Color Of Change Calls Attention To John Stossel's Irresponsible, Divisive Comments About Civil Rights Act of 1964

Here is a letter I received from Color of Change:

On Wednesday, Rand Paul, the GOP’s US Senate candidate for Kentucky repeated his claim that a central piece of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was wrong, and that businesses should be free to discriminate against whomever they please.¹ Paul and his supporters don’t seem to care that without federal intervention, Black people might still be second-class citizens in many aspects of American life: where we eat, where we work, even where we live.

Then, on Thursday, FOX anchor John Stossel went even further, calling for the section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that applies to business to be repealed.² And he’s refused to back down.

While Paul may have started this outrage, he can be taken care of at the ballot box — FOX News can’t.

Stossel’s position is an affront to Black America and everyone in this country who believes in racial progress. It’s one thing to be a candidate with backwards views. It’s another to be employed by a supposed news network and to use that platform to push hateful ideas that our nation repudiated decades ago.

It’s time that FOX drop Stossel. If people like you stand up in huge numbers and FOX does not act, it will be clear that FOX stands with Stossel and his values — and we'll go directly after the network with a public campaign unlike anything we’ve pursued to date.

Can you add your voice to the call to fire Stossel? And please ask your friends and family to do the same. It takes only a moment — just click below:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=1651-835564

FOX has a history of providing a platform for bigoted views and race-baiting. Most recently you helped us hold FOX accountable by stripping Glenn Beck of more than 100 of his advertisers, after Beck called President Obama a “racist” with a “deep-seated hatred for white people.”³

But Stossel has arguably gone beyond Beck, echoing segregationist arguments from the Jim Crow era:

"It’s time now to repeal that part of the law because private businesses ought to get to discriminate. And I won’t ever go to a place that’s racist and I will tell everybody else not to and I’ll speak against them. But it should be their right to be racist."

Stossel went on to argue something that history has disproved time and again — that private business will do the right thing, without being compelled by laws, because no one would patronize a business that discriminates. It’s a blind belief in market fundamentalism that just isn’t in sync with reality. In the '60s, white-owned businesses that allowed Blacks as customers lost business. Market forces actually perpetuated discrimination; they didn’t combat it. Simply put: segregation would still be active in parts of this country if government hadn’t stepped in.

And recent history has shown that the public accommodations section of the Civil Rights Act is still needed. In 1994, it was used to hold Denny’s Restaurants accountable, after the chain repeatedly refused to seat Black customers.⁴ Just last year, it was used to go after a Philadelphia pool that prevented Black children from swimming there.⁵

It’s time for FOX News to make a choice. Are they going to give Stossel a platform to revive dangerously outdated perspectives? Or will they move with the rest of the nation into the 21st century? Please call on FOX News to fire John Stossel. And once you do, please ask your friends and family to do the same:

http://www.colorofchange.org/stossel/?id=1651-835564

Thanks and Peace,

-- James, Gabriel, William, Dani, Milton and the rest of the ColorOfChange.org team
May 22nd, 2010

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References:

1. “Rand Paul On ‘Maddow’ Defends Criticism Of Civil Rights Act, Says He Would Have Worked To Change Bill,” Huffington Post, 5-20-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/246?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=7

2. “Stossel calls for repeal of public accommodations section of Civil Rights Act,” Media Matters, 5-20-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/247?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=9

3. “Beck’s UK broadcast runs without ads; over 100 companies have ditched Beck,” Jack and Jill Politics, 2-16-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/248?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=11

4. “Denny’s Restaurants to Pay $54 Million in Race Bias Suits,” 5-25-94
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/251?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=13

5. “Justice Department Files Lawsuit Against Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, Country Club Alleging Discrimination,” US Department of Justice press release, 1-13-10
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/252?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=15

Additional:

“Dancing with the Devil,” ColorOfChange.org, 3-14-07
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/249?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=17

Summary on FOX News and coverage relating to Black Americans
http://act.colorofchange.org/go/250?akid=1465.868165.C2m-Nl&t=19

Divisive Rand Paul Echoed By Fox News' John Stossel

Tea Party candidate Rand Paul, a radical Republican heavily influenced by the Tea Partiers, is showing his true colors. And, those true colors of Paul are frightening.

Paul has already inexplicably taken shots at the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and seemingly advocated that private businesses should be allowed to discriminate against black people. While he has since tried to walk back his comments, those words were a window into his heart. Paul might have been in the clear until moronic and irresponsible Fox News commentator John Stossel, another right-wing extremist, came on to not only back up Paul but go beyond. Stossel, best known to me for getting slapped around by former wrestler Dr. D David Schultz (after Stossel had insulted him by saying wrestling as fake right to his face), through gasoline on Paul just as the fire was beginning to be put out.

This all brings me to a column I was reading at Salon.com written by Joan Walsh, one of my favorite writers and television personalities.

Walsh had this to say as she was discussing what some people view as her perceptions of the Tea Party movement. In particular, I am highlighting Paul's comments defending a big business and foreign oil company (British Petroleum) while attacking President Obama:

But I don't see a lot of room for cooperation between left- and right-wing libertarians, or the Tea Partiers and left-wing critics of corporate control over the government. One problem, of course, is Rand Paul's controversial approach to civil rights. But I think it's potentially bigger news that he called President Obama "un-American" for criticizing British Petroleum over the Gulf oil spill, rather than merely saying "accidents happen." Unbelievably, he expressed similar feelings about a coal mining accident in his own state that killed two men. "We had a mining accident that was very tragic," Paul said. "Then we come in and it's always someone's fault. Maybe sometimes accidents happen."

Is that the Tea Party philosophy at work: "Accidents happen," people die, and private industry should be left alone, not even criticized, when they do?

So, Paul is defending an oil company.

Paul is defending a foreign oil company.

Paul is defending a foreign oil company responsible for a devastating oil spill the likes of which we have probably never seen.

Paul is attacking President Obama for calling out the oil company.

Paul is defending the foreign oil company responsible for a disastrous spill in the Gulf of Mexico and then calling President Obama "un-American" for holding BP responsible.

As Walsh said, he could have said accidents happen and left it at that, but no...

Paul had to take an opportunity to attack President Obama.

It seems Rand Paul is more interested in protecting rich companies and criticizing our president and less interested in the victims: real people and the environment.

Imagine if President Obama was defending BP.

Rand Paul Is A Disgrace ... Republicans Must Publicly Call Him Out

Rand Paul is a disgrace for his awful comments made in an attack on the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He has not only disgraced himself, but he also has disgraced the state of Kentucky.

Paul will probably become a U.S. senator, and that is a sad commentary on those who will vote for him (and the Republicans and tea baggers who will support him).

Paul is in apology mode right now, but he showed his true ugly colors and has proven that he is not a man who will represent all people if he is willing to essentially support private businesses that would choose to discriminate against black people (he seemed to indicate that it would be OK because they are private businesses.

Rand Paul must strongly be rebuked by Republicans. If the Republicans are too cowardly to stand up to one of their own then how can they claim to be ready to lead this country?

Rachel Maddow, an MSNBC commentator, shredded Paul. The Republicans must do the same for this man, who appears to be seriously flawed.

Part 1



Part 2



Paul blabbed his talking points about being opposed to racism, but his unwillingness to answer simple questions spoke far louder than his hollow claims of opposition to racism.

Crazy Like A Foxx … Virginia Foxx Again Makes A Foolish And Insulting Statement

Leave it to Norh Carolina Republican Congresswoman Virginia Foxx to make yet another foolish and insulting statement in what almost is becoming old hat for her. In a debate about a project that mostly was unrelated, Foxx used the opportunity (and the platform it provided) to attack Democrats and prop up Republicans using the Civil Rights Movement as her weapon of choice. Foxx claimed, “Just as we were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle. They love to engage in revisionist history.” But, as she yielded her time, Congressman Dennis Cardoza, a Democrat from California, rose and issued a strong response against Rep. Foxx.

CARDOZA: Today, what I’m hearing on the floor really takes the cake. The gentlelady from North Carolina, in her statement just now, indicated that the Republican GOP had passed the Civil Rights Act legislation with almost no help from the Democrats. I can’t believe my ears. It was the Kennedy and Johnson administration where we passed that Great Society legislation. It was over the objections of people like Jesse Helms from the gentlewoman’s state that we passed that civil rights legislation. John Lewis…

FOXX: Would, would the gentleman yield?

CARDOZA: No, I will not yield. John Lewis, a member of this House, was beaten on the Edmund Pettus bridge to get that civil rights legislation passed. Tell John Lewis that he wasn’t part of getting that legislation passed.

Helms was a United States senator from 1973 through 2003. While he was not around in the 1960s, Helms was clearly no friends to blacks or to those who fought, bled and died during the Civil Rights Movement.

Foxx rises later and says that Helms was not elected until 1972 and “was not in the Congress when the Civil Rights legislation was passed in the 60s.”

She is technically correct, but her victory is a weak one. It’s kind of like being proud of outrebounding your opponent, in basketball, by five when you lost the game by 25 points.

Helms blasted the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (source: Wikipedia):

Helms opposed many progressive policies regarding race, such as busing, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.^{[257][258][259]} Helms called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ‘the single most dangerous piece of legislation ever introduced in the Congress’,^[12] and sponsored legislation to either extend it to the entire country or scrap it altogether.^[173] Helms reminded voters that he tried, with a 16-day filibuster, to stop the Senate from approving a federal holiday to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr,^[21] although he had fewer reservations about establishing a North Carolina state holiday for King.^[260] He has been accused of being a segregationist by liberals and political scholars including USA Today’s DeWayne Wickham who wrote that Helms ’subtly carried the torch of white supremacy‘ from Ben Tillman.^{[261][262][263][264]}

In 1996 the Department of Justice admonished Helms’s 1990 campaign for mailing 125,000 postcards to households in predominantly African-American precincts warning them (incorrectly) that they could go to jail if they had not updated their addresses on the electoral register since moving.^[265] Helms opposed ‘every piece of civil rights and affirmative action legislation’ and blocked ‘Black judges from being considered for the federal bench’.^[260] In 1982, he voted against the extension of the Voting Rights Act.^[260] Helms opposed busing, supported the ‘racist apartheid regime of South Africa’, and ‘for years blocked attempts by President Bill Clinton to appoint a Black judge on the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’.^[260] Only when Helms’s own judicial choices were threatened with blocking did attorney Roger Gregory of Richmond, Virginia get confirmed.^[260] Helms tried to block the nomination of Carol Moseley Braun, the first African-American female senator, as ambassador to New Zealand.^[260]

Her defense of Jesse Helms is more pathetic than the original point that put her in the hole in the first place.