White Supremacy at CNN: Network Giving A National Platform to White Racists

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 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."


4) Newt Gingrich supported stripping Hispanic Americans of their voting rights by getting rid of bilingual ballots. - "I would have ballots in English."

5) Newt Gingrich implied that there was something inherently wrong with being Muslim and pandered to bigoted "Birthers" by suggesting it was President Obama's own fault that bigots think he's Muslim. - "You have to ask, why would they believe that? It's not because they're stupid."

6) Newt Gingrich implied that there was something inherently wrong with being Muslim and pandered to bigoted "Birthers" by suggesting that the media was hiding President Obama's "Muslim friends." - “It is just astonishing to me how pro-Obama they are,” he said, “Do you think you are going to see two pages on Obama’s Muslim friends?"

7) Newt Gingrich deliberately catered to racist voters by stereotyping President Obama as "The Food Stamp President." Most Americans believe African-Americans are the primary recipients of Food Stamps, which is false. Gingrich was cynically exploiting this misperception for racist reasons. CNN itself posted an article on Newt Gingrich's "Foodstamp" remark titled "'Food stamp president': Gingrich's poetry of hate"

8) Newt Gingrich signaled his hatred for gays by funding an Anti-Gay hate group. - "The Associated Press revealed that one of the cogs in Newt Gingrich’s vast network of business enterprises and front groups, ReAL Action, provided $125,000 to the American Family Association Action, an anti-gay activist organization that has been officially labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center."

I concluded by pointing out the following about the signal CNN was sending by the hiring of Newt Gingrich:

By hiring Newt Gingrich as a host of "Crossfire" CNN endorses, validates, and mainstreams racism, religious intolerance, and homophobia - all in a sleazy attempt to appeal to and attract bigoted viewers. CNN is blowing its own racist 'dog whistle' by hiring Newt Gingrich. 

CNN ignored the pubic outrage concerning the bigoted Newt Gingrich and hired him anyway, signaling that attracting some of FoxNews' right-wing viewers was more of a priority than respecting the interests and sensitivity of their African-American viewers.

It was a clear sign of what was to come.

The next thing we know, CNN hires lawyer Mark O'Mara as a legal pundit. O'mara was fresh off of his role as defense lawyer for George Zimmerman, who was on trial for murdering an unarmed teenager named Trayvon Martin.  Zimmerman was found "not guilty" during that trial, after which one of the jurors came forth and admitted she (and other jurors) thought Zimmerman was guilty but had been swayed by the slanted and straighjacketing instructions from the judge. During the trial, O'Mara defamed the dead teen with a blizzard of boogieman stereotypes: claiming he had video tape of Martin and his "gang friends" roving around attacking people. O'Mara was forced to apologize when it was discovered the video tapes didn't exist.

So with all the legal pundits available, why did CNN hire Mark O'Mara?  Clearly CNN was trying to send a signal to all the bigots who were "wowed" by O'Mara's mean-spirited treatment of the deceased teen Trayvon Martin. CNN was dogwhistling to right-wingers: "Come to CNN, we have your backs!"

And now there's the case of Frank Taffee, a so-called "friend" of George Zimmerman. Zimmerman has had numerous run-ins with the law soon after he was acquitted in the murder of Trayvon Martin. In the latest incident, Zimmerman was accused of threatening a girlfriend with a shotgun—the second time after the trial he was accused of threatening a woman with a gun. After Zimmerman was arrested and let out on bail for this latest violent incident, CNN invited Taffee to the airways to defend Zimmerman. Unbeknownst to most of CNN's viewers, Taffee is a convicted criminal and unabashed racist who hosts a white-power podcast. CNN didn't bother to tell its viewers about Taffee's supremacist proclivities. 

Here is the video of Frank Taffee, and the welcoming treatment he received at CNN:

Taffe also appeared on another Time Warner media property, cable channel HLN, on the programs "Nancy Grace" (watch it the show: here) and "Dr. Drew On Call" (watch the show: here).

So why does CNN, HLN and Time Warner continue to contaminate the airways with avowed supremacists like Frank Taffee? Perhaps the same reason that big media corporations have provided a national platform for bigots like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh: to keep racism "live and well" in America and to attract the same rabid right-wing viewers that Fox News has been able to attract via an endless stream of racist, anti-women, anti-Muslim, and anti-gay vitriol. This is how networks like CNN prove their "swag" to the white racists of America.

Perhaps the blame for CNN's far-right shift should lay right at the doorstep of CNN's new "head honcho" Jeff Zucker, who was hired to bring CNN out of last place in the cable news ratings war. In an article titled, "The Last Charge of the Master Race: The South’s 'Lost Cause' Addiction," Ishmael Reed points out:

Gingrich, a serial hypocrite called Obama “the food stamps president” and “entertainer-in-chief,” conjuring an image of the president as a white-lipped minstrel adorned with white gloves, which is probably why Gingrich was hired by CNN’s Jeff Zucker, who created an atmosphere at NBC for women described by Ann Curry as “cruel.”

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