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Fox News host Eric Bolling is advising a black congresswoman to "step away from the crack pipe" because "you saw what happened to Whitney Houston."

In a segment Thursday on the Fox News morning show Fox & Friends, co-hosts Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt and Eric Bolling took time out of their morning to poke fun at Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) for saying that banks were "shaking in their boots" at the prospect of her becoming the next chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

"The Democrats would have to then win the majority in the House," Doocy explained. "And I haven't heard many professional prognosticators say that there is really any good possibility that that's going to happen."

"This is also the same congresswoman who a year ago said that President Obama should line up the gangsters and tax the bankers out of existence," Bolling recalled. "She points out that if the Democrats take back the House and Barney Frank is going to retire, she's the senior-most member. She could invariably could be leadership in Financial Services, who thinks that we should tax the bankers out of existence."

"What is going on in California -- how's this? Congresswoman, you saw what happened to Whitney Houston. Step away from the crack pipe, step away from the Xanax, step away from the lorazepam because it's going to get you in trouble," he added. "How else do you explain those comments?"

"I'd only say, 'Stay classy, congresswoman,'" Doocy quipped.

This isn't the first time Bolling has created a controversy with racially-tinged remarks.

Last year, he apologized after charging that President Barack Obama had allowed a "hoodlum in the hizzouse" by meeting with president of Gabon.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg called Bolling's comment "open and revolting racism at Fox."

(H/T: Media Matters, Think Progress)

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As I already mentioned in my post on Mary Matalin defending race-baiting Glenn Beck on Blitzer's show this week, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, Rep. Andre Carson, recently made some remarks that have had these so-called "tea partiers" up in arms. And naturally, the talking heads over at Fox have been making hay of the Congressman's remarks as well.

While I agree with Donna Brazile who said that using that level of inflammatory rhetoric is not necessarily useful to the debate over whether we've seen a horrendous level of racism and just out and out disrespect towards our first bi-racial president and race-baiting whether it be towards African Americans, Hispanics, members of the Muslim community or a number of other groups from this so-called "tea party" and those who want to attach themselves to that label in the Congress, anyone at Fox or the likes of Allen West have absolutely no ground to stand on when it comes to criticizing anyone else for overheated rhetoric or flame throwing.

So pot, meet kettle with Bill O'Reilly's interview of Allen West on this Thursday's O'Reilly Factor. News Hounds summed up the hypocrisy pretty well in their post here -- O’Reilly Trots Out Allen West To Attack Congressional Black Caucus’ Rhetoric:

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Via ABC7 in Los Angeles. Waters' comments are at about the 1:40 mark.

NGLEWOOD, Calif. (KABC) -- Unemployment, the faltering economy and the discord in Congress gave voters plenty to vent about at the "Kitchen Table Summit" held at Inglewood High School Saturday.

U.S. Representative Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles), U.S. Rep. Karen Bass (D-Los Angeles) and U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson (D-Long Beach) were there to listen to voter frustrations at the packed summit.

More than a thousand people showed up to have their say.

The jobless rate for African-Americans is almost 16 percent. Officials say in some communities like Inglewood, it's closer to 35 percent.

Waters told the crowd she's ready to fight, especially those currently controlling the House of Representatives.

"I'm not afraid of anybody," said Waters. "This is a tough game. You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned, the 'tea party' can go straight to hell."

The crowd liked that line.

Waters, Bass and Richardson announced a large Los Angeles job fair scheduled for the end of the month.

Tea Party peoples feathers ruffled.

(USA Today) A Tea Party group is fighting back against Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., who said this weekend that the small-government movement "can go to straight to hell."

Jenny Beth Martin and Mark Meckler, co-founders of the Tea Party Patriots, are calling on President Obama and leaders of the Democratic Party to "censure their own." They lambasted previous comments from Democrats who say Tea Party supporters are "terrorists" and "hostage takers."

"Is civility required only of their opponents?" Martin and Meckler said in a statement. "...The president's silence on these latest violations of civility has been deafening, but not surprising."

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Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum lashed out at Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) Monday, calling her "vile."

At a jobs summit at Inglewood High School Sunday, the congresswoman had said she wasn't going to back down from her push for job-creation policies.

"This is a tough game," she explained. "You can't be intimidated. You can't be frightened. And as far as I'm concerned -- the tea party can go straight to hell."

"She's a caricature of what's wrong with Congress," Santorum told conservative radio host Steve Malzberg. "She's vile. She's always been that way, and she's just one of these real, real nasty, you know, anti-basic traditional, fundamental values of this country."

"This is the left in America. They absolutely despise, you know, the founding principles of this country, that believes in free people, that believes in limited government. She is someone who believes she should control what's going on in America, that she knows best, and that people that stand by constitutional principles of limited government are folks who are to be condemned."

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Well, what do you know. Apparently despite his inflammatory rhetoric that he's a "modern-day Harriet Tubman" and that Democrats just want to keep black people on "the plantation" with keeping them reliant on our social safety nets, West's private conversations with his brother seem to prove that maybe the Democrats are right with their response to what it might take to get Americans back to work, and that means government involvement when the private sector is hemorrhaging jobs.

TPM has more on the Congresswoman's conversation with Chris Matthews here – Waters: Allen West’s Comments ‘So Odd’ — And I’m Helping His Brother (VIDEO):

Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) has been firing back at Rep. Allen West (R-FL), who named her as an example of how the Democratic Party has created what he called a "21-century plantation" over black voters, with appointed African-American leaders to act as "overseers" -- the men who committed the day-to-day atrocities of ruling over slaves in the antebellum South.

"I think it's so odd," said Waters, in one such appearance on Hardball, shaking her head. "No, I think that's odd, and it doesn't make good sense. And I don't think that it even deserves a response.

Waters then dished out a response: "Did I tell you his brother was here today?"

She explained to Matthews that West, who is originally from Atlanta, has a brother who went to the Congressional Black Caucus's jobs fair and town hall event in that city.

And Ed Schultz followed up the same evening with some footage of Allen West's brother, Arlan West who was completely supportive of what the Democrats and those from the Congressional Black Caucus like Maxine Waters are doing and these jobs fairs. West also called his brother's inflammatory rhetoric "not productive" and said that all of us need to come together and figure our problems out.

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Tea party favorite Rep. Allen West (R-FL) explained Wednesday that he was helping black voters escape slavery of the "21st-century plantation" overseen by black liberals like Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).

"When you look at what is happening, the laughable hypocrisy is that [President Barack Obama's] big black bus is not going into the black community," West told Fox News guest host Laura Ingraham.

"You have this 21st-century plantation that has been out there, where the Democrat Party has forever taken the black vote for granted," he continued. "And you have established certain black leaders, who are nothing more than the overseers of that plantation. And now the people on that plantation are upset, because they have been disregarded, disrespected, and their concerns are not cared about."

"So I'm here as the modern-day Harriet Tubman, to kind of lead people on the Underground Railroad, away from that plantation into a sense of sensibility."

"Now, you're saying Maxine Waters is the plantation boss at this point?" Ingraham asked.

"Well, absolutely," West agreed. "Because what you end up having -- and you know, I'm gonna be brutally honest -- is that white liberals have turned over to certain leaders, quote-unquote 'perceivably innocent' in the black community like, a Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or a Maxine Waters or Barbara Lee, and said you know, pacify and keep the black community firmly behind us, regardless of the failures of our social welfare policies."

"That's the absence of this quote-unquote 'leadership' in the black community, which as I say are nothing more than overseers of this 21st-century plantation," he added.

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Rep. Maxine Waters articulates what a great deal of progressives are thinking about this troop escalation in Afghanistan. It's too much with no end date and we need to be getting out of that country, not escalating.

OLBERMANN: The President's new strategy for Afghanistan - are you for it or are you against it?

WATERS: Well, first of all I'm terribly saddened. After having listened to the speech, I felt bad for this young, bright, articulate President who wants to do the right thing, but made commitments during his campaign that he was going into Afghanistan, he was going to get Osama bin Laden, and now he's backed against the wall with a strategy that I think has no end. It doesn't really resonate for me.

I'm saddened because 30,000 new troops are going to go into Afghanistan; I guess they're going to be fighting in Pakistan and Afghanistan, al Qaeda and Taliban and where does it end? And what do we do? We have to kill all of the Taliban and we're going to try and transition that government into a democracy? I don't get it. It doesn't work for me.

OLBERMANN: Was the setting of a beginning of the end, essentially, in saying that the troop draw-down will begin by July 2011 and will be fully under way no later than January 2012. Was that not sufficient in terms of an end date, or are you suspicious that at some point the military will have to talk him out of it or try to talk him out of that end date?

WATERS: Well, for me it sounded as if we were going to begin training the Afghanistan troops in 2011. I did not hear that we were going to have them all trained and we would be able to get out. I think that he meant that to be the begin of a withdrawal, but of course we don't know when. There's no end date to it.

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