I'm sure glad Fox News doesn't consider race an issue ever, because if they did, they might have seen Star Parker's remark on Hannity's show as a bit racist. The discussion was about the movie "Runaway Slave", which is a Freedomworks production originally intended to alienate African-American voters from the Democratic Party and Barack Obama during the election.

But Star Parker took it a step further, drawing a parallel between the plantations of the 1800s and today. Specifically, she said "the overseer is the Congressional Black Caucus. Their exclusive job today is to keep them on the plantation, keep them uneducated, and and keep them unarmed."

Really?

Parker is the president of CURE, the Center for Urban Renewal and Education. CURE's advisory board includes such Republican stalwarts as disgraced former Attorney General Ed Meese, crooked former Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, the recently-famous blowhard Ben Carson, former Bush Attorney General John Ashcroft, and more.

Even better, Clarence Thomas' spouse Ginni Thomas, who now works for the Daily Caller but used to run her own billionaire-backed nonprofit, sits on the board of Parker's organization. That's cozy.

With an all-star advisory board like that, I was curious about what CURE actually does, so I checked out the last couple of years' tax returns (2010 and 2011 - PDF). After paying Parker her $167,000 or so, covering five-figure costs for travel and the like, paying her daughter $36,000 to handle the bookkeeping and shelling out almost $50,000 for the office expenses, most of the rest was paid to fundraisers. According to their returns, they mailed out some newsletters, networked with pastors and redesigned their website. Of course, there is the Fox contributor thing, too, which is described as "educating the public on television and radio."

I wouldn't stoop to Star Parker's level, but $700,000 per year to produce a large part of nothing other than a mass emailing now and then and accusing well-meaning legislators of being plantation overseers seems like projection.

I've got to give Fox & Friends credit: They blow the dog whistles so loud you almost miss the crazy underneath the din. Star Parker's appearance yesterday on Fox & Friends was a "kitchen sink moment." Between blaming the President, the 99 percent, and the 2008 market crash for hurting those poor wealthy job creators, she managed to puree her word salad right into a whole lot of nothing.

One of the more classic moments:

"There is a disdain for the wealthy in this President, and when you think about this new economy that he's discussing, the reason that poor people or those that are low-wage workers are at risk or are suffering is because of these attacks on the wealthy. Their portfolios fell apart and poor people are not poor because the wealthy are wealthy...."

So first she says our wealthy President is a self-hating whiner and then turns right around and says but gosh, those poor wealthy folks. Their portfolios fell apart. Aw heck, those wealthy folks saw their dividend stream drop a bit and maybe their net worth, but then, they've already recovered. The rest of us? Not so much.

And then she has the nerve to say that low-wage workers are not suffering because of the wealthy. This, in the face of relentless attacks on labor laws, the minimum wage, work safety regulations, and even child labor laws. After all, as Newt Gingrich says, we can bust the unions by letting schoolchildren take over for janitors. Gee, Star. Who benefits from that arrangement, if not the wealthy?

She moves from that little bit of nonsense on to explain to Fox viewers how much liberals hate the free market system and capitalism after describing her own come-to-Jesus moment. Isn't it weird how these conservative blowhards benefit and are enabled into their current position because of the social safety net? Star Parker was a single mother on welfare who had four abortions before finding Jesus and eschewing the same safety net that kept her alive enough to find him at all. She can thank a liberal for keeping her alive in those lean years so that she could stumble into that church long enough to find Jesus and slap the hand that fed her.

I don't know a liberal or progressive out there whose idea of a fair system includes letting the 99 percent stand in a line with their hand out waiting for their monthly allotment of wealth distribution, but for people like Star Parker, it's always an either/or position. Either you're with us or against us. Either you love free markets or you hate them. There's never a sense of fairness, of the idea that to live in a society you have to give to that society, nurture it, and yes, pay taxes so that the community can thrive for the common good of everyone.

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