The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

CNN Now Aiming for Zero Ratings

Posted on | May 16, 2013 | 46 Comments

The Third-Place Cable Network Nobody Watches™ has decided to give America’s Least Popular Cable News Personality™ a special assignment: “White in America.” Paul Bedard reports:

CNN correspondent Soledad O’Brien, known for her “Black in America” documentaries that sometimes irk viewers, is now turning her cameras on whites. . . .
“We’re not just working on ‘BIA,’ but also developing a ‘White in America.’ Stay tuned for that one.”
Her statement came in reaction to a . . . story about her appearance in a short video posted by Harvard University’s Institute of Politics, based in part on a speech she gave to the college about race and her “Black in America” series. She was just named a distinguished visiting fellow at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

(“Distinguished visiting fellow” — take that, you haters!)

In [her] speech she said that some whites don’t want to talk about race. “People would sometimes, when I give speeches, stand up and say, ‘You know, I think your black America documentaries [are] divisive. I think like, you know, listen, we shouldn’t think of ourselves as African-American. We’re Americans, and everybody should stop separating themselves out.'”
She continued: “First of all, it’s only white people who ever said that — ‘if we could just see beyond race.’ ” And she said her reaction goes like this: “OK, white person, this is a conversation you clearly are uncomfortable with, and I have no problem seeing race, and I think we should talk about race.”

“We should talk about race” — talk about it constantly, because that’s all Soledad O’Brien ever wants to talk about because that’s the only thing she seems to know anything about.

 

Comments

46 Responses to “CNN Now Aiming for Zero Ratings”

  1. disqus_f1zyigGjRS
    May 16th, 2013 @ 11:40 am

    why is it ALWAYS the race card? why cant we all get along? I just don’t understand it at all. how about a story on ‘American in america’???? WHY do we always have to throw race in the conversation; we are all americans, regardless of origin.

  2. Sophie13
    May 16th, 2013 @ 11:48 am

    ‘There is (a) class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs. … There is a certain class of race-problem solvers who don’t want the patient to get well, because as long as the disease holds out they have not only an easy means of making a living, but also an easy medium through which to make themselves prominent before the public.’

    – Booker T Washington, 1911

  3. richard mcenroe
    May 16th, 2013 @ 12:10 pm

    L

    “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”—Martin Luther King, Jr.

    Soledad O’Brien is living proof of the corruption, decadence and devaluation of an Ivy Leage education

  4. Dai Alanye
    May 16th, 2013 @ 12:12 pm

    The ironic thing is that if O’Brien had any more Caucasian DNA she could pass for Norwegian. But of course we hate her because she is ten or fifteen percent black, just as we love Allen West for being fifty percent white.

  5. Trog
    May 16th, 2013 @ 12:23 pm

    Isn’t the phrase “distinguished visiting fellow” kind of sexist? How can she accept something like that?

  6. Finrod Felagund
    May 16th, 2013 @ 12:29 pm

    Of course white people don’t want to talk about race– anything they say can and will be used against them by the racial grievance factory.

  7. John Bradley
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:07 pm

    “Did you see who moved in next door? Soledad O’Brien.”

    “Oh my, yes, white as the Ace of Spades, she is!”

  8. Rosalie
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:37 pm

    “why is it ALWAYS the race card?”
    Because we’re dealing with the Left.

  9. Rosalie
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:39 pm

    I thought her father was white. You would think that she’d be a little more understanding. But then she makes big bucks being a racist.

  10. Rosalie
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:41 pm

    Everything’s okay with them, as long as it’s done by a liberal.

  11. Charles
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:42 pm

    You’ll watch, you know you will. So the ratings won’t be zero. But it would be terrible if White in America got better ratings than Black in America. Better for CNN not to risk it.

  12. gastorgrab
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:53 pm

    Has Soledad O’Brien looked in the mirror lately?

    Girl needs some sun.

  13. gastorgrab
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:55 pm

    Is she suddenly afraid that she’s ‘not black enough’?

  14. Adjoran
    May 16th, 2013 @ 1:57 pm

    It’s for the “School of Education,” a contradiction in terms anyway if you consider the curricula. To be a “distinguished visiting fellow” means you’re crashing on somebody’s couch or, in Soledad’s case, on the Beds-For-BJs Exchange Program.

  15. daleyrocks
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:01 pm

    We need to keep dividing people in order to make them equal! D’oh.

  16. Adjoran
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:05 pm

    It’s this sort of brilliant programming that brought CNN to the point it is today. The only sets tuned to Soledad’s show were the airport and waiting room sets that never change (and that only because they hide the remotes). While they boast of their “Black in America” yawn-fests, they never mention their ratings, only that the leftist enclave of race-baiters cheered them.

    So, Mr. Programming Director, here’s a genius idea for you: let’s take the hostess we just cancelled for low ratings and put her in the lead chair for our 4125th “America: Racists or Haters?” special, which is guaranteed to finish last in its time spot! And then, we can run it over and over to alienate anyone who failed to miss it the first time! Brilliant!

    CNN: Don’t Miss It If You Can.

  17. Adjoran
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:07 pm

    Soledad O’Brien is also living proof of the corruption, decadence and devaluation of an Ivy League Department of Education.

    Say, is it true she’s named after the prison?

  18. Adjoran
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:08 pm

    I don’t know. There are so many black and Hispanic O’Briens . . .

  19. Bruce Webster
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:13 pm
  20. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:21 pm

    I, for one, welcome our new Racist Irish overlords

  21. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:34 pm

    By the way, totally relevant to this post by Stacy is something I wrote over at Scoop’s. Can’t link to it, so here’s the pertinent excerpt:

    ———————–
    …Meanwhile, skin-color-obsessed, Spanish-speaking race hustlers are setting up shop all over the place. They are giddy with the notion that predictions by demographers indicate that “whites” will become a “minority” before too long. They are beating the racism drum harder than ever because–like the black race-hustlers–they don’t understand the real math behind their skin-color obsession.

    So-called “whites” are on track to become a “non-majority skin-color group” by around 2050. This prediction is wildly misunderstood by nearly everyone looking at it across the political/demographic spectrum, from supposedly smart “white” guys like Carl Rove all the way over to dimwits like Toure and Soledad O’Brien (evidently some sort of Irish racist?).

    The first problem is that the term “white” encompasses an awful lot of people considered as part of some other “ethnic” mix, including Jews, Arabs, Brazilians, Argentines, South Africans, Australians, and on and on it goes, covering a huge variety of language backgrounds and social values.

    The second problem with lumping diverse populations together as “white” leads the race-hustlers to gleefully think of themselves as soon-to-be part of the “non-white majority.” Which is about as significant as being part of the group of humans who prefer Pepsi over Coke. It’s a totally meaningless grouping. No Mexican immigrant is going to think of themselves as part of a “skin color group” that includes Julian Bond or Al Sharpton. The long-standing feud between race-obsessed blacks and race-obsessed Puerto Ricans (as opposed to the normal people from Puerto Rico and normal Black Americans) is not going to evaporate because the so-called “whites” are not going to be the sole-owners of majority status. So there really isn’t going to be a “non-white majority.” We’ll just be humming along, intermixing like always.

    Next comes the fact that this hotly anticipated flip of the demographics tables doesn’t actually arrive for forty more years. That is a LONG time to maintain your fever-pitch hatred of a skin color group, and a LONG time to build up a lot of anger by those who are the targets of such insane levels of hatred for being born. Julian Bond is damaging his grandchildren’s potential quality of life by doing his best to keep race-husting alive, so many decades after the Civil Rights era. He may as well be wearing a white robe and a pointy white hat.

    And what will we actually have after this flip of the demographics tables occurs in forty more years? The race-hustlers act like they will magically be in charge, and will be able to continue their abuse of other skin-color groups without any moral or legal impediment whatsoever. But the fact is, the so-called “white skin-color group” will still outnumber all other “skin-color groups” for another century at least. Instead of being a “majority” this fake grouping by a pretend “white” skin color will become a Plurality. In other words, instead of being more than half of the total population, this meaningless grouping of “white” Americans will still be the largest such grouping for many long generations to come. Followed by “Hispanics”, with so-called “blacks” trailing behind, further and further.
    ——————————
    (end excerpt)

  22. Patrick Carroll
    May 16th, 2013 @ 2:37 pm

    “First of all, it’s only white people who ever said that — ‘if we could just see beyond race.’ ”

    Paging Martin Luther King’s dream.

  23. benning
    May 16th, 2013 @ 3:03 pm

    ‘“We should talk about race” — talk about it constantly, because that’s all Soledad O’Brien ever wants to talk about because that’s the only thing she seems to know anything about.’ – And what she knows about it ain’t a whole lot!

  24. gvanderleun
    May 16th, 2013 @ 3:12 pm

    Drive her and CNN fast to their tomb!

  25. Jonovich
    May 16th, 2013 @ 3:44 pm

    End of a long business trip, Friday afternoon in the terminal and I’m exhausted. I just want to sit and catch my breath for a moment. But, no, CNN is blaring on the TV, so I get up and walk some more.

  26. Wombat_socho
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:00 pm

    What, you couldn’t send me the link so I could run it in Live At Five tomorrow?

  27. Wombat_socho
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:02 pm

    I thought she was Latina. What a relief to find I’m not in the same ethnic category as that dimwitted race hustler.

  28. Rosalie
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:17 pm

    I do the same thing. Won’t give them even a minute of my time.

  29. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:26 pm

    It’s just a blog comment. (I live my life in the bleachers.) Since Scoop switched over to LiveFyre, I can’t seem to link directly to the comment itself anymore.

  30. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:31 pm

    I wanted to tie on a “do-rag” just from hearing her name.

  31. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:34 pm

    Yet another reason I stopped flying.

  32. Scribe of Slog (McGehee)
    May 16th, 2013 @ 4:53 pm

    That’s why I (a) got a smartphone, (2) got a tablet, (iii) don’t fly.

  33. librarygryffon
    May 16th, 2013 @ 5:01 pm

    Totally OT: Chrome won’t even show me the “your comment here” box, never mind let me sign in.

    Not OT: K-BOB: “…and a LONG time to build up a lot of anger by those who are the targets of such insane levels of hatred for being born.” I think a lot of us are starting to reach that point. Until quite recently I viewed skin color as a physical characteristic. My girls attended a day-care/after school care with two Ms. Cheryls, so we had the “white Ms. Cheryl”, and the “black Ms. Cheryl”. If they had both been the same skin color, it would have been the tall and the short, or the brown haired and the blond.
    After the last five/six years, I’m beginning to wonder if white people are the only ones who think that way, and do a majority of the “black” people we interact with really see us all as just a step away from joining the KKK?
    Not that Soledad can really complain. Unless she tells us she’s black, no one in their right mind would ever describe her that way. If she had worked at my kids day care with another “black” Soledad, she would have been the “White Ms. Soledad”.
    Somehow I suspect she’d have been very offended…..

  34. Bob Belvedere
    May 16th, 2013 @ 5:13 pm

    María de la Soledad Teresa O’Brien.

    Mother: Afro-Cuban

    Father: Of Irish descent from Australia

    Source: Wikipedia

  35. Bob Belvedere
    May 16th, 2013 @ 5:15 pm

    Haw.

  36. Bob Belvedere
    May 16th, 2013 @ 5:21 pm

    -In a prison cell, Charles Manson is laughing.

    -BTW: I was on the story of her comments in Monday [are you slipping Stacy?].

    http://thecampofthesaints.org/2013/05/13/more-proof-soledad_obrien-is-an-ignoramus/

  37. jsn2
    May 16th, 2013 @ 5:34 pm

    She has no problem seeing race? Race is all she sees. That used to be called racism. Now its rewarded…if you’re a liberal journOlist.

  38. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 5:49 pm

    Well, like Stacy done wroten the other day, the scandals are coming out so fast that Real Correspondents in the trade can barely keep up with them.

    It’s going to be known as the “Scandal-a-minute Administration back in the Tumultuous Tens” to bored kids in school (AKA “RNA Implants”) in the 2060’s.

  39. K-Bob
    May 16th, 2013 @ 6:03 pm

    That’s a very good point. Black teachers I grew up around would never have been insulted by being known as “black.” They were usually some of the best teachers (having had to do that whole, frustrating, “be-twice-as-good-as” thing to be accepted), and they were proud of their achievements *as* black men and women.

    Fortunately we are finally at a point in history where we are on the cusp of ditching skin color as being of any significance, other than cosmetic (and let’s face it, some of that “cosmetic” is d*mn fine looking, regardless of shade, tone, or base–and entire industries exist to prove it). But instead of being able to kick the empty husk of our race-obsessed past away and move into the future desired by Martin Luther King, Jr., people like Sharpton, O’Brien, “Toure” and others insist that we wear that rotting excrescence forever.

    They are the primitives, here. Locked forever in a fever-dream of hate and unreachable forgiveness.

  40. keyboard jockey
    May 16th, 2013 @ 7:54 pm

    White in America? Soledad O’Brien is a racist…..

  41. Mike G.
    May 16th, 2013 @ 11:23 pm

    Damn…sorry Wombat.

  42. Mike G.
    May 16th, 2013 @ 11:32 pm

    I looked this up recently. Americans of White/European descent hold at 72% of the population with Hispanics/Latinos coming in at second with about 16%, broken down into sub groups like Hispanic/African, Hispanic/European, Hispanic/Asian, ect., while people of African American descent come in at slightly over 12% with Asians coming in at about 6%.

    Most Americans could give a tinker’s damn about race. I have Black neighbors and Hispanic neighbors. They mind their own business and we mind ours. When we pass each other in the neighborhood, we throw up our hand in a wave to each other and everybody’s happy.

  43. Junior Samples
    May 17th, 2013 @ 1:03 am

    Is she supposed to be black, by the way? Because if she’s black, so is Carrot Top!

  44. Frederick Bastiat
    May 18th, 2013 @ 11:26 am

    Thomas Jefferson, in Notes on the State of Virginia, wrote extensively about the delusional nature of many of the mulattoes he had encountered.

    Seriously.

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