Topic: NewsBusters
We know that NewsBusters associate editor Noel Sheppard is ultimately kind of a coward -- after all, he has blocked us from following his Twitter account. Now, he is similarly silent about a commentator who has responded to his petulant attacks.
In a July 4 NewsBusters post, Sheppard goes off on Salon's Joan Walsh for (accurately) describing Republicans as "a white, older base that doesn’t quite understand the way healthcare works" during an appearance on Tavis Smiley's show. He did this mostly by insulting and personally attacking Walsh:
Let's call a spade a spade: the arrogance, hypocrisy and racism of Salon's Joan Walsh knows no bounds.
[...]
Lest we forget this is the same woman who in March wrote a column titled "What's the Matter With White People" and is so proud of the idea she's turning it into a book.
You see, racism for Walsh is a common theme to be repeated whenever possible.
As for Republicans being "worried that some people are going to get something for nothing," shouldn't that concern all Americans?
Or is the country Walsh pines for one where a growing majority of idle citizens take from the decreasing minority that actually work for a living?
Yes, those last two questions were rhetorical.
As for Walsh, she sadly represents the voices on the far-left in this nation that don't believe people are entitled to more if they work harder and smarter than others, and even more sadly speaks for those that still want to divide this nation along racial lines.
How someone so arrogant, bigoted, and closed-minded could become the editor at large of any publication in this country today is both shocking and disheartening.
Even worse, Walsh has now become a mainstay on that joke of a so-called "news network" MSNBC.
You can't swing a dead cat anymore without hitting her on some MSNBC program spewing her divisive opinions.
Let's hope it's so frequent that viewers have become numb to her much as they did Keith Olbermann.
The next day, Walsh responded on her Salon blog, marvelously (to borrow a Sheppard-ism) calling Sheppard "umbrage-addicted" and defending her views:
We are living in a moment when right-wing extremists are casting any critical observation about white people as racism — and the mainstream media, already tongue-tied about race, has no idea how to respond.
Ironically, I get criticized from the left sometimes for downplaying the role that race plays in the backlash against President Obama. More frequently, though, I’m trashed from the right for overplaying it. Journalists like to comfort themselves by saying that when both sides are mad at you, you must be doing something right. But I know from experience: Sometimes it means you’re wrong. I don’t think I’m wrong here – although occasionally I am wrong about this tough racial stuff. I’m just wondering if it’s possible to get it right, in an atmosphere where one side is determined to prove the divisive and ludicrous idea that Obama-era liberalism is animated by anti-white racism.
But it is just a fact that Republicans today are disproportionately white and older than the rest of the country. It’s almost certainly a fact that Mitt Romney is more comfortable around white people (unless he leads a secret multi-culti life that we don’t know about). Look at his crowds. Look at his friends. Look at his advisors. Look at that video where he sings “Who Let the Dogs Out?” with black people on Martin Luther King Jr. Day in Jacksonville, Fla.[...]
I’m flat-out stunned at the way the right has managed to push this notion that whites are suffering a new surge of racism, mainly at the hands of African-Americans and their liberal allies of other races. Like me. In his shrieky best seller, “Suicide of a Superpower,” Pat Buchanan warned that even Obama-supporting whites would soon “discover what it is like to ride in the back of the bus.” Rush Limbaugh has called me “the real racist” (and more affectionately, “the Magic Honky”). The late Andrew Breitbart, who made me a special target (although, affectionately, he often remarked that he liked my hair), lived to find “reverse racists,” but particularly black “racists.” He thought he found one in Shirley Sherrod, but of course he was wrong; she was the opposite of a racist. His spawn think they found one in Joe Williams. They’re wrong, too.
Over on the white nationalist site Stormfront, they didn’t like my interview with Tavis Smiley, either. (Sorry, I won’t link there.) The more sympathetic Stormfront posters want me to know that I’ll be a victim of anti-white genocide thanks to my Obama support; the idiots want to know if I’m Jewish, even though I told Smiley I’m Irish Catholic. But then the KKK hated Catholics as well as Jews and blacks, so maybe it doesn’t matter.[...]
I guess I’m going to find out soon. My book comes out Aug. 13 – you can pre-order it here. I’m going to send a copy to Noel Sheppard. Maybe he’ll see my argument with a little more clarity.
Will Sheppard act like a gentleman for once when he gets that book and seriously consider Walsh's views instead of spewing kneejerk right-wing talking points?
To borrow another Sheppard-ism: Yes, that was a rhetorical question.
UPDATE: Guess who else agrees with Walsh's assessment? None other than Republican strategist Ed Rollins In a Fox News appearance, Rollins said of the Republican Party: "It is a bunch of old, white guys, and unfortunately, a lot of them are fat like me – like Haley Barbour, my former deputy, and others."
