“The Nightly Show” host Larry Wilmore refused to hide his disdain for Fox News on Tuesday night, reviewing the channel’s coverage of the violence in Baltimore this week.
Wilmore played a few clips of Fox hosts, one saying that the unrest in Baltimore “looks like some riot in a Third World nation.”
Shep Smith complained that police officers in the city had to “stand by and watch these thugs go thuggin’,” prompting laughter from Wilmore’s audience.
Meanwhile, host Megyn Kelly added, “this doesn’t look or feel like the United States of America.”
The host faux-whimpered, “this doesn’t look like the United States, I can’t relate.” Fox News will never be able to relate, he said.
“If anything explains America, it’s those pictures: oppression-riot, oppression-riot is exactly the pattern that built this country. Starting with the tax oppression that led to the tea party riot, the party that you all seem so in love with.”
The last straw was a long montage of Fox hosts rattling off the name of one reported gang from Baltimore, “The Black Guerilla Family” a bit too many times for Wilmore’s taste.
“Fuck you, motherfuckers,” he said. “That’s rolling off your tongues a little too gleefully.”
Watch the clip:
Oh good an articulate and helpful commentator. This riot is more than likely the beginning of what the conservatives have been working to incite for several years now. The media echo chamber has done nothing but judge, jury and condemn and people of color, poverty or disadvantage when they complain of their conditions. The Fox news crew has set a standard the rest of the media is trying gamely to live down to.
We are reaping what we have sown for years, hate, unrest and judgement against the helpless.
The blood thirsty bastards sit back and glorify the violence after ignoring the protests. Fox entertainers should be very careful about whom they call thugs.
Has anyone noticed that the days where the media were busy either with their gala on Saturday or recovering from a hangover on Sunday there weren’t any riots, but the moment they showed up to pay attention to the whole thing suddenly the violence explodes?
Working to incite for several years now? Today is the 23rd anniversary of the LA Riots, something I’ll never forget having lived there during them. I can’t imagine how much bigger they would have been had there been cell phone cameras, and blanket coverage. As it was, it was much bigger and MUCH more violent than the Baltimore one. But the cause was the same: White cops getting away with the beating of a black man with impunity (well 2 of them eventually saw jail time). But I’m amazed that none of the news that I’ve seen are putting this into context as not being a new issue in America. It’s just the police are getting caught much more frequently thanks to camera phones being ubiquitous and the news cycle being much more rapid. The big difference in the LA riots is Chief Darryl Gates pulled ALL the police off the streets to let the city burn and the local media reported there are no police out at all. That made the riot turn from a limited area at Florence and Normandie to go citywide quickly. I remember being at work and watch the fires get closer and closer. Eventually there were 1200+ fires burning and the city, from up on Mulholland Drive looked like Kuwait burning, which was going on at that time.
Real backlash would be a massive voter registration project nationwide.
In WWII, young men regularly committed suicide if found unfit for military service. For those who served, something had to convince those young men to do what they did.
Passion can exist in young people. It’s just that those of us who are older have failed mightily to get them to connect the idea of politics to action.
In most of what I have seen from those who should know better, the talking has been more about dramatization than constructive action going forward. As much as I despised the Soviet system and as much as people in China have suffered through the years, (young) people in those countries have achieved feats unmentionable in these parts, like carrying heavy equipment over roads for hundreds of miles on foot or this one by the Soviets:
In 1941-42, Stalin, aware that the Germans might capture Russian industry (which was in the western part of the country), sent (by train) a substantial amount of Soviet HEAVY INDUSTRY to the east.
In months.
If the Democratic Party and all of these groups I get on my email EVERY DAY cannot figure out how to motivate young people to vote, the untimate fault may have been OURS (their parents and elders), for giving them a nearly ZERO conception of civic duty while raising them.
Or it may be just ineptness of all of these bumbling organizations.