Thursday, July 9, 2009

keep their jobs on fox news no matter what they say



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

44 comments:

  1. I saw this on Sociological Images already... I can't believe it. I love how his cohorts try to make a joke out of it to get past the awkward racism.

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  2. Jesus Hopping Christ. That man is amazing. His racial beliefs are straight white nationalist fascism. And yes, the cohorts laugh it away! I think the cartoon whistle sound is about that too. Some technician probably waits for moments like that to spring out that whistle effect?

    Thank you for the fuller context to this man's revelations of his deep racial fascism. He definitely should be fired.

    Yes, I have encountered this kind of thinking. I encounter it whenever people I know do not question the heavy percentages of white people in positions of power and influence and wealth in the United States. They do not question that, so they must think it is just natural, and not results of a white supremacist society that is artificially set up and maintained by white people.

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  3. anyone know the exact date/time this aired, need it for my FCC complaint

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  4. Wow, Fox is even worse than I thought it was. Just beyond belief.

    Isn't Murdoch himself now married to a Chinese woman? Is he happy that his own channel features someone who thinks he's married to another 'species'?

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  5. What political party has ousted a member of its party due to "pulling an imus"?
    that's another question I would ask, i have heard hundreds of people argue republican/democrat racism back and forth over which is more or less racist or which one has more racists within the party. But, really no party has ousted a party member for saying something outwardly racist. That's what really frustrates me.

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  6. thelady, as you may already know, the show is called "Fox and Friends." I've been searching around for the exact timing of that segment -- maybe it's okay to just list the program's time, which is listed on their site as 6 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. The showed aired on July 8.

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  7. And he's one of the few lefties on Fox News, go figure.

    You wanna hear some real racism. Tune into Air America

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  8. One danger about race-mixing I've heard involves donor marrow/organs. Much ado has been made about how difficult it is to find marrow for mixed-race people. I don't know if this problem is being exaggerated or not, but I do know that sometimes people with matching marrow/organs often cross ethnic/racial lines. If a white person can successfully donate marrow to a black person, why would it be significantly harder for a mixed-race person to find a donor?

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  9. C'mon......is there really such a thing as going too far on Fox News?!? As long as Rupert Murdoch is running that ship; their anchors could probably show up to work in their white sheets and pointy hoods and everything would be okay.

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  10. @Reggie - Rupert Murdoch is Jewish... last I checked, the KKK don't like Jews either so I'm not sure the "white sheets and pointy hood" would go down too well (yes, I know to PoC like us, Jewish people and other "white" people look exactly the same, but apparently there's a difference... apparently...)

    re the guy saying people marry different species, I was imagining a person marrying a lion, elephant or kangaroo...

    incredible how stupid some people are *blank*

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  11. Everyone on Fox News should be fired. At the least, they shouldn't be allowed to call themselves a news station at all. At least that asshat comes out looking like the real jackass, even to a conservative (I hope).

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  12. I had to come back because I thought about something else. It could be said that this is not a thing that "white people do" because people who are not white work on Fox News too, and they say obnoxious things about race too.

    But then I realized that those people cannot say whatever they want to say about race and "keep their jobs on Fox News no matter what they say." They cannot even say what people who are not white probably say just about every day. They cannot say things that are the truth about their lives. There are things that are true that Fox News people who are not white will never say because they want to keep their jobs.

    With the subject of race, people who are not white cannot say the truth on Fox News or they will lose their jobs. People who are white can say outrageously false and racist things on Fox News and they will keep their jobs.

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  13. Thank you Macon for bringing this to my attention. I just recently sent the fcc a complaint on those 'Fox and Friends' idiots.
    This is one of the many reasons why I don't watch the FOX news network.
    Please continue your 'watch dog' activities going on this network.
    Peace,
    Kristy Napier

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  14. Eugenics never really fell into disfavor instead it went underground and is still a popular theory among many elites, and many people like that Fox news anchor still hold strong to it.

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  15. I do not watch Faux News. I hate to have my intelligence insulted with stupidity.

    This theory is not new to me. There is a black version of it. It just doesn't get that type of recognition.

    I am Black. My family branch is definitely bi-racial. What as said during those few moments on Faux is mild. Oh the remarks we have endured over the course of our lifetime.

    As long as people continue to support this type of babble on the air-it will be present. If I did not read posts on what has happened-I would not even know what aired on the network.

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  16. But it is true that homogenous countries like iceland and Japan are healthier and have a longer life expectancy than mixed countries. He may have phrased it poorly but it doesn´t make it any less true.

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  17. @ Anonymous

    False. Case in point, Costa Rica.

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  18. Oops. I think I just wrote Costa Rica, but meant Canada. Costa Rica has highest life satisfaction. You could also include France as a mixed society with a high life expectancy, higher than Iceland, for example.

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  19. It is a scientific fact that some diseases affect races differently
    (cystic fibrosis, sickle cell, taysachs, heart disease, etc.).

    Kilmeade's assertion is not at all outrageous, and could in fact be %100 accurate.

    What a waste of a topic.

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  20. @ TruthHurts001
    Actually, it's an outrageous oversimplification to say that diseases affect 'races' differently and therefore life expectancies, because that fails to account for how you define race. Are Japanese people a different "race" than Chinese people or Korean people? Are Icelanders a different race than people from Denmark? These "racial" groups have differing life expectancies within them. Even allowing that population groups may be affected in different ways by certain diseases, that does not translate to a determinant of life expectancy. The other major considerations have to be the diseases in question, their specific mortality rates, and their prevalence in the affected populations. But again, it won't answer the disparaties within the "races."

    Life expectancy is not a function solely, or even primarily, of race or race mixing, which can't, for example, be convincingly used to explain why Puerto Rico has a higher life expectancy than Denmark. Or, Spain's is higher than Finland's, or Japan is higher than Korea.

    It also doesn't address that the greatest disparities map well with wealth disparities, as do intracountry life expectancies.

    To suggest, then, that race or racial mixing is the cause for different life expectancies IS outrageously unscientific if you want to bring in "scientific fact." That eugencisict argumentation is lazy logic and pseudo-science. To suggest that different ethnicities are different species is outrageously stupid.

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  21. Actually, those views are common among white conservatives, white nationalists, liberals, etc. I'm sorry, white liberals can be just as racist as their conservative counterparts.

    As for that idiot on Faux, he needs to resign. These views are taken from American Renaissance, VDARE, and Sam Francis. America is multicultural and multiethnic. Get use to it, Mr. Whateverhisname.

    La Reyna

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  22. To "Anonymous" - most industrialized countries have better health and longer life expectancies than the US, and it has nothing to do with their being more "homogenous" (which not all of them are anyway). It has to do with:

    1. the typical American diet being excessively heavy on fat, sugar, refined carbohydrates, animal protein, and processed crap in general, which leads to sky-high levels of obesity, diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other "diseases of affluence"; and

    2. the US lacking an accessible public health care system, meaning that low-income people without insurance often go without medical care and die from diseases that could have been easily treated anywhere else.

    Nice attempt at derailing, though... :-/

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  23. "Actually, it's an outrageous oversimplification to say that diseases affect 'races' differently"

    It was intended to be a simplification, particularly because the endless debate of how to define race or ethnicity is tired and boring. There's absolutely no reason to be overly complex when pointing out the well-known fact that whites are more susceptible to cystic fibrosis, blacks are more susceptible to sickle cell and heart disease, Jews are more susceptible to Taysachs.

    Define race however you like, my point still stands.

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  24. To the handful of you on here who are dismissing this episode two things 1) he didn't just say different races being married, he said DIFFERENT SPECIES being married and having off-spring. With a few exceptions, that isn't possible. Humans are all part of the same species, so unless a person can mate sucessfully with an ape, or a Puma or a horse or something else. 2) This discussion wasn't, at least from what I saw of it which isn't the clip here b/c I can't open these things at work but I saw the shorter version at home, they are talking about the length of time people are married and stay married. IT was pointed out that several N. European countries stay in their marriages longer. This totally doesn't take into account that the overall marriage rates in those nations have declined significantly in recent years, and these socities are no longer as homogenous as they once were; they are not as heterogenous as we are in the US, but they aren't as "pure" as this idiot thinks they are. Also, biodiversity helps species to survive so only marrying people of the same genetic makeup by only marrying with a small subset of a particular race doesn't seem to be too great from a long term evolutionary point of view, at least from my laywoman's point of view.

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  25. "I'm sorry, white liberals can be just as racist as their conservative counterparts."

    Also just as racist as their non-white liberal counterparts.

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  26. ...most industrialized countries have better health and longer life expectancies than the US, and it has nothing to do with their being more "homogenous"...

    Please provide a source.

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  27. "Define race however you like, my point still stands."

    No, it doesn't. You didn't just point out that some groups (races) are more susceptible to certain diseases, you suggested that somehow this means that joker on Fox may be 100% correct. This implies that susceptibility to these few diseases is a determinant of average life expectancy and that mixing races lowers life expectancy. You may be bored by it, but it's slipshod thinking to disregard the definition of races, especially when you can't then explain disparities in life expectancy within the "races" that share genetic susceptibility to those diseases.

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  28. "you suggested that somehow this means that joker on Fox may be 100% correct."

    And until someone is able to produce scientific proof that he not, then he MAY be.

    The key word is MAY.

    I'm not arguing in his favor, only that based on what we know concerning racial disparity among diseases, his comment is not outrageous, and may even be factual.

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  29. Sure, anything not disproven may be factual. However, that's an argument frequently used in a pseudo-scientific manner to justify outrageous claims. There is actual evidence which illustrates directly causal explanations such as wealth discrepancies, lifestyles (e.g. diet), culture (e.g. smoking) and access to health care. And again, the cognitive leap from "racial diseases" to life expectancy of nations is not linear, but passes through those definitions of race and ethnicity that bore you so much.

    His was an unsubstantiated claim mirroring already discredited eugenics ideas, in which he equated different ethnicities with different species. So yeah, it's still outrageous.

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  30. @Truthhurts101

    For a source, you could try the CIA world fact book. US is number 50 when ranked by life expectancy, below most major industrial countries.

    Also, you need to look up the notion of 'burden of proof'.

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  31. When that Gretchen chick is looking at you sideways, you know you've majorly f*d up.

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  32. @ TruthHurts001 - It's not a matter of disease affecting races differently so much as some races have a higher incidents of certain disease occurring, for example sickle cell in blacks. But many of the genetic disease you mentioned are also affected by environmental factors. The reason why sickle cell is more prevalent among blacks is due to the fact that malaria is more of a problem in tropical/subtropical areas...this doesn't only include just Africa, but other parts of the world too. There are several countries where you see genetic disease very similar to sickle cell (again, due to the prevalence of other disease like malaria). The sickle cell trait provides a way for the body to offer some protection against malaria, as opposed to those who don't have the sickle cell trait.

    Kilmeade shows a complete lack of understanding about genetics. Fishing from the same gene pool tends to lead to recessive (and often harmful) genetics traits reappearing. There are quite a few disease that are found more highly in one ethnic groups or race than another. If people from those ethnic groups keep there genes "pure" and only marry folks from their same ethnic group, you tend to see an increase in genetic disease. Part of the reason so many members of European royalty ended up with genetic diseases was the tendency to intermarry within a small group with similar genes in order to keep the bloodlines "pure".

    And it's not a "rule" that the Swedes marry Swedes and the Fins marry Finns. There's been a lot of interaction between and intermarrying between Finns, Swedes, Danes and Icelanders for quite awhile. Although some may argue that they look alike, they are hardly a "pure" society.

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  33. Omg, what an idiot! they do continue to outdo themselves!

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  34. I challenge people who made comments here including the word "race" to define it explicitly- not using an online dictionary, but using the likely fuzzy, emotional connotation they had in mind when posting. I would hazard to guess that each will be very different and likely misuse poorly defined scientific concepts like "genes."

    I cannot stand listening to and reading input from people who comfortably walk around with emotional, ill defined garbage in their minds about "racial" issues and argue vociferously to defend its soundness. Yeah, this is an ad hominem; it's really time for us to take our heads out of that nether orifice and live up to our potential to be intelligent creatures. Ugh.

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  35. One more thing, Kilmeade is making the obvious mistake of attributing correlation to causality. Anyone with a passing knowledge of statistics will know that just because less diverse nations have certain statistics associated with them, it doesn't entail that those statistics are CAUSED by the fact that the nation is less diverse.

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  36. Linda J
    Miscegenation

    The issue actually is not that clear. It has to do with the relative advantages of inbreeding advantage vrs. outbreeding enhancement. Most people are familiar with the former but not that later because it causes clearly visible advantages and because out society pushes it for social reasons. In both cases you are deluding gene associations. The advantage of this is that deleterious recessive genes are depressed, as you mention. However genes work in complexes not one on one, so any adaptive advantage is also lost -- imagine randomly switching Ford and Toyota parts -- (Toyota designs it valves to match its motors) Take a look at this Nyt article: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/03/science/03gene.html Interesting huh.

    Anyways, the debate is actually somewhat meaningless as genetic engineering will be readily available by the end of this century or the next -- so many of these factors will be altered -- in addition to what we consider us -- So its not something to loose sleep over --- or it is but in the sense of species not race or ethny.

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  37. Personally, I am more frustrated that people are surprised, versus being frustrated by what was said. Many white feel this way about non-whites; If they won't say it publicly, then they'll say it amongst polite company. Sometimes I wonder if people get offended because such assertions are made "publicly," versus being offended at the "mentality" of these people. Many whites have learned to controld their tongue and, in 2009, it's not cool to "publicize" such statements. However, such beliefs are alive and well in the minds of many--not all-whites. This is why they run when too many non whites move in the neighborhood. This is why they established the white only church. They are the most intolerant of so-called "other races" than anyone on this planet.

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  38. This really doesn't surprise me, as eugenist thinking still has a huge following. This is going to be a huge rambling post so bear with me. I'm also going to be ranting a bit. I'm also posting under a different handle because I'm going to be sharing some personal information.

    Remember "The Bell Curve", the book from the early 90's? supposedly written by 2 supposedly respectable scientists (Murray and Hernstein). They had a hidden agenda, and their target was both blacks and poor people in general. Their main argument was that IQ (despite the fact that what constitutes IQ is still fiercely debated) is to some extent genetic and based on race.

    I read "The Bell Curve" cover to cover, and it is riddled with flaws. In addition, it selectively cites flawed and biased studies, including one that was first cited by noted racist Richard Lynn (of Mankind Quaterly fame). The study in question, was taken in South Africa in the 1920s and places the IQ of the average African at 70 points (though mysteriously the authors goofed and stated it as 75. This is the study they extrapolate from to cover all Africans (and as we all know, the apartheid regime in SA would have had no exterior motive in creating studies that would call the humanity and intelligence of blacks into question)
    Now, to give you some perspective, an IQ of 80 is considered borderline retarded. So as an African, I'm very thankful that I managed to make it to adulthood without any untoward accidents with any complicated machinery or house utensils due to my mental retardation.(for those with no sense of irony, that would be what we call 'sarcasm').

    ...

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  39. ...
    The reason that intelligence interests me is because I've seen it used time and time again to beat down those who look like me. The tests are biased, and are tilted towards someone with a Western, middle class upbringing. And they don't tell us much. Ironically, I score really high on IQ tests (between 132 and 149). I'd consider myself reasonably intelligent, but I won't be winning any Nobel prizes soon. Also, I'm a member of a certain high IQ society and here is a joke for you

    A black man walks into a [said High IQ] meeting........

    That's a story for another day, but through my life in the U.S I've had people put my abilites down based on my skin color and national origin. I was programming in Kenya since I was in my early teens (Atari/Commodore I think), but at my first CS course in University here (this was in the early 90's), I aced the very first test I took and the professor accused me of cheating and eventually forced me to drop out of his class. In his words 'No one from Africa could have known anything about computers'.

    I took the same course with a different professor the next semester and aced it. The school attempted to place me in elementary courses. I was in a highly demanding High school back home and had done the equivalent of Calc I and Calc II. I had to fight to be allowed to take the placement tests to prove this. I took them, and aced them. I also had to fight not to be put in English 101 since since English is my first language. I eventually transferred to a much better and much friendlier school.

    Today, I'm a successful software engineer , and if I had a dime for all the times people have dismissed my knowledge or questioned my intelligence because of the color of my skin I could retire and buy an island to boot. I'm a proud geek, love physics and astronomy and I've found a lot of times in my interactions with other geeks (mostly white and male) I sometimes get the 'what are you doing here' vibe. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes its very open.
    ...

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  40. ...
    So anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the argument that Kilmeade is making has a long and storied history. Every flawed ideology has 2 parts, the actual ideology and the end result that the ideology seeks to achieve. Eugenics (and some of its other ofshoots) is an ideology whose intent is to justify inequality. Just as the Bell Curve was a book written to argue that spending money on programs like Head Start and other social programs that appear (cause we know the rich have their programs, they are just not as visible) to benefit the poor and african americans dis-proportionately are a waste of time and money. Why help these people if they are genetically inferior to begin with? Eugenics nicely ties in with hyper and neo-conservative theories because they are both predicated on an assumption that inequality is just part of the natural order and those 'other' (substitute black or poor) people are where they are because of their own personal failings rather than historical injustices, ongoing injustices and or larger societal problems/forces.

    Any reporter worth his salt could have found out a few things about the Bell Curve;

    a) The book was funded by the Pioneer institute. Just google the Pioneer institute
    b) The studies cited were flawed. Any studies that didn't meet the authors conclusions were tossed, those that did, no matter how dishonest, were used.

    For a good refutation of "The Bell Curve" read "The Bell Curve Wars" or read Stephen J Goulds seminal work "The mismeasure of Man" for a history of Eugenics. Not many did. I remember the Wall Street Journal giving it a glowing review, as did the New York Times. Those that raised any questions did so meekly with a 'well, they may be right, I'm not a scientist so I'm not qualified..'. The 2 authors were writing outside their area of expertise, actual scientists in the field (you know, the actual ones, not Mr 'blacks have bigger penises and therefore smaller brains' Rushton and Lynn hacks) were hopping mad, but they couldn't get mainstream medias ear.

    It was because there are a shocking number of people who actively believe this crap or passively buy into it. This is why someone who graduated at the top of Harvard Law School and was also president of the Harvard Law review got his intellect challenged time and time again while Mr couldn't think his way out of a paper bag Bush got a free pass.

    Anyway, Kilmeade's idiotic argument has gotten me hopping mad. And when I'm mad, I write. It's very cathartic.
    ...

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  41. Oh yeah, and since I'm in an interracial marriage I'm glad to know I'm doing my part to weaken the human race :-)

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  42. thanks really_anonymous, I really appreciated reading your comments :)

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  43. I viewed the entire clip (which was longer than what was shown here) and what he said was "AMERICANS marry other "species and ethnics". I didn't know that American was code for white. Since when? I found him using "species" was strange though. I don't know what he meant by that. Ethnic is another word I don't get. Do the people who commented and OP(original poster) believe it's code for non-white. Aren't we all ethnic? Webster's dictionary states: Ethnic- of or relating to large groups of people classed according to common racial, national, tribal, religious, linguistic, or cultural origin or background. Seems to encompass everyone in the world to me.
    Also at the end of the other clip Gretchen said "thank you for filling that in for us Italian-Irish man".

    I think what he said didn't make sense in the context of what they were reporting on and he also was not given a chance to explain himself because time ran out, but I don't think he should lose his job over it.


    I believe those who agree with the OP had a biased opinion Fox News Channel and therefore didn't watch it with an open mind. What a shame!
    Sincerely in Christ,
    Leesa C.
    Eph.2:8,9
    Proud third generation Black Hispanic Republican

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  44. Great Post.....

    I found your site on stumbleupon and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. Looking forward to reading more from you down the road!

    Thanks for sharing....

    ReplyDelete

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