Carlson, Limbaugh baselessly accused Obama of justifying and inciting riots

[NNN0LHI]

http://mediamatters.org/items/200706070003?f=h_top

On the June 5 edition of MSNBC's Tucker, after playing a short excerpt of Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) June 5 speech in which Obama discussed what he called "quiet riots" of despair and hopelessness in poor communities, host Tucker Carlson accused Obama of "giving a political justification to totally unacceptable, never justifiable behavior." He also stated, "{I}t seems to me that when people burn down stores, kill people because they're Korean, or beat people in the head with cinder blocks because of their race, like Reginald Denny {a white man who was injured in the 1992 Los Angeles riots}, that's not a political statement." But contrary to Carlson's suggestion, Obama, referring to the 1992 riots, explicitly denounced violence in the speech, including some of the specific acts Carlson listed: "This is not to excuse the violence of bashing in a man's head or destroying someone's store and their life's work. That kind of violence is inexcusable and self-defeating."

Additionally, on the June 6 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of "inciting riots" in the June 5 speech: "He's talking about there's a quiet riot brewing in America today because Bush doesn't care, because Bush isn't doing enough. This guy was inciting, he was inciting riots. ... And to talk about a quiet riot that is brewing out there it is dangerous, it is reckless." Limbaugh later asked, "Can you imagine if a Republican candidate talked about something equivalent to this; there's a quiet riot brewing? It would be all over the place, headlines and so forth, about how this is irresponsible, trying to incite violence in America. What do you think Obama was doing?"

[monmouth]

1. The right is afraid of Obama's popularity. Same with HRC and Edwards.

Anything they can nitpick at is a joy for them. They have so little.....