keep their jobs on fox news no matter what they say

(h/t: the field negro)

Has anyone ever been fired from Fox News for going too far? Has anyone there who's pulled an Imus been justifiably fired for it?

I mean, people go too far by my standards on that "news" outlet almost every time I happen to watch it. But sometimes this or that Fox pundit or commentator goes too far for just about everyone -- and yet, far as I can tell, they still keep their jobs.

That's likely to happen with the most recent example, yesterday's racist, eugenicist outburst on America's mixed, "impure" bloodlines, as vomited forth by Brian Kilmeade. You might remember him as the guy who stormed off the set recently when Jesse Ventura insisted on talking straight about torture and other American war crimes.

Kilmeade, along with his partners in the fine art of "talking-to-adults-as-if-they're-children," was discussing a study's claims that people in Finland and Sweden who stay married are less likely to suffer from Alzheimer’s. Kilmeade thinks that has something to do with how "pure" the blood is in those countries, compared to American blood, which he thinks suffers from intermixing with different "ethnics" and . . . "species"?!

This Air America segment, with Cenk Uygur of "The Young Turks," contains a somewhat fuller clip of Kilmeade's comments than the one that's been making the blogosphere rounds. If you want to skip ahead, the Fox clip begins at about 40 seconds here (and what's up with the whistle-and-rimshot sound effect at one point? That's a Fox insertion, not Air America's).




In her post on this racist outburst, Jessie at racism review provides some useful background on the roots of Kilmeade's claims:

The argument Kilmeade is making, and to their credit that his co-workers at Fox News seem appalled to hear, is one that’s rooted in the discredited racial pseudo-science of eugenics.

Eugenics, which reached ascendancy in the U.S. and Europe in the 1930s, advocated social progress through encouraging those deemed “fit” to reproduce to have children and discouraging, even coercing through forced sterilization, those thought to be “unfit.” One of the intellectual factories producing knowledge steeped in eugenics was at Cold Spring Harbor Lab on Long Island, just outside New York. While claims about “fitness” and “unfitness” were sometimes tied to inherited disease, just as often these designations were linked to poverty and race. Thus, people who are poor or not considered white are designated “unfit.” Indeed, in the extreme version of eugenics, some people were considered “less than human” or of “another species.” This kind of thinking is part of what fueled the Third Reich’s calculated extermination of six million Jews. Following the defeat of the Nazis and the liberation of the camps, the theory of eugenics fell into disfavor.


What do you think? Should Kilmeade be given a pass for his white supremacist comments?

Have you encountered other instances of this kind of thinking, on the dangers of race-mixing, in other ordinary, everyday situations?


If Kilmeade's blatherings bother you enough, you might even consider it worthwhile to go this far, in response to this and other Fox outrages:

Federal Communications Commission
Consumer & Governmental Affairs Bureau
Consumer Complaints
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, D.C. 20554

File a Complaint

The completed complaint form can also be faxed to: 1-866-418-0232