Horowitz Declares War on Marc Lamont Hill Topic: Horowitz
For reasons clear only to him, David Horowitz has felt the need to smack down Marc Lamont Hill.
In a Sept. 25 Newsreal post, Horowitz declares Hill -- a frequent guest on "The O'Reilly Factor" -- to be "an embarrassment to his own standards and an insult to the intelligence of African Americans particularly and his entire audience generally." Why? Because, Horowitz writes, "Hill is an expert on “hip-hop culture,” i.e., rap music. His academic degree is in education. What are his views on foreign policy worth, unless putting him on was designed to show up the shallow views of the left?" Horowitz continues:
I wonder if O’Reilly understands that putting on such a lightweight feeds the racism of low expectations. There are very intelligent blacks (and leftists) who could provide an interesting foil for conservative views if that was the agenda. Having a Columbia professor of rap music comment on the foreign policy views of Karl Rove (who was featured in the preceding segment) is demeaning to Rove and embarrassing to every African American watching. First we have a figure involved in every major foreign policy decision of the Bush administration who happens to be white. Then we have an aficionado of rap music who happens to be black? What does that say to the television viewer?
If O’Reilly wants to bring Hill on to defend Ludacris or some other morally-challenged rapper then fine. If he is the best defender that ACORN can get, then fine too. But spectacles like tonight’s segment are like circus sideshows that reflect poorly on the judgment of the Factor’s producers and are unworthy of the Factor itself.
Of course, O'Reilly himself has no particular experience to draw on that would give him expertise in discussing foreign policy. But Horowitz doesn't seem bothered by that.
Needless to say, Hill was not happy with this unprovoked attack, responding on his Twitter account, writing among other things: "David Horowitz has made his career calling people communists and/or anti-semites. He sees no irony in challenging credentials, while exercising the freedom to talk about whatever he wants with NO training at all. How does his Masters in literature allow him to write books on Islamic radicalism? "Furthermore, why hasn't he challenged Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh's ability to analyze politics and lead the GOP w/ HIGH SCHOOL DIPLOMAS?"
This, of course, merely set up Hill for more abuse from Horowitz. In a Sept. 27 FrontPageMag article headlined "Fox’s Affirmative Action Baby Whines," Horowitz again sneered that "Hill’s expertise, such as it is, is hip-hop culture — the very low end, in other words, of popular music which is better known as rap," adding, "With an expertise in rap music, Hill has a professorship at Columbia University, illustrating my often made observation that our liberal arts colleges have fallen to their lowest intellectual level in 100 years." Horowitz asserted that "a rap professor pontificating about geopolitical issues" feeds "the soft racism of low expectations and that it was in fact an insult to all those black academics who would actually have had something intelligent to say about the Iran crisis."
Horowitz went on to complain that Hill's use of Twitter to respond to him was "bad judgment" because it revealed that "His Twitter web page is wall-papered with one of his heroes, Assata Shakur — a fugitive killer, wanted for the cold-blooded murder of a New Jersey state trooper in 1973." Horowitz then expanded his smears of black liberals:
Marc Lamont Hill, out of all the black intellectuals available, to talk about cultural issues (let alone international affairs.) Hill is one of a community of black intellectuals promoted well beyond their abilities — Michael Eric Dyson and Cornel West are two obvious others — who are poisoning the minds of black youth with the idea that politically correct murderers like Assata Shakur are heroes, and patriotic Americans are devils incarnate. Of course confronting O’Reilly — and cherishing his air time and Fox stipend — Hill is far more moderate on TV than he probably is in his classroom or at the public speaking venues his gig on Fox makes possible.
Horowitz also gets pedantic about what Hill actually wrote:
Hill’s second complaint is that I wrote a book called Unholy Alliance about radical Islam but I’m not an expert in Islam. This is supposed to take the heat off him for making inane comments on the Iranian crisis. Actually, my book — which he obviously didn’t read — is about theAmerican left — not Islam — and is an attempt to explain its tacit alliance with the Islamic totalitarians of al-Qaeda and Hamas. This is a subject I happen to be an expert on. I have studied the American left longer and know more about it than Professor Hill does about hip-hop culture or, for that matter, about me.
Horowitz doesn't address Hill's point about conservative radio hosts who pontificate about geopolitical issues with no college degree at all.
Remember, this is all happening because Hill is a black liberal who likes rap music -- and therefore, in Horowitz's eyes, isn't qualified to talk about anything else.
And Horowitz is the one complaining about others' "soft bigotry of low expectations"?
UPDATE: Cliff Kincaid follows Horowitz's lead by complaining in a Sept. 28 Accuracy in Media column that Hill is allowed to comment "on issues that go far beyond his expertise on hip-hop culture."
Baseless 9/12 Protest Attendance Number of the Day Topic: Horowitz
Estimates vary, as they always do, as to how large the crowds were, but the general consensus seems to have settled at one million, and possibly as high as two million.
It appears that, after months of attempting in vain to counter the worst anti-Obama impulses of his fellow right-wingers, David Horowitz has decided to embrace them.
A Sept. 11 Obama-bashing FrontPageMag article by Horowitz carries the headline "The Manchurian Candidate," illustrated with this front-page image:
Horowitz thus contradicts his earlier criticism -- from just four months ago -- of far-right critics like WorldNetDaily's David Kupelian: "Obama is a machine politician and whatever dangers he represents (and as I see it there are many) are dangers because they reflect the heart and soul of today's Democratic Party, not because he is a Manchurian candidate or a closet Islamist, as more than a few conservatives seem to think."
Apparently so, because he also appears to be content with echoing Rush Limbaugh.
Horowitz apes Limbaugh in a Sept. 11 NewsReal post claiming that Obama "lied not once in his Health Care speech but twice — and not on inconsequential issues, but big ones." The first one he cites:
The lies were direct and were compounded by the fact that he accused others of lying because they called him on his lies. Joe Wilson who sat on the congressional committees which reviewed the amendments that were then killed which would have required people to prove they’re citizens. Of course!
But Wilson is wrong to call Obama a liar for asserting that health care reform won't cover illegal immigrants -- FactCheck and PolitiFact have demonstrated it.
Horowitz goes on to assert: "The Democrats are for death panels. Of course they are. ... Of course if you’re going to have one Big Brother — single payer system — ration health care, you’re going to have death panels. There’s no other option." FactCheck and PolitiFact have debunked that claim too.
Horowitz's post is headlined "Brazen Democrats Defend White House Liar." It is much more brazen for Horowitz to assert that claims repeatedly demonstrated to be false are the truth.
All Horowitz needs to do now is go full birther, and the transformation will be complete.
FrontPageMag Reprints Newsmax's Whitewash of Kerik Topic: Horowitz
FrontPageMag has reprinted the first part of Newsmax's article "Bernie Kerik: The Trial of an American Hero," and provides a link to the entire article.
As we detailed, Newsmax's article is full of misleading claims and whitewashes Kerik's alleged offenses in order to fawn over him as a purported hero.
NewsReal Falsely Portrays Maddow Show Segment Topic: Horowitz
A Sept. 5 NewsReal post by Paul Cooper falsely portrays a segment on MSNBC's "The Rachel Maddow Show" as on in which "guest host Ana Marie Cox called for censorship of blogs like NewsRealblog.com and WorldNetDaily (which is her focus)" and that "Cox and [guest Sam] Tanenhaus both are ready to call all moderate Republicans to silence and 'reign in' [sic] conservative blogs."
But WND is more than the "focus" of the segment -- it's the only outlet mentioned. Not only is NewsReal not mentioned, despite Cooper's suggestion otherwise, no other "conservative blog" is either. And Cox didn't "call for censorship"; as Cooper goes on to write, she urged mainstream conservatives to denounce such fringe publications as WND and not mainstream their conspiracy theories.
Cooper then writes:
The focus of the interview is suggesting that conservative blogs are promoting “conspiracy theories” like the Obama birthers. Cox and Tanenhaus draw a comparison to the 1960s when William F. Buckley Jr. effectively wrote the John Birch Society out of the conservative movement by denouncing them as crank conspiracists. Cox and Tanenhaus claim that there’s no one in the Conservative Movement doing this today. This is a complete lie. “Mainstream,” “moderate” conservatives have denounced the Birther Conspiracy. David Horowitz, NewsReal, Mike Huckabee, and Ann Coulter have all dismissed the notion that President Barack Obama is not a natural born citizen.
But the birther issue is not the only conspiracy theory Cox cited. She also noted WND's role in promoting the "deather" issue -- the discredited idea that health care reformcontains "death panels" -- and that "it's currently warning that the White House is spying on your Facebook page." Cooper doesn't mention these -- perhaps because his fellow NewsReal writers, far from dismissing it, haveendorsed the "death panel" attack.
Further, Cooper's claim that "'Mainstream,' 'moderate' conservatives have denounced the Birther Conspiracy" belies the fact that such denunciation has not been consistent. As Cooper Cox and Tanenhaus note:
TANENHAUS: Now what we see are supposed intellectuals on the right who are really mouthpieces of the party and don't differ with it in any way. So they give you not denunciations of these sorts of conspiracy theories but highbrow versions of them. In other words, they agree.
COX: Like in the National Review recently, actually, about this birther thing, they sort of very -- I think very proudly pat themselves on the back about running this editorial saying that they didn't buy into the birther movement. But then --
TANENHAUS: They pulled out some evidence.
COX: That's right.
TANENHAUS: Well, you know, the great historian --
COX: They pulled -- they had someone write a piece that said, "Well, I don't believe in the birther movement, but it raises some interesting questions."
Indeed, while NewsReal sister publication FrontPageMag did denounce the birthers back in April, it has not done so in any significant way since then -- and we don't see Cooper exactly rushing to do any substantive denunciation now.
NewsReal joins the right-wing freak-out over a speech by President Obama to schoolchildren with a Sept. 3 post by Joseph Klein:
The Obama forces are getting desperate. They are using Saul Alinsky’s tactics for radicals against sincere Americans concerned with the direction in which Obama is taking the country.
This is right out of Alinsky Rules Eight and Twelve: “Attack, attack, attack from all sides, never giving the reeling organization a chance to rest, regroup, recover and re-strategize…Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.”
[...]
The President is also hoping to influence voters through their children. This is a version of Alinsky’s Rule Eight – “As the opposition masters one approach, hit them from the flank with something new.” The children are Obama’s new flank, as he delivers a broadcast live via the White House’s Web site to the nation’s school children just a day before his address to Congress.
Schools are being strongly encouraged to have their students watch the speech and have been given training materials to use with the kids as a follow-up. Students will be asked to ponder such questions as: “What specific job is he asking me to do? Is he asking anything of anyone else? Teachers? Principals? Parents? The American people?”
With their parents watching the President’s prime time speech on health care the following night, will it be a mere coincidence if their kids start bugging them about what they plan to do to help the President?
It looks like Obama is adding another rule to the Alinsky set: ”Exploit the children to sell your arguments.”
Before Klein goes off the deep end with this, he might want to see what his boss, David Horowitz, is up to:
Americans - your friends and neighbors - do not fully realize the radical changes Barack Obama and the socialists in Congress are foisting upon our way of life!
But you do. And I do as well. Today the Obamaites, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid - the small but powerful group of left-wing radicals who are at the controls of this transformation are all disciples of the 1960s radical Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's book, Rules for Radicals, was the Little Red Book for the college radicals of the 1960s. I know, I was one of them.
[...]
I am writing a new booklet that I must blanket on college campuses as the new school year starts. This booklet - "Alinsky's Rules for Obama's Radicalism" - paints a clear picture of Barack Obama's agenda for our nation. And we have prepared an advertisement to run in papers around the country calling on Americans to derail this train before it's too late.
I urgently need your support. Will you help the Freedom Center with a contribution of $25, $50 or $100 would help lift us out of our budget emergency; $1,000 would be a terrific aid to getting our ads in newspapers and my new booklet published.
So, Horowitz is using Alinskyite tactics to accuse Obama of ... using Alinskyite tactics. And is writing "a new booklet" that he "must blanket on college campuses" -- that is, in Klein's words, exploit the children -- to do so.
Horowitz needs to explain why, if Alinsky's tactics are so horrible, he's using them too.
As part of our continuing dialogue of sorts, David Swindle has taken us to task for having no apparent sense of humor, calling this blog "almost as bland and dull as a Nation editorial or a Noam Chomsky speech" and not finding Rush Limbaugh's joke about Barney Frank spending "most of his time living around Uranus" all that funny. Swindle adds: "It’s quite clear by the uptight, overly serious tone of his painfully boring blog that he was born without a funny bone."
Well, yeah, we're too busy documenting atrocities to regularly bring the funny -- we are a watchdog website, after all, which doesn't usually lend itself to knee-slapping humor. We will, however, occasionally display a bit of snark. But unfortunately for Swindle, telling the truth is simply not inherently funny; we're watchdogs, dammit, not comedians. If it's humor in liberal blogging Swindle wants, we recommend World O'Crap and Sadly, No!
Actually, we have quite a sense of humor in meatspace, with preferences toward the likes of "Mystery Science Theater 3000" and (Swindle will be happy to hear) Bill Hicks.
Swindle goes on to defend Limbaugh's "Uranus" joke:
Yes, homophobic jokes are acceptable as long as they’re funny. And so are the racist jokes of comedians like Lisa Lampanelli, the anti-white racist jokes of the comedians on Martin Lawrence’s First Amendment Stand-Up, the gay stereotype jokes of Margaret Cho, and the anti-Semitic satires of Sacha Baran Cohen. Dark humor about the Holocaust, child molestation (Michael Jackson joke anyone?,) and dead babies is acceptable too — as long as the jokes are funny and not made at inappropriate times and places. Surely this isn’t a very controversial point that I’m making. And there’s no ideological component to it either. This is something leftists, conservatives, and the apolitical should all agree on.
There's another factor to consider: the intent of the person telling the joke. A gay joke from Margaret Cho is not the same thing as a gay joke from Rush Limbaugh. Simply summarized: Cho is gay-friendly; Rush is not. Plus, factor in Limbaugh's weird obsession with anal sex, and it's clear that his intent in telling a gay joke about Frank is to mock and deride. And what is Limbaugh mocking about Frank? The fact that he's gay. That's it. Yeah, Barney Frank is gay -- so what? We're just not seeing the humor in that, however clever a line it might be.
Swindle also takes us to task for dismissing his previous likening of Obama to gangsters as guilt by association:
Terry: seek first to understand before you criticize. This isn’t “guilt by association.” Read David Horowitz’s ongoing “Alinsky, Beck, Satan, and Me” series to understand better the connections between Saul Alinsky, his gangster influences, and the tactics employed by the modern Left. Deal with the argument, don’t just dismiss it as a malicious smear.
Just because one purports to offer a historical argument for a malicious smear doesn't make it less of a malicious smear. Does Hilmar von Campe offering a historical argument for smearing Obama as a Nazi make it any less of a smear? Technically, there's a historical argument for likening George W. Bush to Nazis, but again, that doesn't make it any less of a smear to call him that (even though those who criticized that smear have been eager to hurl the same smear at certainDemocrats). And while gangster is arguably a lesser smear than Nazi, it's still a smear (and besides, Ellis Washington hurled that one a long time ago, so Swindle is a little late to the parade).
Further, since Swindle offers no evidence of Obama associating with gangsters -- only of purportedly emulating the tactics of Saul Alinsky, who once allegedly associated with gangsters -- the smear is, yes, guilt by association.
One final question: Swindle has seemingly declared all tactics pioneered or popularized by Alinsky to be akin to gansterism. But Swindle, by likening Obama to gangsters, is arguably using the Alinsky tactic of "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it." Doesn't that mean Swindle himself is acting like a gangster too?
An Aug. 25 NewsReal post by David Forsmark touts Jim Towey's misleading claims about a Veterans Health Administration booklet advising veterans on end-of-life care. Forsmark uncritically repeats Towey's description of the booklet as an attempt to "steer vulnerable individuals to conclude for themselves that life is not worth living."
In fact, the booklet emphasizes that "your wishes will direct future health care decisions" and presents preserving one's life "using any means possible" as an option to consider.
Forsmark also includes a transcript of Towey's appearance in which he and host Chris Wallace discuss the appearance in the VA booklet of the statement "If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug" without noting that Towey and Wallace failed to explain the full context in which the phrase appears.
Forsmark goes on to criticize VA spokesperson Tammy Duckworth for pointing out that Towey is selling his own end-of-life-choices book, thus "cast[ing] doubt on Towey’s motives and to confuse the issue about who is responsible for the work sheet being available currently."
In fact, given that Towey has attempted to get the VA to buy his booklet, Towey's motives are a legitimate issue, on top of the fact that he's misrepresenting the VA's booklet. Further, Forsmark downplays the fact that the VA booklet was available and promoted throughout President Bush's presidency.
In an Aug. 24 NewsReal post, David Swindle writes that Media Matters shouldn't be "throwing a fit" over Fox News' comparison of President Obama to Mafia gangsters.
Why? Because Saul Alilnsky associated with gangsters.
No, really. That's why.
Swindle explains that "Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and a good number of their various political operatives have all been schooled in the Saul Alinsky methods of ‘community organizing.' " In other words, it's guilt (or, in this case, gangster) by association.
Swindle then writes:
Here's a question for the Left: how far would you go to get universal healthcare in this country? After all, it's supposedly a plan which will save the lives of millions and help liberate the lower class from the economic totalitarianism inflicted on them by their malevolent Fat Cat CEO taskmasters. How far would you go to save the world? If an influential conservative Senator stood in the way of "reform" and one could do something to embarrass or discredit him then wouldn't it be worth it? After all, we're talking about saving people's lives here. What's one man's reputation compared to millions of lives and the perfect world?
Think about that for a moment and perhaps the gangster comparison isn't quite as outlandish as one might suspect.
What seems to be happening here is that Swindle is justifying the gangster reference as an Alinsky-esque tactic, but failing to acknowledge his own embrace of it.
Here's a question for Swindle: Obama is clearly in your way of wanting to "liberate" Americans from the evil of liberalism. How far would he go to embarrass and discredit him? Would you smear him by calling him a gangster, then justify the smear by playing guilt-by-association? After all, what's one man's reputation in the pursuit of the "perfect world" of conservatism, right?
It seems that Swindle has answered in the affirmative.
NewsReal Condemns One 'Anti-Gay Slur,' Endorses Another Topic: Horowitz
An Aug. 20 NewsReal post by "FrontPageMgEd" -- presumably, Jacob Laksin -- declared offense at Chris Matthews' comment that Tom DeLay, who was showing Matthews the high-heeled shoe he will wear in his upcoming stint on "Dancing With the Stars," would be "a little light in that shoe," calling it an "anti-gay slur" and "a Fifties-era phrase coined to mock homosexuals." Laksin added: "Had these words been spoken by Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, or any townhall protester in the country, the left-wing blogosphere would be on fire, Media Matters would have sent out a blast FAX, GLAAD would have called a boycott, and it would be the lead story on every program in MSNBC prime time."
But a day earlier, Limbaugh did make an anti-gay slur -- and NewsReal endorsed it.
In an Aug. 19 post -- more accurately, the post immediately previous to Laksin's -- David Swindle responded to Limbaugh's statement that gay congressman Barney Frank "spends most of his time living around Uranus":
Confession: I laughed when I heard it. Sure, it’s a cheap shot. Yeah, it’s the kind of thing we learned in third grade. And yes, it’s slightly homophobic. But funny is funny. When it comes to humor I don’t care from which ideology a joke emerges. If it makes me laugh then it’s acceptable.
So an anti-gay slur is OK as long as it makes a conservative laugh?
Also unmentioned by Laksin is that, despite his attack on Matthews as a man of "the Left," Matthews and DeLay are apparently close enough that DeLay will send scoops Matthews' way. That suggests Matthews' remark was more about jesting between friends than the malice endemic in Limbaugh's slur of Frank.
Our dialogue with David Swindle at David Horowitz's Newsreal blog continues in an Aug. 13 post by Swindle, who reports Horowitz's response to us:
Treating all black people like potential predators is racist and we’re opposed to that. First look at the statistics of how many traffic stops for broken tail lights turn up criminals and then ask yourself whether the inconvenience isn’t worth it. Because I have an artificial hip I get searched every time I take a flight (which is often). That’s a greater inconvenience than having your car searched because you didn’t bother to fix your tail light. Now consider how many black citizens have been robbed, raped, murdered and become addicted to drugs because of leftists who oppose these simple and reasonable measures the police use to stop crime.
Horowitz is making some baseless blanket assertions there. First, why the assumption that any vehicle with a non-functional taillight is that way because the driver "didn't bother" to fix it? Second, why the assumption that "leftists who oppose ... simple and reasonable measures" are to blame for crime? Third, where is it written that getting stopped for a broken tail light equals automatically "having your car searched"?
Swindle continues:
First, of course, the crew member from Glenn Beck’s show who relayed the alleged incident of racial profiling isn’t going to mention if there was anything else about him that might make him fit the profile of a potential drug dealer. What does he know about offender profiling? Certainly not as much as the cop who stopped him, who assessed the situation and saw clues of possible criminal wrongdoing beyond a busted tail light.
But the fact of the matter is that in this case, neither Krepel nor Horowitz and myself know what happened. We weren’t there, we can only guess. And it’s here where the subject of ideology emerges. How do we make our guess at what happened? Why do Horowitz and I tend to lean more heavily toward the idea that the cop was just doing his job? Why does Krepel see a potential racist?
True, we are arguing about a incident about which we know very little, only the limited information the Beck crew member related during the Horowitz interview. But Swindle leaves out one important component: the crew member thought that the search was unwarranted.
And this is where Horowitz's analogy about getting extra attention from airport security because of his artificial hip breaks down. Horowitz's inconvenience mainly applies in one specific situation: when he's boarding a plane. He can prepare for that eventuality and build time into his schedule to allow for it. The crew member, on the other hand, does not know what made the police officer search his car, and thus does not know what, if anything, he can do to lessen the suspicion. Indeed, the only possible contributing factor we're aware of is that he's black.
Further, I find it interesting that Horowitz publications such as NewsReal and FrontPageMag are so dedicated these days to denigrating the authority of elected officials whose politics they don't disagree with, yet offer deference to certain other authoritarian figures even if their motivation is in question, becuase they are "just doing their job." That's not a excuse Horowitz and Swindle would likely let any Obama administration official get away with.
Finally, Swindle writes:
So I return to Krepel with the question posed in my headline, which seems to be our primary fundamental disagreement: Is your average cop society’s sentinel or is he a racist authoritarian? Is racism within the law-enforcement community a systematic problem, or are there just a few bad apples? And if your answer is the latter, then why would you make the assumption that Beck’s crew member was likely the victim of one of those few?
In other words, which ideological approach is ultimately more accurate and more useful in 2009?
Why must it be either/or? I believe that the vast majority of police are doing the best job they can. I suspect that overt racism does not exist and is frowned upon within the ranks, and that any racism that does exist is by and large not consciously done and limited to situations such as what could be described as racial profiling.
I do, however, reserve the right to question the authority of anyone, law enforcement included, who hasn't earned it. And I don't have to resort to political ideology in the process.
In an Aug. 6 NewsReal blog post, David Swindle takes us to task for our previous criticism of him and David Horowitz for their apparent support of racial profiling:
David Horowitz had a great one-line response to Terry’s inability to even bother engaging our arguments for discussion:
What is it you don’t understand about protecting black people from black predators?
To which we respond: What is it you don't understand about not treating all black people like potential predators?
As we originally pointed out, Horowitz and Swindle seemed to justify the full search of a vehicle of a black person pulled over on the New Jersey Turnpike for a minor traffic offense -- mentioned during an appearance by Horowitz on Glenn Beck's Fox News show -- by claiming that "a high percentage of drug dealers in the New York-New Jersey area were black." That, on its face, implies support for racial profiling due to the apparent belief that because most drug dealers are black, all blacks should be therefore treated as potential drug dealers. No additional justification was provided.
Swindle then added:
I’m not sure Terry really understands what Horowitz and I are defending here. We’re not suggesting that it’s acceptable for a cop to pull over an African-American male who’s just driving down the street, not breaking any laws. To do so would be true “racial profiling” and a genuine example of a “DWB” — “Driving While Black.”
But if an African-American male is pulled over and fits the offender profiling (which would include many factors apart from his race), a cop shouldn’t be afraid to search his car because some leftist, anti-cop activist will try and attack him as a racist.
But there was no indication from the person mentioned during Horowitz's "Glenn Beck" appearance who was stopped and searched that he fit the profile of a drug dealer beyond being a black male.
We have no problem with police using profiling techniques to catch criminals -- after all, that's their job. We have a problem with race being a disproportionate factor when it's not justified, which is what Horowitz and Swindle (as well as Newsmax's Ronald Kessler) appeared to be endorsing.
We believe in color-blind justice. We hope Horowitz and Swindle do too.
The Horowitz Empire Flip-Flops on Racial Profiling Topic: Horowitz
Does the left hand of the David Horowitz empire know what its right hand is doing?
We noted the other day that Horowitz himself has defended racial profiling because most drug dealers are black, a sentiment endorsed by the Horowitz-operated NewsReal blog.
Now, a July 30 FrontPageMag article by Lloyd Billingsley asserts that there's no such thing as racial profiling, insisting that it is a "bogus construct " and it is "not ... a reality that the police target any group based on race or ethnicity."
So, which is it, guys? Is racial profiling imaginary, or is it entirely justified?
Right-wingers are trying to score political points in the controversy over the arrest of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates and President Obama's remarks on it: by seeking to justify racial profiling.
In a July 23 Newsmax column, Ronald Kessler wrote:
Then Obama cited the history of blacks and Hispanics “being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately . . . and even when there are honest misunderstandings, the fact that blacks and Hispanics are picked up more frequently, and often time for no cause, casts suspicion even when there is good cause.”
In saying that, Obama ignored the unfortunate fact that blacks account for four times more violent crimes than people of other races.
Then, in a July 23 appearance on Glenn Beck's Fox News show, David Horowitz responded to complaints by Beck's black crew members about racial profiling by saying: "If he’s on the New Jersey Turnpike or in that area, 70 percent of the drug dealers are black. And who do you think they’re dealing the drugs to? Poor blacks in the -- in Newark, in the inner cities there. So the fact that they stopped him -- I mean, it’s an inconvenience. I have an inconvenience. I get searched every single time every time I jump a plane -- take a plane because I have an artificial hip, but I put up with it."
David Swindle reiterated and sycophantically defended Horowitz's remarks in a July 25 post at the (Horowitz-operated) NewsReal blog:
In explaining why it might be appropriate to search an African-American man’s truck when he gets pulled over Horowitz threw out something Media Matters doesn’t want people to think about: a high percentage of drug dealers in the New York-New Jersey area were black and were making money addicting young blacks to drugs.
This isn’t a “racist” point. He’s not saying that blacks are ethnically inclined to be drug dealers. Horowitz has black family members and has been a civil rights activist for his entire life. He’s primarily concerned with seeing that black children grow up in a safe environment so they too can participate in the American Dream. And part of that means confronting the criminals that are standing in the way of that pursuit.
Are Kessler, Horowitz and Swindle really claiming that racial profiling is not racist? And Horowitz having "black family members" somehow give him a free pass to advocate racial profiling? It appears so.
A July 22 NewsReal post by Joseph Klein suggests that Ralph Peters -- by claiming that Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier captured by the Taliban, was AWOL at the time of his capture, deserves whatever the Taliban does to him -- is part of "Left’s own propaganda campaign that we are losing an unjust war and that it is time to bring all of our soldiers home."
In fact, Peters is very much a right-winger, a supporter of Dick Cheney and the Iraq war, not to mention someone who despises President Obama. He is definitely not part of "the Left."
In addition to getting Peters' ideology wrong, Klein didn't reveal the full extent of what Peters said, stating only that Peters "suggested" that Bergdahl "had intended to go AWOL" (though noting that "Mr. Peters should be certain beyond a reasonable doubt before leveling such charges"). In fact, Peters called Bergdahl a "liar" and added that if Bergdahl is a deserter, "the Taliban can save us a lot of legal hassles and legal bills."
But you do. And I do as well. Today the Obamaites, George Soros, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Rahm Emanuel, Harry Reid - the small but powerful group of left-wing radicals who are at the controls of this transformation are all disciples of the 1960s radical Saul Alinsky. Alinsky's book, Rules for Radicals, was the Little Red Book for the college radicals of the 1960s. I know, I was one of them. 
