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In what was an otherwise very informative segment discussing the rise in the number of hate groups in America in the wake of the recent shootings in Texas and questions as to whether there are links with a white supremacist prison gang, the audience of MSNBC's The Cycle were treated to conservative co-host S.E. Cupp playing concern troll for right-wing gay-hating fundamentalists, who are none too happy about being designated as hate groups by the SPLC.

As Dave Neiwert discussed here:

When right-wingers got wind of the fact that the Southern Poverty Law Center had designated a number of Religious Right organizations who specialize in rhetorically bashing gays and lesbians as hate groups, they and their allies on the Right came more or less unglued.

Now, rather than face up to the substance of the accusations, they're choosing to demonize the SPLC and their critics. Par for the course for this crowd.

Which is exactly what Cupp did this Wednesday with the SPLC's Heidi Beirich right about mid-way through the segment above:

CUPP: But Heidi, your group, the SPLC, has earned significant criticism over the years for smearing religious and far right groups and ignoring far left hate groups. Shouldn't people be aware of your ideological biases before they take seriously your claims about who they should be afraid of?

BEIRICH: Well, I guess I have to dispute the notion of the question on its... on the premise. The fact of the matter is that we've written about left wing domestic terrorism for almost a decade now coming from animal rights groups, for example, or eco-terrorist types. The criticism we get most heavily from the right-wing are complaints about our listing of groups like the Family Research Council or the American Family Association as anti-gay hate groups.

And the fact of the matter is that those organizations are akin to many of the white supremacist organizations that we list in the sense that they lie about gay folks. White supremacist folks lie about African-Americans.

In the case of something like the Family Research Council, they put out all kinds of defamatory information about how gays are child molesters at higher rates and so on, with the intention of destroying that particular population and making them appear to be lesser. So for us, it is a no-brainer to put groups like that on our hate list.

CUPP: The Family Research Council was actually the victim recently of a hate crime as I'm sure you're aware, when a gentleman stormed the building in D.C. with a bag full of Chick-Fil-A sandwiches.

BEIRICH: Yeah, I mean obviously, we condemn all kinds of violence. It's a horrible thing and what we're all about trying to stop domestic terrorism, violence and anything inspired by hate. That was a disgusting incident.

The wingers over at Brent Bozell's rag, Newsbusters, who I will not link to, were all over this, defending Cupp and blaming the SPLC for the shooting at FRC's headquarters, because of course they want to paint someone who tells the truth about hate groups and the lies they tell as a hate group themselves, as though the work the SPLC is doing is somehow equivalent to the garbage being spread by these so-called Christians. And naturally their comment section was full of attacks on Beirich for her looks, because we all know the most important thing is how you look on TV and not what comes out of your mouth. As Dave noted in his very long post which I linked above, when you can't defend your message, you attack the messenger.

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While discussing the White House commission on gun violence meeting this week, which the NRA has been invited to attend, along with Vice President Joe Biden's remarks that an executive order is on the table as part of a solution to curb the gun violence in the United States, Howard Fineman did his best to pin down MSNBC's The Cycle co-host S.E. Cupp and get an answer as to why any civilian out there needs an assault weapon or a high capacity magazine. To on one's surprise, she couldn't give him an answer.

Rather than answering his question, she started playing games with semantics on what the definition of an assault rifle, or high capacity, or rapid fire was and claimed that there were reasons someone would want them outside of the military or specialized police forces. When Fineman asked her to give one example, she punted and said she didn't want to take up the time allotted to the other hosts.

I still don't know why MSNBC hired Cupp. She's as thick as a brick and takes great pride in just being as annoying as humanly possible rather than bringing a bit of intellectual honesty to single debate. This is just the latest example of what she does on a daily basis to make sure this stinker of a show stays exactly that.

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I've already expressed my disdain for this woman and the fact that MSNBC gave her a spot co-hosting a show here -- S.E. Cupp Defends Disenfranchising Millions of Voters as Solution to 86 Cases of Voter Fraud. Apparently Esquire's Charles Pierce isn't any more fond of her than I am.

S.E. Cupp Is a Colossal Idiot:

In case you've missed it, MSNBC has compensated for the loss of Dylan Ratigan in the afternoon by moving Martin Bashir to 4 p.m. Eastern, and filling Bashir's old 3 p.m. slot with something called The Cycle, which is kind of Around The Horn for young pundits. The regular cast includes the younger generation among MSNBC's apparently inexhaustible reservoir of Political Analysts. These include Krystal Ball, Steve Kornacki, Touré, and S.E. Cupp and, this afternoon, as the program was winding down, Ms. Cupp spent a good four minutes being, weight for age, the dumbest person in the history of cable television:

To review: Talking about the president's tax proposal, Ms. Cupp rather loosely termed the president's tax policy "collectivist." (And, yes, both Mao and Stalin laughed uproariously as their spits turned over the flames of hell.) Kornacki gently reminded her that an increase in the marginal income tax tax rate is a lot of things — including, to my mind, a pretty good idea, but no matter — but it is in no way "collectivist," if English words have any meaning in, you know, English. Read on...

MSNBC really needs to rethink why they want to have this woman on the air... ever... at all... as a host or a guest. She lowers the IQ in the room when she enters it and sucks most of the oxygen out as well. I'm not sure how anyone ever possibly comes out better or smarter for the experience of being forced to maintain a dialog with her.

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Here we go again with MSNBC's replacement in the afternoon for Martin Bashir's show, The Cycle, after Bashir moved into Dylan Ratigan's old time slot, and more proof that the network really screwed the pooch with giving S.E. Cupp a spot as one of the co-hosts on this god awful show.

As Fran rightfully pointed out a couple of weeks ago, this show "has all the markings of a summer replacement series" and that's probably giving it way too much credit. I caught some of this on the satellite radio this Wednesday afternoon and this has to be one of the more obnoxious appearances I've had the unfortunate circumstance of listening to since I first had the unfortunate circumstance of ever hearing the woman's name in the first place.

The segment, I assume was supposed to be a serious interview with The Nation's Ari Berman, who's done some excellent reporting on the problem we've got going on right now across the country and voter disenfranchisement, some of which you can read about here: Discriminatory Texas Voter ID Law Challenged in Federal Court .

Rather than the other hosts and their guest being allowed to have a sane debate on the topic, the viewers were treated to Cupp demanding that the rest of them explain to her how to solve the 86 cases of voter fraud which were prosecuted under the Bush administration, as though those cases being prosecuted wasn't a solution in and of itself and her defending the disenfranchisement of millions of voters in order to do something about the minute number of actual fraud cases, that almost never happen and are not statistically a problem when it comes to the integrity of our elections in the United States. Unlike, you know, throwing millions of people off of the voting rolls because less than a hundred may have had some irregularity with how they voted.

If Cupp is so worried about the types of problems that were likely to be found in those 86 cases, maybe we can get her to go ballistic over her buddies Ann Coulter and Mitt Romney and making sure they're both voting from the addresses where they actually reside. Listening to her rail on over and over about them not having a "solution" to those cases of voter fraud, when they ended up in the courts, was enough to make me want to throw something at my TV set when going back to record this debacle.

If MSNBC doesn't want to lose all of their viewers in this time slot, they'll start looking for a new host and a new format for that matter. Four hosts don't work. The show has mainly been a shoutfest with them talking over each other constantly since it first aired and S.E. Cupp has no business hosting anything. The woman is just another know nothing flame thrower who is a bad guest and an even worse host. I put up with watching a lot of really bad television to help with monitoring cable "news" for C&L and this show is already somewhere in the range of Glenn Beck or Sean Hannity awful with trying to watch or listen to any of it.

If MSNBC were serious about having anyone want to watch their network in this time slot, they'd consider giving it to someone like Sam Seder. They'd also take Michael Steele out of Pat Buchanan's old cot on the set and send him packing as well. He's ruining shows from Morning Joe straight on through their prime time programming.

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The author of a new article about Eagles quarterback Michael Vick in ESPN The Magazine says he was "dismayed and horrified" when he discovered that the publication had photoshopped the football star into a white man.

"I didn't imagine that they would do that and it contradicts what I'm doing in the story," Touré told CNN's Carol Costello Friday. "This whole concept doesn't really make any sense. Race informs your entire life. So, you wouldn't even enter the same moment the same way. If Michael Vick were white, if that were even imaginable, he may not even go to the NFL because he might see other options for his life."

"So, just the concept of re-imagining somebody is white or black is extraordinary difficult, and I dismiss the concept of that right away in the story. For the headline and the image to suggest, 'Let's look at him as white' is extremely -- it's just a perpendicular relationship to the story that I wrote."

ESPN The Magazine senior editor Raina Kelly was quick to defend the decision.

"Well, the first reason we did it is because, I mean, I'm sure, as you know, the purpose of the art in a magazine, on television, in the newspaper, is to accompany and make the reader think in a way similar to the story," she explained. "What we wanted to do is discuss Michael Vick as fully as possible and discuss the dog-fighting issue as fully as possible."

"You can use all kinds of code words so that nobody really knows what you're saying, or you can just put the issue out there and let people talk about it. That's what we did and that's what we have done."

"You heard her explanation, what do you think?" Costello asked Touré.

"I deal with it as a writer. I can't even deal with the marketing of the story, putting that image, taking that title. When you see the image in particular, which goes counter to what the story is all about, you come to the story with a pitchfork," he replied. "I mean, there is so many issues. Race is so layered. You can't just switch people's races and know the answer... In America, we love dogs. And for a lot of people, hurting a dog is morally equivalent to hurting a toddler. I think if Tom Brady were found to have a massive dog-fighting ring in his backyard, he would do two years in jail as well, and be thrown out of the Patriots and out of the NFL. And he would not be able to get away with it because he is white."

ESPN briefly removed the photo from their website Thursday, but by Friday morning it reappeared again.

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Given the fact that many Republicans over the weekend when asked about why so many people in their party believe that our president is a Muslim were feigning ignorance on what's actually going on with who and why these rumors about President Obama started, I thought Touré's rant from this past Friday's Dylan Ratigan show was worth going back for and sharing.

Anyone paying attention to the "summer of racial resentment" from Fox and the GOP already knew this, but it was nice to hear someone say it out loud on national television. The GOP's plan is to drum up racial resentment in order to gain seats in the upcoming mid-term elections.

The misinformation is coming from right wing web sites, email chains, right wing radio and sadly from our "mainstream" media outlets as well.

Touré did a great job of calling out the Dr. Lauras and the Newt Gingrichs and the Franklin Grahams of the world in this segment.

They all were more than aware of the dog-whistles they were setting off to the Republican right wing base and he lays out very clearly just what they'd like to be calling President Obama when they call him a Muslim, but can't do in polite company. I grew up dealing with a father who was and sadly still is racist as hell but doesn't think he is and the cognitive dissonance with some of his opinions and trying to digest them is always something that makes my stomach churn.

I listened to him for years blather on about the lazy blacks he worked with when apparently they never had a lazy white worker as well that they couldn't get rid of, the terrible black drivers he'd encounter on his way to work while I'm sure there was never a bad white driver on the road anywhere around him. He, like Stephen Colbert did have at least one or two black friends, so how could he be a racist? And he was very sad when Lou Dobbs went off the air.

He used to send me some of his right wing emails that his buddies sent him until I did a few replies to all and debunked the hateful junk he was sending me, and that put a stop to those mass emails coming my way. Imagine that.

I know all to well just who the right wing is trying to appeal to with their "Obama is a secret Muslim" bull pucky and Touré is spot on with his commentary. I've had the unfortunate circumstance of knowing who it plays to and what they are willing to say out loud when they think it doesn't matter who hears them first hand.

I'm sure I'm not alone with this experience. I'd love to hear back from others who have had to deal with people they love just being so wrong headed with their prejudices as well.

In the mean time, here's Touré's rant, and rough transcript below the fold.

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