Three White People On Fox News Come To Conclusion That Birtherism Isn’t Racist
While Donald Trump’s anti-birther stunt on Friday was widely criticized by the majority of mainstream news outlets, who saw it as both the Trumpster playing games with the media and attempting to gaslight America on his years-long embrace of birtherism, Fox News praised the GOP nominee throughout the day.
As Media Matters noted, the network’s reaction was predictably terrible. Noting how CNN and MSNBC angrily ridiculed the entire spectacle due to Trump’s media manipulation and false claims, the media watchdog highlighted how Fox’s afternoon coverage was spent slobbering all over Trump. And when they weren’t fellating him, they were drawing false equivalencies and stating that Trump unequivocally put the birther issue to rest once and for all.
The evening programming got progressively worse. Prior to Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity doing Daddy’s bidding, exhumed corpse Brit Hume devoted a segment on whether or not questioning the legitimacy of the first African-American POTUS on the basis of his birth and heritage is racist. And, just to make sure the discussion was Fair & Balanced, Hume had on a white man AND a white woman.
After busting out the dictionary to give us the definition of racism, Hume then asked Stephen Dinan, columnist for the conservative Washington Times, his thoughts on birtherism vis a vis racism. And, surprise surprise surprise, Dinan felt one had nothing to do with the other.
“Look, birtherism — another -ism – it’s certainly ignorant. There are probably racists who are birthers. But, you know, birtherism itself — it’s not racist to question where the president was born. As I said, it may be dumb, it may be ignorant, but it’s not the strict definition of racism.”
Right -wing white dudes really hate -isms, if you haven’t caught on by now.
Hume, very impressed with Dinan’s answer, then turned to USA Today’s Heidi Pryzbyla to get her opinion. While she indicated there could be racist or bigoted elements involved with birtherism, she agreed with Hume and Dinan that it didn’t meet the “textbook definition.” When noting that Trump has also tried to question Obama’s religion, saying he could be Muslim, Hume quickly shot out that he could worship Islam “wherever he was born.” So, no racism for you!
Anyway, according to three white folks on Fox, birtherism is definitely not racist.
Below is video of the segment, courtesy of Fox News:
