Sharpton meets with FCC to temper Limbaugh comments
When freedom of speech goes too far
The Rev. Al Sharpton is currently conducting a series of meetings with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an effort to put an end to what he says are Rush Limbaugh’s racist rants that have become routine on his radio show.
Sharpton recently appeared on MSNBC, where he and host Ed Schultz discussed their disapproval of Limbaugh, as well as Sharpton’s efforts with the FCC.
“We have a series of meetings going on, and we’re going to see the FCC next week,” Sharpton said.
“We’re not going to stand by and allow publicly regulated radio and television to just go for marketing and promoting this kind of racism.”
Sharpton is particularly offended that Limbaugh continues to label all new Democratic policies as reparations for slavery.
“The objective is unemployment, the objective is more food stamp benefits, the objective is more unemployment benefits, the objective is an expanding welfare state,” Limbaugh said on his show earlier this year. “The objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return it to the nation’s ‘rightful owners.’ Think reparations. Think forced reparations. Obama’s entire economic program is reparations,” he said.
Schultz criticized Limbaugh, calling his language “racially-charged hate speech” and acknowledged that other conservative Republican congressmen are following Limbaugh’s arguments.
Rep. Steve King recently argued that the claims of the Black farmers and the American Indians, who were discriminated against by the United States Department of Agriculture, are all fraudulent.
“We’ve got to stand up at some point and say, ‘We are not going to pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress,’” King said. “That war’s been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there’s no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery. No one’s filing that claim.”
“Rush Limbaugh has the right to say whatever he wants to say. He can’t do it, though, on publicly regulated air waves. The FCC has a responsibility to set standards, to say the public can not be offended based on their race or their gender in this country...”, said Sharpton.
Numerous conservative bloggers have spoken out against Sharpton after he stated that he is encouraging the FCC to take action against stations carrying Limbaugh’s show.
The chilling silence taking place around the mass shooting tragedy that occurred at an Arizona Congresswoman’s constituent town hall rally in Tucson is extremely disturbing.
Every year since 2002 the community-based group, Reparations United Front, RUF, has presented a comprehensive report to Southern California residents regarding the state of the reparations movement. This year that report will be presented on Saturday, from 11 am to 4 p.m., at Los Angeles Southwest College in Lecture Hall LL 103. The presentation is in conjunction with a class assignment for Pol Sci 101, and it is both free and open to the general public.
Taking Black people off the land—when they have been able to buy and occupy it—whether by starving Black owners of funds, seeds and farm equipment; by outright KKK-type murder and intimidation, or through other nefarious means, has been as regular in America as night following day.
This has especially been the case in the agricultural sector, where making a living was never easy even for the hardworking and resilient.
It seems so natural today. Having cable television in our homes, giving us a vast selection of channels from which to choose, is a given condition for the vast majority of us. I can remember in my early years it was not like that. We had the three networks and a few local channels. A Black face on television doing something productive was very few and far between. When the great singer Nat King Cole got his own television show in Los Angeles we were all so proud. Our music was available to us and we were indeed becoming a valuable part of American culture.
The Republican Party is about to return from a two-year banishment to political Siberia, back into the mainstream as it seats its House majority for the 112th Congress.
While change has occurred in the past two years (no matter what the rhetoricians say), and it has ben some of the most progressive change in recent congressional history, mind you; the Republicans spent most of their time trying to find the tail they lost in the 2008 presidential elections.
