Shep Smith responds to right-wing critics: ?I do belong here? at Fox News.
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on June 23rd, 2009 4:33 am by HL
Shep Smith responds to right-wing critics: ?I do belong here? at Fox News.
On June 10, Fox News anchor Shep Smith made headlines with his response to the shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. He said the incident showed that the much-maligned DHS report on violent, right-wing extremists was a “warning to us all,” even though “the right went absolutely bonkers” in response […]
On June 10, Fox News anchor Shep Smith made headlines with his response to the shooting by a white supremacist at the Holocaust Memorial Museum. He said the incident showed that the much-maligned DHS report on violent, right-wing extremists was a “warning to us all,” even though “the right went absolutely bonkers” in response to it. The right quickly went after him, calling for his resignation from Fox News. In a new interview with the New York Times, Smith responds:
“When a crazy man has walked into a Holocaust museum and shot the security guard, maybe that’s an appropriate time to warn people: you’ve got a crazy person in your life, keep an eye on him,” he said in an interview in his Manhattan office last week.
Mr. Smith said he fully anticipated one result of those comments: the nasty e-mail increased.
“Thousands of them,” Mr. Smith said. “And I know they don’t mean the things they say. I know they don’t hate me and want death on my family.”
What they mostly say, he explained, is: “You don’t belong there.” Mr. Smith paused a moment before adding: “I do belong here.”
Smith said that his colleagues, such as Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck, are “fascinating, terrific entertainer,” but that he tries to provide the “news” in Fox News.
Under Misspelled Banner, Buchanan And White Nationalist Brimelow Argue For English-Only Initiatives
On Saturday, Pat Buchanan hosted a conference to discuss how Republicans can regain a majority in America. During one discussion, panelists suggested supporting English-only initiatives as a prime way of attracting “working class white Democrats.” The discussion ridiculed Judge Sotomayor for the fact that she studied children’s classics to improve her grammar while attending […]
On Saturday, Pat Buchanan hosted a conference to discuss how Republicans can regain a majority in America. During one discussion, panelists suggested supporting English-only initiatives as a prime way of attracting “working class white Democrats.” The discussion ridiculed Judge Sotomayor for the fact that she studied children’s classics to improve her grammar while attending college. The panelists also suggested that, without English as the official language, President Obama would force Americans to speak Spanish.
One salient feature of the event was the banner hanging over the English-only advocates. The word conference was spelled “Conferenece.” View it here:
The panelists pressed on with their anti-bilingualism diatribe without noting the irony of the obvious misspelling on the banner:
PAT BUCHANAN: Judge Sotomayor is up there at school in New York, she gets a scholarship to Princeton, she’s graduated with all these big honors and awards they said she never won. What’s she doing there in the summer? They said her adviser told her to read children’s classics so she can learn English better. How do you graduate number one in Princeton if you’re in the summer and you’re reading Rumpelstiltskin and Snow White? [laughter] […]
PETER BRIMELOW: I really do recommend the language issue because you know that polls better than immigration and affirmative action. Eighty-five percent of Americans say they would favor official language policy. The wonderful thing about this issue if you look at what’s going to actually happen here is you’re going to find that the Obama administration is going to gradually institute institutional bilingualism in the country. It’s going to be required to speak Spanish in key positions, the police force and so on. This is a direct attack on the American working class because they are not going to be bilingual.
ThinkProgress attended the event and obtained audio of the panel. Listen here:
Mocking Sotomayor’s struggle to learn English has become a habit for Buchanan. On CSPAN a few weeks ago, Buchanan tried to undermine Sotomayor’s qualifications by saying she had read Pinocchio as a part of her “college work.” Buchanan was referencing a New York Times article, which talked about how hard Sotomayor had to work to graduate at the top of her class from Princeton. The article stated that she “spent summers reading children’s classics she had missed in a Spanish-speaking home and ‘re-teaching’ herself to write ‘proper English’ by reading elementary grammar books.” Sotomayor never read children’s books as part of her “college work” and the books consisted of classics such as “Huckleberry Finn” and “Pride and Prejudice” — not Snow White, as Buchanan contends.
Peter Brimelow, one of the panelists to the event, is the editor of Vdare.com. He has written extensively against immigration and has long advocated that the GOP must “appeal to its base: white Americans.” Brimelow has defended accusations that he writes and publishes white supremacist material by declaring his content to be merely “white nationalist.”
