I caught this segment on Friday and thought it was awful enough just for the pure race-baiting involved, but after reading this post over at Media Matters, I discovered that it was even worse than it appeared at first blush. Not only were Neil Cavuto and his guest Crystal Wright doing their best to falsely demonize the Obama administration as wanting to promote a welfare state of lazy moocher "illegal immigrants," the program was started under their hero, George W. Bush.

Fox Accuses Obama Of Creating Dependency With Bush-Era Program:

Fox News accused President Obama of promoting dependency and illegal immigration with a food stamp program that started under the Bush administration.

On the April 26 edition of Your World, Cavuto attacked a partnership that educates Spanish-speaking populations about Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility. Wright claimed that "the Obama administration wants to encourage government dependency and, it looks like, illegal immigration" with the program. Cavuto agreed with Wright and added "it looks like we are doing a beeline to help folks who should not be here in the first place."

But the partnership was created under President George W. Bush in 2004. Salon reported that it "doesn't actually provide food stamps to immigrants," only information on benefits that are already available to those who had been in the country legally for five years: [...]

Fox News continues to falsely claim that Obama is creating a "culture of dependency" for anti-poverty programs put in place before his presidency and exacerbated by the recession. In reality many SNAP recipients work and only stay on the program a short time.

Cavuto continually qualified his statements during this interview with him saying he really didn't want to see anyone out there starving... but... hey... we can't have someone asking for his taxes to be going up to feed all of those lazy brown people just dying to live off of the public dole because they don't want to work for a living... or not.

And it was so nice to hear his guest, Crystal Wright say that she doesn't want the "neediest of the poor" to have to go without being helped. Just what the hell does that mean? Nothing like Fox deciding to have someone on who will define what the rest of us consider poverty down a notch, as if the standard definition isn't quite low enough.