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Bill O'Reilly cooked up another way to attack President Obama this week -- by suggesting that he was associating with racial radicals again, namely, the National Council of La Raza:

O'REILLY: But the president spoke to La Raza this week. La Raza, a pretty radicalized group. I think they're further left than you are. I mean, they don't like any kind of border security, they want amnesty for all the people here. They object to almost every kind of measure to control illegal immigration. And yet the president feels comfortable there. Do you think he's just posturing?

This is why O'Reilly enjoys about as much credibility among Latino viewers as Lou Dobbs -- which is to say, nearly zero. Because everyone who knows their way around the immigration scene is perfectly aware that NCLR is a very temperate, middle-of-the-road organization -- and in fact is frequently criticized by other Latino groups for being too safe and cautious, and for being corporate sellouts. (Your mileage may vary.)

Indeed, all O'Reilly and his crack staff would have had to do is visit NCLR's website to read this:

Unfortunately, NCLR has been called an “open-borders advocate” and the “illegal alien lobby” numerous times. NCLR has repeatedly recognized the right of the United States, as a sovereign nation, to control its borders. Moreover, NCLR has supported numerous specific measures to strengthen border enforcement, provided that such enforcement is conducted fairly, humanely, and in a nondiscriminatory fashion.

There are a whole bunch of falsehoods about NCLR -- beginning with their name -- that endure as right-wing myths. I bet O'Reilly has pretty much swallowed those whole, too.

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It was only a few years ago that J.D. Hayworth was out there selling Henry Ford's anti-Semitic "100 percent Americanism" schtick (which may have played a role in him losing his seat in Congress). Nowadays he's pitching Birther conspiracy theories and going so far to the right that, of course, he's giving John McCain a run for his money in the Arizona Senate primary, and making things a bit uncomfortable for Sarah Palin in the process.

Of course, this means he shows up a lot on Fox News, too, which gave him airtime Saturday on the Geraldo Rivera show (with Jeanine Pirro filling in), along with his pal and avid supporter, Crazy Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County. Trying desperately to inject some sanity into the conversation was Clarissa Martinez of the National Council of La Raza -- but the Crazy Train was too busy tooting and rolling to notice.

Hayworth: And Jeanine, I have to tell you, when I heard our president speak earlier this week, I was struck by the fact that it seems that he was unilaterally declaring surrender -- that he is not interested in enforcing the law.

See, J.D., it's called comprehensive immigration reform for a reason -- Obama (and millions of other Americans) wants to enforce laws that actually work. He is not interested in continuing to shovel billions of taxpayer dollars trying to enforce laws that clearly don't work. You know, laws that create only 5,000 green cards to deal with 500,000 unskilled-labor jobs created every year by the American economy.

Along the way, of course, Crazy Joe gave J.D. lots of love in his quest to unseat John McCain as Arizona's senator -- particularly by attacking McCain:

Arpaio: I don't seem to get much support, especially from some U.S. senators or politicians.

Pirro: Well, you are certainly supporting J.D. Hayworth in his race against John McCain.

Arpaio: And I'm proud of it.

Pirro: Why, sheriff? Why?

Arpaio: Because he's been around for five years, he's been talkin' about this. It's not politically expedient for him to do it now, like some other politicians -- it's a political issue. And that's what the problem is with illegal immigration. So J.D.'s been doing it five years, and he's gonna continue to fight this problem.

Pirro, however, was eager to treat the two extremists, while simultaneously trying to paint Clarissa Martinez in a corner. Martinez, fortunately, was up to the task and made compelling points that left them unable to respond -- so of course, Pirro quickly switched back to boosting Hayworth.

And this was on Geraldo Rivera's show. Rivera is one of the few sane voices at Fox on immigration -- but you sure would never have known by watching this weekend.

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All day yesterday on Fox, the talking/shrieking heads were all worked up about some comments from Rep. Linda Sanchez about Arizona's SB1070:

A California congresswoman is pointing the finger at white supremacist groups, who she says have inspired Arizona's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants.

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., told a Democratic Club on Tuesday that white supremacist groups are influencing lawmakers to adopt laws that will lead to discrimination.

"There's a concerted effort behind promoting these kinds of laws on a state-by-state basis by people who have ties to white supremacy groups," said the lawmaker, who is of Mexican descent. "It's been documented. It's not mainstream politics."

Oh my God! Somebody tossed a little Baby Ruth of Truth into the swimming pool!

Rick Folbaum told Jon Scott that Sanchez got her information from those notorious dispensers of inconvenient information, a left-wing blogger. (Hey, it coulda been C&L.) Megyn Kelly demanded of Clarissa Martinez of the National Council of La Raza that she denounce these horrendous words. And Sean Hannity didn't even bother to query into whether what Sanchez said might be accurate -- he just ran a quick segment sneering at her "Liberal Lie".

The problem they have is that it's in fact perfectly accurate. Sanchez may have gotten the information from a blogger, but it's more than likely the blog got its information from the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League -- both of which have, as Sanchez suggested, fully documented that a number of the leading "respectable" anti-immigration organizations are in fact fronts created by white-supremacist ideologues.

You see, Fox and everyone else has been running commentary from Kris Kobach, a well-paid lackey for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. Kobach has been boasting on Fox and elsewhere that he and his fellows at FAIR are helping to push the Arizona immigration law in other states as well.

Well, FAIR is exactly what Linda Sanchez described. And it's not exactly news, either. Here's the SPLC's rundown on the three main groups involved in promoting the Arizona law:

FAIR, which Tanton founded and where he remains on the board, has been listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Among the reasons are its acceptance of $1.2 million from the Pioneer Fund, a group founded to promote the genes of white colonials that funds studies of race, intelligence and genetics. FAIR has also hired as key officials men who also joined white supremacist groups. It has board members who regularly write for hate publications. It promotes racist conspiracy theories about Latinos. And it has produced television programming featuring white nationalists.

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(This is a guest post for C&L, written by the NCLR's Clarissa Martínez.)

After a member station launched an incredibly insensitive radio promotion designed to tweak Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus, Ohio for joining the national boycott of Arizona over its new anti-immigrant law, Clear Channel found itself in the center of a national controversy and the target of the ire of Latino communities across America.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest national Hispanic civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, immediately demanded an apology from the station, and thousands of people nationwide, by phone or in writing, contacted Clear Channel General Manager Brian Dytko and President and CEO Mark Mays asking for the same.

Today at 5:00 p.m. Dytko will go on air to do just that.

It all started when Coleman made the decision to ban city employees from visiting Arizona on official business. He joins other cities and counties in making his decision to protest Arizona’s new law, SB 1070, which essentially sanctions racial profiling.

WTVN-AM’s response? “WTVN would like to send you where Americans are proud and illegals are scared—sunny Phoenix, Arizona! You’ll spend a weekend chasing aliens and spending cash in the desert. Just make sure you have your green card!”

NCLR President and CEO Janet Murguía was not amused.

“The passage of SB 1070 has provoked a lot of reprehensible anti-Latino and anti-immigrant rhetoric,” stated Murguía, “but a radio station bankrolling someone to ‘hunt’ human beings for sport represents a new low. What is happening to Latinos—citizens, legal residents, and undocumented alike—in Arizona is no joke.”
Murguía reminded Dytko that “the American people own the airwaves over which WTVN broadcasts. As such, we will ask FCC commissioners to ensure that threats against American citizens—such as the one encouraged and promoted by WTVN—are not taken lightly and dealt with in an appropriate manner.”

Dytko admitted that his station has received hundreds of phone calls protesting the promotion, thanks to the efforts of several groups in Ohio and at the national level that mobilized their supporters to pressure him.

We can’t wait to hear what he’ll say at 5:00.

UPDATE: John Amato:

They finally did apologize for their egregious actions. You can hear the apology and see the transcript here.

This is Brian Dytko, Station Manager of WTVN with a message regarding our station’s recent “Win a Trip to Phoenix, Arizona” promotional contest. Our contest was meant as a humorous response to a City of Columbus ban on travel to Arizona by city employees. In fact, a key element of the promotion was that city employees were specifically invited to enter the contest. We regret that our promotional copy has been characterized as condoning violence. This was not our intent, and we do not condone violence of any kind. We apologize for our actions here. We are always striving to engage our community on important issues of the day and sometimes we do a better job than others, but we always take the input of our community seriously.

It was a pretty pathetic contest and tepid apology if you ask me, but an apology none the less.

Everyone is speaking out against Arizona's SB 1070, but Baseball Commissioner Selig and MLB have been mum, like decaying carcasses stuffed away in the Tomb of Bud.

Janet Murguia is the President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza and she wrote an op-ed which appeared on ESPN. She's calling out Bud Selig to take a meaningful stand against racial profiling in Arizona.

When a host of individuals and organizations called for Major League Baseball's 2011 All-Star Game to be moved from Phoenix in protest of Arizona's new racial profiling law, MLB commissioner Bud Selig flubbed his response.

Petitioned by a United States senator, a member of the House of Representatives, and dozens of civil rights, labor, pro-immigrant, and Latino groups, including my organization, the National Council of La Raza, Selig sidestepped the issue and instead talked about baseball's record on diversity. Whether he was being overly defensive, tried to change the subject, didn't understand the question, or was just plain nonresponsive, Selig's refusal to answer a direct question on the issue is a deep disappointment to Latino baseball fans and the Latino community throughout the nation.

To clear things up for Mr. Selig, the call for moving the All-Star game is not an attack on Major League Baseball or some kind of threat. Proponents of the move are instead urging MLB to stand up for its players, its front office personnel and its fans who have been singled out and targeted for abuse and harassment by the state of Arizona thanks to its new law, SB 1070, which allows police to stop anyone they "reasonably suspect" of being undocumented. What is happening in Arizona is not a debate over how to best deal with a broken immigration system; it is a violation of our civil rights and our most fundamental values as Americans.

The Major League Baseball Players Association understands that. That's why it quickly issued a statement in opposition to SB 1070. Padres first baseman and perennial All-Star Adrian Gonzalez and White Sox Manager Ozzie Guillen have already said they will not play in Phoenix next year.

This is neither unusual nor unprecedented. The NCAA does not allow postseason events -- such as the wildly popular Final Four -- in states that fly the Confederate flag. The NFL tangled with Arizona in the early 1990s over its refusal to recognize Martin Luther King Jr. Day and pulled the 1993 Super Bowl from Tempe. Those organizations took such steps in defense of their players and all other African-Americans involved in the NCAA and NFL, showing what they stood for at their core despite the fact that there was no direct threat to their safety. SB 1070 is a direct threat, and that argues for Selig and MLB to take action both to protect their players and personnel and to preserve the integrity of the game.

Quibbles aside, Latinos in baseball are considerably better off today than when Selig took over as commissioner. But that is minor league ball compared to this decision. Make the right play, commissioner. Move the game.

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Glenn Beck sure inhabits a weird quadrant of the universe. It's one in which you can switch, as he did on his show yesterday, from pleading with his viewers to stop lumping each other into political frames that are unfair -- especially lumping Tea Partiers in with neo-Nazis -- and then leaping to lump one of the most mainstream Latino advocacy organizations, the National Council of La Raza, in the same "box" with violent Mexican drug gangs.

We've seen nasty smears directed at NCLR previously, but this hits a new low. Which no doubt was Beck's fondest hope.

How he gets there is actually an amazing convolution of logic that not only defies gravity but reality -- particularly when he explains that the neo-Nazis marching in Los Angeles last weekend, under the aegis of the National Socialist Movement, are Socialists, you see, and therefore "Progressive Right".

He later adds: "The neo-Nazis -- National Socialists -- you'd put that on the Left in America."

Excuse me, but as someone who actually covered neo-Nazis as a journalist here in the Pacific Northwest at a time when Glenn Beck was perfecting a shock-jock schtick, I have to call bullshit on this.

Having been to neo-Nazi rallies, having covered the demise of the Aryan Nations, and having interviewed both leaders and followers of the neo-Nazis, I can assert without any hesitation that there's nothing remotely "progressive" about neo-Nazis of any stripe, whether they're NSM or AN or White Aryan Resistance or Hammerskins. They're all extremely hardcore far-right-wingers who are in many ways primarily driven by a deep animus for "progressive" values, particularly multiculturalism, civil rights, internationalism, and union organizing.

Beck, as we well know, is a fan of Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism fraud, and this deliberate confusion about where neo-Nazis sit on the political spectrum is a clear product of Goldberg's mishmash of history. Indeed, Goldberg himself is fond of rationalizing, whenever real American fascists show up on the scene, that they're not right-wingers at all -- they're just kooks. To which we responded:

[T]his is palpable nonsense. What makes these people right-wing extremists is that they not only adopt right-wing political positions, they take them to their most extreme logical (if that's the word for it) outcome:

• They not only oppose abortion, they believe abortion providers should be killed.
• They not only believe that liberal elites control the media and financial institutions, but that a conniving cabal of Jews is at the heart of this conspiracy to destroy America.
• They not only despise Big Government, they believe it is part of a New World Order plot to enslave us all.
• They not only defend gun rights avidly, they stockpile them out of fear that President Obama plans to send in U.N. troops to take them away from citizens.
• They not only oppose homosexuality as immoral, they believe gays and lesbians deserve the death penalty.
• They not only oppose civil-rights advances for minorities, they also believe a "race war" is imminent, necessary and desirable.

And on and on. Every part of the agenda of the agenda of right-wing extremists is essentially an extreme expression of conservative positions. And that, fundamentally, is why American fascism always has been and always will be, properly understood, an unmistakable phenomenon of the Right.

Having thus broken down any kind of meaningful category into which neo-Nazis might belong, he then calls the "progressive Right" fascists "the same people" as the "progressive Left" group -- which includes NCLR and various "Marxist" groups and Mexican drug gangs. And, ah, last I checked, Mexican drug cartels have no political philosophy -- though at least one of them La Familia, draws its inspiration from the American religious-right group Focus on the Family.

Nonetheless, according to Beck, "if you're in this picture, you're a danger to society." Including NCLR.

But then he suddenly and bizarrely switched to a plea for people not to put each other into unfair "boxes":

Beck: This is why, see, you can't stand there. You can't stand where they're putting you. Because they're putting you in a box with Nazis.

And Democrats? You're being put into boxes with Communists! That's not who you are.

We have to stop with the R and D stuff. We have to stop with the Republicans and Democrats stuff. And I know, I mean, I've done my fair share of this. We've gotta stop! We've gotta stop.

Then, of course, he promptly turned around in hsi very next segment and did exactly that -- placed a mainstream Latino organization like La Raza in "a box" with drug gangs and neo-Nazis!

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