first place — teeing off on photographers is one thing, verbally assaulting a member of the GOP is just SOP for MSNBC. And Bashir can always claim that in the interests of the post-Giffords-era New Civility, he’s dialing back the rhetoric a notch on behalf of his beleaguered network, and he’d have a point. Bashir just wants to crap on Palin; in 2008, former fellow-MSNBC anchor Keith Olbermann insinuated on-air that Palin should be killed.
Between apologizing for the president’s botched ObamaCare policies, and Baldwin and Bashir’s hate speech, that’s quite a week they’ve had at MSNBC, isn’t it?
MSNBC’s collective amnesia is remarkable, though not at all surprising: the network made its bones from in the mid-naughts, when former anchor Keith Olbermann and others at the network repeatedly compared President Bush to Hitler, as did many in the network’s core audience during his two terms in office. National Socialism was another historic form of slavery, as their repeated slurs implied. As a journalist noted at Mediaite in late 2010, nearly two years after Mr. Bush left office:
Hyperbole is one thing, but it is utterly reprehensible to make repeated comparisons to a period in history when six million Jews were executed in concentration camps, unspeakable acts of brutality and cruelty were committed against many more and a savage dictator attempted to form an Aryan empire. Most recently, Olbermann believed it appropriate to compare Obama’s surrender to Republicans on taxes as akin to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of the Nazis in signing the Munich Agreement. Yes, apparently the Republicans are like Nazis because they argue that a lower tax rate on the wealthy would be a better stimulant to the economy than higher taxes.
Whether you agree or disagree with this proposition isn’t the issue, [No actually, it’s part of the issue; given that the National Socialists were, umm, socialists, good luck with that comparison– Ed] nor is whether you think this tax system is totally unfair or even intellectually dishonest. What is relevant is why a nationally known commentator on a major network would deem it acceptable to repeatedly use the Nazi comparison to gain political points. Sure, make the argument that the Democrats should not have caved—but why does Olbermann always have to drag Nazis into the conversation?
Because somebody had to set the style and tone for Bashir, Baldwin, and MSNBC’s other current anchors. Which brings us back to Bashir’s disgusting tirade. Speaking of which, Mark Levin “Condemns Women’s Groups’ Silence on MSNBC Host Attacking Palin,” Tony Lee writes at Big Journalism, but Levin shouldn’t hold his breath — for the left, “She’s not a woman, she’s a Republican,” as the dehumanizing anti-Palin bumper sticker that made the rounds during the 2008 campaign posited.
And as Michelle Malkin tweets:
Palin-bashing Martin Bashir proves once again that the “M” in MSNBC stands for misogyny ==> http://t.co/zZXJvAzkud http://t.co/otIoSVdVGX
— Michelle Malkin (@michellemalkin) November 16, 2013
Much more reaction from Twitter users regarding the NBC anchor’s meltdown at Twitchy.com.
Update: Related thoughts from Paula Bolyard at the PJ Lifestyle blog: “MSNBC Soldier in the War on Women Says Palin ‘Qualified for a Dose of Discipline.’”
And also at Twitchy, “Hey, Martin Bashir: OWS protesters likened debt to slavery, too.”
But that’s different somehow, right?
(Headline originally by the Rocky Mountain News, reporting on the 2008 Democrat National Convention in 2008, before becoming a long-running leitmotif of the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto.)
Join the conversation as a VIP Member