Rupert Murdoch Calls Obama Racist, Spokesman Backpedals

Fox News host Glenn Beck was wrong when he called President Obama a racist this summer, so I'm not sure why his boss, Rupert Murdoch, repeated the silly allegation only to have his spokesperson backtrack.

According to the Huffington Post, Murdoch said:

But [Obama] did make a very racist comment about blacks and whites and so on, which he said in his campaign he would be completely above. And that was something which perhaps shouldn't have been said about the president, but if you actually assess what he was talking about, [Beck] was right.

Beck made his comment this summer in relation to Obama's response to the arrest of Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. At a nationally televised press conference about health care, the final question asked was about the Gates' case. Obama said:

I don't know, not having been there and not seeing all the facts, what role race played in that [Gates' case]. But I think it's fair to say, number one, any of us would be pretty angry; number two, that the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home; and, number three, what I think we know separate and apart from this incident is that there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos being stopped by law enforcement disproportionately. That's just a fact.

Beck said this summer that Obama has "over and over again" exposed himself as "a guy who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture. I don't know what it is..."

Obama did make a couple of mistakes in his comments. The first was answering this question in any detail at a press conference about the important issue of health coverage. The remarks distracted the public from one of his administration's, and this country's, top priorities. The other mistake was his use of the word "stupidly," which the president later said was a mistake. The only reason that word was incorrect was that all of the facts hadn't been revealed yet.

Aside from that, what's so racist about speaking the truth?

Obama said he didn't know what role race played in the Gates' case, but he also spoke the truth when he said that blacks and Latinos are stopped by police "disproportionately."

Anecdotal evidence and statistics from police agencies from New Jersey to California reveal that minorities are often disproportionately stopped, searched and suspected of criminal activity, a practice known as racial profiling.

According to an American Civil Liberties Union report, titled 'The Persistence of Racial and Ethnic Profiling in the United Sates':

Indeed, data and anecdotal information from across the country reveal that racial minorities continue to be unfairly victimized when authorities investigate, stop, frisk, or search them based upon subjective identity-based characteristics rather than identifiable evidence of illegal activity. Victims continue to be racially or ethnically profiled while they work, drive, shop, pray, travel and stand on the street. The disproportionate rates at which minorities are stopped and searched, in addition to the often high concentrations of law enforcement in minority communities, continues to have a tremendous impact on the overrepresentation of minorities (and especially members of African American, Latino and Native American communities) in the American criminal justice system.

What's the point in having an African American president if he won't challenge the nation about issues of race?

Advertisers began withdrawing their ads from Beck's show after his remarks. Maybe that's why a Murdoch spokesperson began backtracking:

"He does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist," News Corp. spokesperson Gary Ginsberg told Politico.

Ginsberg declined to comment further, but Murdoch needs to explain his comments. If not, maybe more advertisers need to take notice.

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