You may recall that the gang on “Fox & Friends” spent most of the show trying to blame last night’s bloodbath at a prominent black church in Charleston on anti-Christian hate. But believe it or not, the dumbest thing that was said about this didn’t come from Steve Doocy, Elisabeth Hasselbeck, or E. W. Jackson. Nope, it came from one of the fair and balanced network’s other hired pastors of color, Alveda King. People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch noticed that Martin Luther King’s niece, who is also the head of African-American outreach at Priests for Life, told the gang on the curvy couch that last night’s rampage could be blamed on–wait for it–legalized abortion.
Watch the full segment here.
When Doocy mentioned that the Department of Justice had already opened a hate crime investigation, King was quick to point out, “Hate does not have a color.” She likened last night’s shooting to the assassination of her grandmother, Alberta “Mama” King, in 1974. Alveda emphasized that Mama King was killed in Ebenezer Baptist Church by a black man who was “making his statement about the time.”
According to The New York Times, Mama King’s assassin, Marcus Wayne Chenault, originally had Martin Luther King, Sr. in his crosshairs because he hated Christianity and considered black ministers to be a menace to the race. However, he decided to kill Mama King instead because she was close to her husband. The message Alveda King was trying to send was obvious–this was no different from any other church shooting. As if she hadn’t already made that clear, she said that while this was a case of a white man shooting black people, “evil is not just limited to color.”
As King saw it, this shooting happened because of “a lack of value for human life.” But just as she was starting to make some sense, she turned the conversation to abortion. To her mind, legalized abortion only opens the door for massacres like this. But don’t take my word for it. Take hers.
“You kill babies in the womb, kill people in their beds, shoot people in the streets. So now you go into the church when people are praying.”
Okay, Alveda. I’ll admit that you’re partially right about one thing–evil knows no color. But how can you and your Fox News buddies ignore the overwhelming evidence that this particular thug was indeed motivated by racial hatred? After all, one of the survivors said that the gunman told them up front that he decided to shoot up their church because blacks “rape our women” and are trying to “take over our country.” Moreover, the suspect, Dylann Roof–who was arrested earlier this morning–was seen wearing a jacket with depictions of the South African and Rhodesian flags.
As much as you’d like to believe this was about abortion, Alveda, this was a racially motivated attack. The most benign interpretation of this meme is that it’s so blatantly obvious that King and her Fox News buddies don’t want to believe it. Are they so fixated on finding excuses to blame national tragedies on abortion, gay rights, and/or persecution of people of faith that they’re not willing to acknowledge any other factors even when they’re blatantly obvious? If today’s edition of “Fox & Friends” is any indication, the answer can only be yes.
