In today’s news: Kim Kardashian #broketheinternet with her butt (sorry again) and MSNBC brought on leader of the ‘Imperial Wizard of the Traditionalist American Klu Klux Klan’ Frank Ancona to talk Ferguson. Gonna skip over KK for the KKK, forgive me.
As part of the latest initiative to garner more views, MSNBC news correspondent Chris Hayes invited Ancona to discuss the KKK’s actions in Furguson, Missouri. Apparently they have been handing out pamphlets denouncing the ‘terrorists’ masquerading as peaceful protestors and inform readers of their rights to use lethal force in self-defense. The segment, itself, included two other speakers, St. Louis American Columnist Lizz Brown and St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson, in addition to Ancona, but the title of the piece was only about the KKK. The topic at hand, firmly, was what the KKK were doing in Ferguson and definitely not Ferguson itself.
The reason for bringing Ancona on, Hayes later says, is he believes testimony from the leader of the KKK is an accurate reflection of the racist backlash taking over ‘social media’ (that bogeyman of a buzzword) in the wake of Ferguson. To be sure, open racism has gripped our country and our hashtags post-Ferguson but choosing, arguably, the most racist man in America to confirm this indirectly does not support any further claims made by Hayes or MSNBC. It is just click-baiting and pandering.
The best moment of the whole interview was when MSNBC news correspondent directly asks Ancona if he believes his actions are making the situation better and safer. He, of course, says ‘Yes, I do.’ From there, it veers off into a sarcastic jab-fest between the two as Ancona makes claims about private police knowledge and Hayes acts overly-incredulous.
It has become the norm to talk at length about how the twitter-verse has blown up over Ferguson, rather than discussing the actual issues – namely the fact that details of the case are spun into pure fantasy (including autopsy reports, eyewitness accounts, etc.), that Darren Wilson still roams free, that more black men are dying in similar circumstances in the wake of Ferguson as well as in Ferguson. These are the topics that feed news outlets with a never-ending cornucopia of stories.
The actual inclusion of the KKK in this story works against every other trope of American news reporting. We don’t put in airtime for terrorists or other political undesirables in foreign lands, why would we in our own? Allowing the ‘Imperial Wizard’ of the Klu Klux Klan to openly discuss the hotbed topic of Ferguson, in which it seems white people are openly wrong about as a rule, merely adds fire to their cross-burnings and does not even shed light on the topic.
So, while MSNBC gets an hour of footage, nothing is resolved, no real reporting has been done, and we’re still mesmerized by Kim Kardashian’s large derrière.
Post-graduate Sob Stories 