After a few minutes of high-octane drama on Twitter, Drudge finally updated with some salacious tidbits: “Marianne Gingrich has said she could end her ex-husband’s career with a single interview…” he typed, adding that the interview was earlier this week with ABC News’ Brian Ross, lasted two hours, and the debate was whether it was ethical to air it before the South Carolina primary. He then added that “ABCNEWS suits determined it would be ‘unethical’ to run the Marianne Gingrich interview so close to the South Carolina Primary,” which might imply that the reporters and producers further down from the “suits” may be the ones lobbying or it to air.

Sometime later, Politico‘s Keach Hagey added some of her own reporting, suggesting that we were less than 24 hours from learning the contents of the debate:

Like all good Drudge exclusives, this one is still developing…

UPDATE: Drudge reports (see what I did there?) that the interview is tentatively scheduled for Monday, “after all the votes have been counted.” And adds this salacious tidbit: “Ex-wife of 18 years: Newt not fit to be President… during Lewinsky, Clinton warned cheating Newt ‘You’re alot like me’…”

UPDATE 2: Drudge adds that Gingrich “canceled a press conference” today to deal with the interview, and added more quotes (from this interview with Marianne Gingrich in Esquire):

“He believes that what he says in public and how he lives don’t have to be connected,” Marianne Gingrich, Newt’s wife of 18 years, explained to ESQUIRE last year. “When you try and change your history too much, and try and recolor it because you don’t like the way it was or you want it to be different to prove something new … you lose touch with who you really are.”

UPDATE 3: Gingrich’s daughters sent an email to ABC News on the matter, saying they will “not say anything negative about our father’s ex-wife” and that the candidate would continue talking about “issues.” The full letter, via Greta Van Susteren, below:

To: ABC News Leadership
From: Kathy Lubbers, Jackie Cushman
Date: January 18, 2012

The failure of a marriage is a terrible and emotional experience for everyone involved. Anyone who has had that experience understands it is a personal tragedy filled with regrets, and sometimes differing memories of events.

We will not say anything negative about our father’s ex-wife. He has said before, privately and publicly, that he regrets any pain he may have caused in the past to people he loves.

ABC News or other campaigns may want to talk about the past, just days before an important primary election. But Newt is going to talk to the people of South Carolina about the future– about job creation, lower taxes, and about who can defeat Barack Obama by providing the sharpest contrast to his damaging, extreme liberalism. We are confident this is the conversation the people of South Carolina are interested in having.

Our father is running for President because of his grandchildren – so they can inherit the America he loves. To do that, President Obama must be defeated. And as the only candidate in the race, including Obama, who has actually helped balance the national budget, create jobs, reform welfare, and cut taxes and spending, Newt felt compelled to run – to serve his country and safeguard his grandchildren’s future.

UPDATE 4: According to the AP, the interview will air on Nightline tomorrow.

REPORT: Janet Napolitano Is Not A Fan Of How The Drudge Report Treats Her

Under the umbrella of “Social Networking/Media Capability” — the department has been keeping tabs on “blogs, forums and social networks online for at least the past 18 months.” Why? According to Hosenball, the department says it is for the purpose of collecting “information used in providing situational awareness and establishing a common operating picture.”

Here is the full list of websites Homeland Security has been watching:

Facebook
Twitter
Myspace
Blogs

The Drudge Report
The Huffington Post
The New York Times’s Lede blog
Wired’s Threat Level
Wired’s Danger Room
ABC News’ investigative blog The Blotter
“blogs that cover bird flu … news and activity along U.S. borders … drug trafficking and cybercrime”
Multimedia

Hulu
YouTube
Flickr

(h/t Atlantic Wire)

If you haven’t been following the story, Michelle Obama’s event is set to feature poetry readings by a number of public figures. One of the figures, the rapper Common, has come under intense scrutiny because of an old video in which he raps about carrying a gun and threatening police officers and then-President George W. Bush. The controversy also touched on a 2005 interview Common gave in which he came out against interracial dating as a detriment to “self love.”

Some industrious soul decided to search through the other attendees’ public comments and came up with Scott’s Essence article which is now being widely shared and denounced. The column did indeed cause a small controversy when it first came out, however, it’s important to look beyond the scandal then and the (manufactured) one now and see that it is actually a very thoughtful piece. If you read past the provocative quote that Drudge tweeted, you’ll see that Scott is actually analyzing the internal conflict she has between being raised to view everyone as equal despite the color of their skin and the subconscious discomfort she feels seeing a successful black man dating a white woman. In that way, Scott’s supposed racism in making these comments is about as real as Shirley Sherrod’s.

From Essence:

“Was I jealous? Did the reality of his relationship somehow diminish his soul’s credibility? The answer is not simple. One could easily dispel the wince as racist or separatist, but that’s not how I was brought up. I was reared in a Jehovah’s Witness household. I was taught that every man should be judged by his deeds and not his color, and I firmly stand where my grandmother left me. African people worldwide are known to be welcoming and open-minded. We share our culture sometimes to our own peril and most of us love the very notion of love. My position is that for women of color, this very common ‘wince’ has solely to do with the African story in America.”

Even in the Big Hollywood article about Scott (the one written with the ready-to-incite headline of “Like Rapper Common, White House Guest Jill Scott ‘Winces’ at Interracial Relationships”), the writer admits that Scott’s column is “artful” and that “she firmly stated that she was not raised to view people by the color of their skin.” However, he then instantly jumps back to the cop-out hypothetical of “WHAT IF A WHITE PERSON SAID IT???”

“Her justification for these feeling were artful and she firmly stated that she was not raised to view people by the color of their skin. But if the same words were put in the mouth of a Caucasian, the viewpoint would wreak of bigotry.”

That argument is ridiculous in the first place (um, ever heard of “two wrongs don’t make a right”?), but it’s doubly wrong here in that there actually is a big difference. The subject of black men dating white women is a very sensitive one in the African American community. While interracial relationships were taboo in white communities in the past, that was because racist white people felt that black romantic partners weren’t “good enough.” When a black man dates a white woman today, it is still taboo for many blacks because they fear it reenforces that old idea. This anxiety is prevalent enough that it has inspired an entire character type in movies and TV, the Evil White Women who frequently is depicted as a mistress or girlfriend to a successful black man. It’s become a cliche and Scott was merely trying to discover the reasons behind it origin.

While Scott’s column was indeed “artful,” Common’s more blunt explanation for why he doesn’t date white women may be the simplest explanation for the raw nerves this subject touches upon:

“I don’t think there’s anything the matter with somebody loving somebody from another race but it’s almost like a stereotype that if you’ve got dreadlocks you go out with a white girl. just feel like, as black men, we do have to be aware that, yo, every time we step out with some woman it’s setting an example for our daughters and it’s also representing something for our mothers. If you can’t really love your own, how can you really love others?”

But, I digress. I’m focussing on Scott here and why I find the Right’s attacks on her so offensive. To explain, let me call up yet another quote, this time, one of the favorites of Conservative commentators; Eric Holder’s “nation of cowards” comment. The Right frequently mentions only those three words when quoting Holder, thus using it as proof of the Obama administration’s lack of belief in American exceptionalism (“How dare they call us cowards! We’re the bravest country ever!!!”). However, the full quote was strictly about race relations: “Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.”

Here is Jill Scott, an intelligent woman, trying to have a thoughtful conversation about race relations in America and what is the Right doing? They’re doing exactly what Holder said. They’re acting like cowards.

However, I don’t think the people posting these quotes and trying to get their readers angry at Scott are actually cowards and that’s what is so infuriating. As the Big Hollywood post proves, this whole “outrage” is completely disingenuous. This is just an example of finding any possible excuse to get people to hate Michelle Obama and therefore her husband and therefore his administration. Selectively quoting from year-old columns by random event guests to attack the Obamas? That’s stretching.

So, let me change up Holder’s quote a bit. Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as united, in anything related to what are political rivals are doing, we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, a nation of pissy, little jerks.

(Editors Note: This post has been updated since it’s original posting)

Drudge Report posted this on Twitter:

Meanwhile, The Blaze and Fox News went for skeptical phrasing (Fox News image via Think Progress):

Now, this could easily just be careful journalism. After all, we live in the age of WikiLeaks so we should know better than just blindly accepting everything our government hands us. However, it’s not unfair to say that these aren’t examples of skepticism but rather cynicism. No one in the news media has ever believed anything about the Birther conspiracy except for one thing: those silly Birthers have a lot of eyes and those eyes mean traffic and ratings.

Look at every news site today (including our’s we must admit): they are all littered with birth certificate stories. Not because this story is more important than anything else (save perhaps the Royal Wedding) but because this is the SEO equivalent of oil bubbling out of the ground. For those of you who don’t blog for a living, let me explain it this way; I could have used the above headline and merely made this entire post an MS Paint drawing of Obama exiting his mother’s womb and it still would have done better traffic than the last ten posts I’ve written on every other subject. The search term “Obama birth certificate” is now making “Megan Fox naked” look like “The Paul Reiser Show air times.”

But, I suppose this is as it should be. The inevitable climax of the Birther story would have to be covered with a big explosion of cynicism and pandering. That’s all it’s ever been in the first place. For all of you people out there who thought Donald Trump was speaking for you by voicing your questions, it’s quite possible that his “campaign” is nothing more than viral marketing for Apprentice: Celebrity Rehab All-Stars Edition 3D. And, all of us in the media? We sadly covered it because it made you all click on us and, hey, some of it was really funny.

So, yeah, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that some news outlets seem to be trying to keep this conspiracy on life support. It’s in their best interest. But, before you forward links to articles like the Smoking Gun piece Drudge linked to, take a look at it. Ask yourself, “Why would a news article make fun of Birthers in the first paragraph while then listing bullet point reasons why the birth certificate may be fake (yes, that’s really what the article does)?” And then ask yourself, “Am I getting journalism, or am I getting pandering?” Or maybe both?

Take, for instance, General Motors. After a seemingly successful IPO last fall, things have tanked. In recent weeks, GM’s stock price has been–in the words of CBS MoneyWatch columnist Conrad de Aenlle “in a tailspin.” As de Aenlle pointed out on March 7:

After being offered for sale at $33 a share last November after GM emerged from bankruptcy reorganization, the stock climbed as high as $39.48 in January and has headed downhill ever since. It reached a new low of $32.01 on Friday, below the issue price.

And since then, the stock’s dropped even further, hitting $30.65 before the market’s close Thursday.

The execs at GM have a lot to think about, but they might want to cross their fingers, light a candle and hope Matt Drudge forgets their company exists. Why? GM’s ended up on the Drudge Report at least seven times since the IPO. And no, they weren’t good news. Take this Drudge headline from March 4: SHOCK REPORT: GM sells just 281 Chevy Volts in February, or this one on April 1: Government losses in GM far higher than claimed.

Every time Drudge links to a lousy story–like the April 10 story in The Wall Street Journal about a Chevy that lost its steering wheel–the carmaker’s stock falls faster down the edge of the mountain:

So the lesson’s clear–at least for auto makers–make sure your steering wheels stay on tight, and try to get ignored by The Drudge Report.

Additional reports from Drudge included:

“SOURCE: 1st Quarter ratings due out next week show Beck lost 30% of total viewership vs. ’10; Nearly 40% of 25-54 demo . . . Number of advertisers now boycotting show closing in on 400″

Beck responded “we’ve never had 400 sponsors total” and that all of a sudden “now I’m a loser in ratings.” If all of these facts were true, Beck says “they should fire me – I’m a loser and a detriment.” Then he joked it was time for a commercial, but since 400 sponsors have abandoned him, most likely listeners will just hear silence.

Given that reports indicate Beck might be considering starting his own cable network and willing to poach Fox News talent in the process, might Drudge’s headlines here be an indication of where his loyalty lies in any potential Beck vs. Fox News conflict?

Listen to the clip below from The Glenn Beck Program:

(h/t)

Yes, Obama stumbled over the word “share” and it kind of, sort of sounded like the word “shit.” The video was quickly popped up on Real Clear Politics and then garnered a Drudge link that has (as of this moment) been retweeted 25 times. Look, I know it’s been a kind of a slow day (check that, make it a really slow news day), but wasn’t there anything else of interest in that conference?

No? Nothing? Ok, fine. Here is the video where he clearly is just misspeaking. Really, if any morning news shows play this tomorrow and bleep it out, we’re going to curl up in a corner and cry. Of course, we might do that anyway. We’ve still got Valentines Day depression.

While Drudge used his first few tweets to complain about words like “Twitter,” it appears he finally got into gear earlier in the day to discuss raw politics, and, if he sticks around, will probably get over using words like “Twitter” just as much as the rest of us have. Drudge isn’t verified yet, but he posted a link to his Twitter stream on the Drudge Report homepage and has already been tweeting at the likes of Howard Stern– one of his only two follows at press date– and explaining why his moniker, @_Drudge, has an underscore: “Took time to find name i could use, all were taken. lots of matt drudges, drudge reports out there. OFTEN imitated, never quite duplicated.” While it’s hard to imagine he could top his former protege Andrew Breitbart in terms of sheer bombast on the microblogging medium, it certainly makes the political twittersphere that much more interesting to know Drudge is now lurking around and, hopefully, willing to engage in the often raucous debate. Let’s hope Stern is but the first of many Drudge is open to tweeting at.

[h/t Gawker]

Frequenters of online information pirate website Wikileaks surely must have noticed something new when the company, booted out of their original domain name Wikileaks.org, landed on Swiss servers at Wikileaks.ch: the website’s proprietor, Julian Assange, reclined casually over the site’s header, in what appears to be an expensive suit and a come-hither look worthy of a teen heartthrob (that look courtesy of Forbes Magazine, whose cover the photo graces this month). Should you miss him on the homepage, Assange also asks for money to support the site on every single page of the newly-leaked US diplomatic cables in the same pose, in which there is an unequivocal appeal to his sexuality.

Why is a man wanted by Interpol for sex crimes littering his website with seductive photos of himself? Given what we know about Assange so far, the short answer is self-indulgence. This is a man who allows no room for dissent in his organization; who will walk out of an interview at the drop of a hat and spend the day tweeting catty things at the Pentagon like a Kardashian. There is no stooping too low when egos are concerned– at the very least, Assange has yet to hit the bottom of his vanity. Yet the shock is not that Assange would feel comfortable enough to do this, but that the media is mostly letting him get away with it, too distracted with the details of his actual day job (leaking confidential files) to ridicule him for something few other media figures would have survived.

In some ways, it has worked. After repeated bashings for looking like a Bond villain back in the “Collateral Murder” days, Assange cut and dyed his hair (moving eulogy to the silver mane here) and started wearing suits for a change. The very least it got him was his very own fanpage, where giddy fangirls (and boys) fawn over him and lament they were not the objects of his rape charges (really). Degrading, perhaps, but it’s all a walking PR disaster the size of former BP CEO Tony Hayward can do to keep the public in his favor. Those who perceive a gender bias in the way media figures must present themselves should take some solace in the fact that sex is now a tool for both genders– or, at the very least, Assange is desperately trying to make that so. In the aforementioned Megyn Kelly case, those who supported her choice to look sexy in a skimpy dress without a hint of irony found it empowering. Somehow, Assange’s version of a skimpy outfit and sexy look devoid of irony– engenders more pause. The personalities and histories, of course, are different, whether there is something equally empowering or degrading about a man taking to what has traditionally been a woman’s battlefield to save his image has now become a matter of contention where, previously, the physical exploitation of a male figure was only possible for the sake of comedy.

Had it been any other website proprietor, it would have been ridiculous enough– imagine a new Drudge Report with Matt Drudge‘s bedroom eyes baring down from above, or Big Government with Andrew Breitbart pinups all over the place, or a Daily Caller with something like this wallpapered everywhere. Because these are all men, it would be quite funny; one suspects Arianna Huffington would not get away with being “funny,” but rather would be accused in a rainbow of euphemisms of prostituting her image for money. That Julian Assange is now doing the same– when he faces an international sex crime charge, no less– is a gutsy, bizarre, disarming, insane move worthy of universal mockery– or universal recognition.

The newly elected GOP Congresswoman from South Dakota currently has not one, but TWO, pictures on Drudge, so it’s time to learn about this person.

Noem defeated three-time Democrat Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin for the only South Dakota seat in the House. She won by what is shaping up to be approximately three points. Both female candidates are under 40, which caused some to call this the “hottest race” in the House.

ABC News dubbed Noem a “hot” candidate last month, but for a different reason – her ability to raise money.

So… attractive, conservative – obviously the question becomes: is she the next Sarah Palin? She downplayed the direct comparison, although inevitably it was made quite a bit.

But who is she? Well, she sounds a bit Palin-ish, from her bio. She’s a farmer and a hunter, which is like what Sarah Palin would probably be if she lived in South Dakota instead of Alaska. She has three children, which have fantastic names: Kassidy, Kennedy, and Booker. She has also attended three colleges. And from the rest of her bio – well she’s certainly not part of the Washington establishment.

And now she’s in Congress. Get ready for more Kristi Noem…

Here was one of her campaign ads, in which she rides a horse and closes with the line “Sorry, Nancy.”:

—–
» Follow Steve Krakauer on Twitter

Henican was discussing whether Wikileaks was a journalistic organization– a hot topic nowadays given their release of what they have dubbed the Afghan War Diaries– with fellow panelist S.E. Cupp, who was attacking Wikileaks for having as their sole purpose, according to her, “to discredit and dismantle our war efforts and at any cost.” She refused to call their efforts journalism, claiming that, should they also work for whistleblowers in the tobacco industry or DC lobbyists, she would be more comfortable with them. For now, “hey’re just a collection bin for, for you know, documents.” Henican responded: “Kind of like the Drudge Report, right?”

Wikileaks, naturally, was peeved by this insolence, though they didn’t seem to take too much issue with Henican’s comparison– in response to Cupp’s claim that she would be ok with the organization if they served tobacco company whistleblowers, they tweeted out the entirety of their (quite formidable, but nowhere near the size of their war reports) tobacco industry archives. And they don’t have too much of a reason to be angry. Aside from the obvious differences in ideology, methodology and ultimate goal, there are a good number of similarities between the two organizations:

• Elusive, soft-spoken mystery leader that manages to live in several places simultaneously? Check.
• Unknown number/names of staff? Check.
• Undisclosed method of choosing what goes up on the website? Check.
• Obvious hyper-partisanship? Check.
• High editorial-to-raw-info ratio in favor of the latter? Check. (I’d say Matt Drudge does about as much writing as Julian Assange does, perhaps a little less).

Given that they had both been involved in controversies with editing videos and releasing information that was detrimental to the American government (though obviously on different levels)– and that their styles on cable news are so vastly different– I have always thought it would be interesting to watch a discussion between Assange and Andrew Breitbart. But I think Henican is onto something bigger here with the comparison between Assange and Drudge, and given the way in which the Drudge Report surfaced and Drudge’s clear leanings in favor of open information online, there would be a lot to gain from putting these two on a talk show or panel somewhere. The existence of both sites make it increasingly clear that further dialogue on new media and its impact on the beast we call journalism is necessary, and, really, who better debate the issue than the people on either side that have caused old media the most frustration?

The clip from yesterday’s Fox News Watch below:

[h/t Newsbusters]

Matthews understood that the clip was presented out of context by Breitbart, but thought that it was only because Sherrod was depicted as a “current” member of the administration when the events that she described had occurred. Both Dean and Walsh do their level best to disabuse Matthews of his incorrect position, but the Hardball host obstinately – and wrongly – sticks to his guns. The only thing missing from this following clip is “Yakkity Sax” playing underneath this commentary.

The problem was, however, that the story didn’tt hold up. Each of the eleven other jurors swore under oath (something the original complainant refused to do) that her version of events was erroneous, that the emails were out of context and misrepresentative. The Times ran their follow-up story on a Saturday, on page A18.

It takes no imagination to see how this story has echoes in the current environment. The Journolist emails, of course, and Drudge’s speculative front page story yesterday about “improper contact” between Google and the Administration. The absolution of the scientists in the “Climategate” incident, similarly maligned for selective emails, has also been criticized for lacking follow-up from the media outlets that trumpeted the original accusations.

Here, I’ll admit my bias. I was one of the eleven jurors; an excerpt of one of my emails appeared in that front page Times article. And, after many affidavits back and forth, the court has not yet ruled on the solitary juror’s original claims. But as I said, the story echoes, this week in particular.

We may have entered a golden age of email scandals. There are a number of reasons that emails, in this moment, are a tool ripe for employment – or exploitation – in politics, the law, and relationships.

Email is still new.

In the context of human history, obviously. But even in the context of communications.

Think about how it differs from older forms of communication. There’s the immediacy, of course, but there’s also the simplicity of archiving it. One’s desk drawers don’t have to overflow with old correspondence – it just sits there, on your desktop or in your organization’s backup files, waiting for someone to search “Weigel” or “die in a fire.” And as it travels across the internet, it often does so without encryption. The old saw about email being like a postcard that every mailman can read has an element of truth.

Here’s another way in which it is different than older forms of communication. There’s an implied letterhead on every email sent from a company or organization, that little trailing domain after the @ symbol. If you send an email from an army.mil domain, you are sending an email from the Army. From foxnews.com or from nytimes.com – those emails can be interpreted as though you are acting on behalf of those companies.

The end result will probably be less candor, and perhaps less immediacy, in emailed communications. When this happens, it will spell the end of this golden age.

But that candor and immediacy will transfer (and has transferred) to other media – instant messaging, texts, BBMs – where the same problems will soon start to crop up. In the legal case I mentioned at the outset, a text message was used in an affidavit responding to the isolated juror’s claims. In two years time, I’m going to re-release this post, doing a find-and-replace for “email” and “text”.

An individual email is often just an excerpt of a conversation.

What Andrew Breitbart was to the Sherrod video, the Daily Caller is to “Journolist”. Each broadcasts only the most incendiary parts of a discussion, with all of the subtlety of tossing a grenade.

It is rare that a stand-alone, one-off email will be of much interest. Usually, those emails that elicit a furor are part of an ongoing conversation between the sender and recipient.

Presenting only part of a discussion to make a political or personal point may be effective over the short-term, but over the long-term the audience is owed the full context for the conversation in order to fully assess its impact.

Contrast email in this regard with, oh, I don’t know, voice recordings. In addition to the overhead in recording and storing a conversation, surreptitiously or not, a snippet of recorded conversation demands release of what preceded and followed it. RadarOnline couldn’t release only Mel Gibson’s furious invectives, they had to release the whole thing, because they knew people wouldn’t accept only his side as representative. Yet, for some reason with email, they do.

Voice recordings do have an advantage over email in this regard: emotion. Were Gibson’s words type-written, it’s certain they would lack the emotional power they carry when you hear them in his familiar voice. But again, that lack of emotion can make email a tool for triggering scandal.

There was a sketch comedy show about a decade ago that had a skit in which a witness at a trial was examined. He confessed to the crime with heavy sarcasm to the amusement of the jury and audience. But when the prosecution had his words read back, the cold statement (something like “Oh yeah, I killed him.”) shifted meaning.

It was a comedy sketch, but we’ve all had that experience – an email being misinterpreted when the tone of it is misunderstood. Now imagine that email being read by someone who you’d never intended to read it, perhaps someone looking for evidence of wrong-doing. Perhaps someone with the improbable name of “Tucker”.

The Freedom of Information Act just got a lot more robust.

It used to be that FOIA requests took time to compile. When it became law in 1967, responding to a request was not trivial. Even if the respondent wanted to do so as quickly as possible, it still took a long time to look through old documents and filings.

Not so anymore. While still more complicated than searching one’s hard drive, it’s much easier for the government to respond to even the most far-reaching of requests. This is very much for the good of democracy, of course – but, as in the Drudge-linked example above, it’s also much easier for those trying to rake muck. With access to a wide range of communication, it’s easy to succumb to confirmation bias. (Lawrence Lessig wrote an excellent essay on the dangers of too much openness last year that is worth revisiting.)

The moral of the story is this: as much as we hold the Administration to account for overreacting in Shirley Sherrod’s case, we should exercise the same restraint when the next email scandal breaks. I say this in part from self-interest, of course, but the point remains. Our relationship with email is still evolving, and we live in a moment in which it can easily be misunderstood. We owe it to ourselves to take isolated emails out of context with a grain of salt – no matter the source, no matter the topic.

We’ll only see more revelations like those of recent months. It is up to all of us to assure that we understand why we’re seeing them.

Or to get everyone to give a sworn statement about it. I can go either way.

O’Reilly reiterated to both guests that “I don’t think Drudge said ‘Gee, let me use the word ‘street’ so we can get everybody upset racially,’” which Dowdell disagreed with. She cited comments by Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart, which O’Reilly criticized, that there is “a stigma attached to being considered an angry black man,” and there is a legitimate concern among the black community, even when the white community does not see it, that they will be stereotyped when expressing certain emotions.

O’Reilly replied that the point was “a non-sequiter,” because no white people were deliberately stimagitizing them. “When Obama said ‘I want to kick some butt’ I didn’t say ‘ooh, there’s a black guy who wants to kick some butt’ I said ‘Good! Do something!’” Rev. Bryant, a self-described “angry black man,” agreed and thought there was nothing wrong with Barack Obama‘s “kicking ass” comment. “All we’re looking for is leadership,” he argued, “and that has nothing to do with race.”

Video of the discussion below: