In Sean Hannity’s world, there are a few bad cops but far more bad African Americans. That was the message condescendingly imparted to his guest, Rep. Hank Johnson.
Hannity introduced Johnson by saying he “has a history of making controversial comments about police practices in America.” Which is funny because I don’t recall Hannity ever describing his slavery-loving, African-American hating pal Jesse Lee Peterson as “controversial.”
Johnson recently blasted Congress for doing nothing in the wake of a series of killings of unarmed Americans by law enforcers. “It feels like open season on black men in America” Johnson was shown saying in a video clip. He said it again to Hannity. Johnson also said that “All Americans are at risk when bad actors in law enforcement use their guns instead of their heads.”
Rather than let his guest talk about his ideas and solutions, Hannity hogged the time to whitesplain about black-on-black crime.
“Isn’t it a bigger issue, black on black crime?” Hannity “asked.” He came up with some statistics about the number of African Americans killed by the police vs. the number killed by other African Americans. Johnson tried to explain to a completely uninterested Hannity that there are no hard statistics on how many African Americans (or other Americans) are killed by police.
Hannity said, “I can’t think of one other instance that is similar” to the case of Walter Scott (the South Carolina man recently shot in the back and killed as he fled the police).
“You can’t think of one other instance where there has been an unjustified killing?” Johnson asked.
“No…. Not like that,” Hannity insisted. He argued that Michael Brown or Trayvon Martin “wasn’t like that.” Never mind that there was no video in those cases or that if there had not been a video in this one, Fox would almost certainly have shrugged off Scott's kililng, too.
But what about Tamir Rice? Eric Harris? Akai Gurley?
Johnson said he didn’t want to argue specific cases. His point was that there has been “a cascade of black males being killed at the hands of law enforcement.”
“But can you name one other example?” Hannity asked. Without giving Johnson a chance to speak, Hannity started talking about “the numbers” of black-on-black crime vs. police killings. But here's another funny thing: There were way more police killings than, say, people killed by Ebola. But that didn’t stop Hannity from promoting hysteria over it.
Hannity started whitesplaining again.
HANNITY: Congressman, I think we’re on the same page here. …There are some bad cops. That’s one case that you’ve got right. Those numbers are dramatically lower than the incidences of black-on-black crime and I believe every one of these kids, every one of these statistics – we need to save their lives. And I think we gotta then deal with the bigger part of the problem here and the entire problem. You seem to only want to go after law enforcement.
And Hannity only seems to want to go after African Americans.
Oh, and by the way? As a white person, I find it terrifying that cops are quick on the trigger to shoot anybody. Why doesn’t Hannity care about that?
Watch it above, from the April 15 Hannity.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
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