and you know what strikes me, chris? this man is 67 years old. we didn t say 97. we didn t even say 77. we said 67. imagine all the 67 to 70-year-olds out there exercising authority over the lives of people of color, even over poor white people who have the same pernicious beliefs about african-american, latino, and other poor people. this is one of the most i think ridiculous revelations about the soft underbelly of racism and the hard, if you will, surface of bigotry that co-exist. and i don t see i m not calling him a racist. but i don t see a great deal of difference between paul ryan s comments about lazy inner city people who really just don t want to work and this guy suggesting that they abort their babies and they somehow instead of picking cotton in slavery are being subsidized by the government. there is a continuum of racialized beliefs that has to at least acknowledge the connection between on the one hand the arguments about race that are implicit and the arguments on r
turn him into a national hero, today they say they are shocked, shocked that it turns out he thinks african-americans should be picking cotton as slaves because that would at least be good for them. and let us all pray that it is out of ignorance that the national review comparing him to gandhi and the right-wing activists comparing him to rosa parks and the fox news channel booking him and his family over and over and over and over and over again as heroes and the republican senator calling his armed supporters pointing guns at federal law enforcement officers patriots, let us pray that that was happening under a veil of ignorance. let us pray that they had no idea that there is a long-standing fairly violent right-wing movement in this country that is born in the defense of slavery and that causes people to say weird stuff about sheriffs being the supreme authority and the federal government not existing. let us pray that the right and these republican senators made a hero out of t
wrap up the week with just one phrase, give me a second. today everybody s favorite nevada rancher got a second chance to make a first impression. didn t really handle it that way. nra is holding its annual convention. we will take you live to that celebration of the second amendment. and we bring you inside the secret rise of pet coke and why it is causing men and women in the second city to fight back. spoiler alert. industrial byproduct not the best for your heating. not so much. you re telling me you did not say picking cotton. are they better off as slaves picking cotton. i should be able to say those things and they shouldn t offend anybody. 70,000 people are gathering for the national rifle association annual meeting. stand and fight is this year s theme. that s what the second amendment is all about, to
that. people are entitled to their opinions, beliefs, you can say what you like. you said meet them in the middle. we can meet them in the middle when it comes to kbal rights for gay and lesbians. what do you think about phil robertson? what s happened is people didn t ask, people didn t want to put the conversation out there. they immediately want to i think people tried to ask and say, what s going on here. part of what happened as to someone s own grandfather called me a sin because i m mixed race, looking at his comments what bothered me is the right went so quickly to talking about freedom of religion and speech particularly around the lbgt comments and totally blew off the ridiculousness of picking cotton in the heat and singing you re happy and all good. that s a mythology that i know
pennsylvania sheriff who had a pretty stern message for anyone he thought was threatening his second amendment roilths, including city council members. now the city council members have a message for him. plus, a controversial school field trip. students pretending to be in a slave ship? picking cotton, even having slave masters. at one point, even called the n-word. an education in history or a lesson gone too far? we ll ask the man who runs the program coming up.