RUSH LIMBAUGH CALLS JEMELE HILL A "NEW BLACK PANTHERETTE"

I mentioned Rush Limbaugh in my last post, but I neglected to tell you that Limbaugh told his audience yesterday that ESPN host Jemele Hill is a "New Black Pantherette."



(Limbaugh tacks on the "-ette" because, hey, why just be racist when you can be racist and sexist at the same time? It's like sinking two balls with one pool shot.)

Here's what Limbaugh said:

The New Black Pantherette, Jemele Hill, who is recently suspended from…? (interruption) What are you lookin’ at? New. New Black Panther. She’s not a Huey Newton.

I mean, the Black Panthers, they’re one and alone. But the New Black Panther... She’s a New Black Pantherette. These are the people that thwarted people’s efforts to vote in Philadelphia. (interruption) Uh-oh. Dawn has got a worried look on. (interruption) Oh, it’s not about me. Okay. I use barometers on the other side of the glass to tell myself when the media is gonna get excited over something I say, and... (laughing) Okay. So Jemele Hill, the New Black Pantherette at ESPN, was not suspended for claiming that Trump was a white supremacist. But she has been suspended “for violation of social media policy.”

Limbaugh wants this to go viral. His last huge viral moment was when he spent days slut-shaming Sandra Fluke in 2012; he lost a lot of advertisers, but he's still on the air, so I'm sure he thinks it's all good. His most recent viral moment was an embarrassing one: He downplayed warnings about Hurricane Irma's threat to Florida, after which he acknowledged the storm's danger and left the state. He'd like a breakthrough again.

Jemele Hill... She is a radical, by the way. She’s an angry radical. I mean, you can just tell as a viewer. You can just tell this. That better not offend her.

It's scary when black people are angry, especially "radical" black people.

The New Black Panthers are a small black separatist group. They've been denounced by everyone from the Southern Poverty Law Center to the Huey P. Newton Foundation, a group named after a co-founder of the original Black Panthers.

A much-watched video showed two members of the group standing outside a polling place in Philadelphia, one holding a billy club; no voter ever claimed to have been intimidated by them, and the Justice Department in the waning days of the George W. Bush administration decided to seek an injunction against members of the group rather than pursuing criminal charges, but the incident and the response were deemed to be all Barack Obama's fault, and by 2010 Fox News had aired at least 95 segments on the group, covering more than eight hours of airtime. Many of the segments were hosted by the now allegedly apolitical Megyn Kelly.

(I'd remind you that most of the angry conservatives who've denounced what the New Black Panthers did at that polling place believe Americans, or at least white Americans, have an absolute right to carry firearms anywhere they please, including polling places. See, e.g., "A Guy in a Trump Shirt Carried a Gun Outside of a Virginia Polling Place. Authorities Say That’s Fine" by Ryan J. Reilly, HuffPost, 11/4/2016.)

Is Jemele Hill really a New Black Panther? Has she expressed any sentiments similar to these?

"Our lessons talk about the bloodsuckers of the poor... . It's that old no-good Jew, that old imposter Jew, that old hooked-nose, bagel-eating, lox-eating, Johnny-come-lately, perpetrating-a-fraud, just-crawled-out-of-the-caves-and-hills-of-Europe, so-called damn Jew ... and I feel everything I'm saying up here is kosher."
— Khalid Abdul Muhammad, one of the party's future leaders, Baltimore, Md., Feb. 19, 1994

"Kill every goddamn Zionist in Israel! Goddamn little babies, goddamn old ladies! Blow up Zionist supermarkets!"
—Malik Zulu Shabazz, the party's national chairman, protesting at B'nai B'rith International headquarters in Washington, D.C., April 20, 2002

"I hate white people. All of them. Every last iota of a cracker, I hate it. We didn't come out here to play today. There's too much serious business going on in the black community to be out here sliding through South Street with white, dirty, cracker whore bitches on our arms, and we call ourselves black men. ... What the hell is wrong with you black man? You at a doomsday with a white girl on your damn arm. We keep begging white people for freedom! No wonder we not free! Your enemy cannot make you free, fool! You want freedom? You going to have to kill some crackers! You going to have to kill some of their babies!"
— King Samir Shabazz, head of the party's Philadelphia chapter, in a National Geographic documentary, January 2009

Of course she hasn't. But it doesn't matter -- she's black and she's expressed political anger, so she's a radical hatemonger to Limbaugh's audience, of course.