Colmescivil Videos

On the October 15 edition of Fox News Hannity s Eric Deggans assertion that former MSNBC host Don Imus is "returning to the air essentially without fully apologizing for what he actually did wrong," co-host Alan Colmes said that Imus "did apologize" and went on to say: "The team that he allegedly insulted -- I would say satirized -- they accepted his apology. Why can t you?" When Deggans asserted, "What he did wrong was build a 25- to 30-year broadcasting career on humor that s racist and that exaggerates stereotypes," Colmes responded, "Well, that s what satire is." Colmes and Deggans were discussing recent reports that Imus will be hired to host a nationally syndicated radio show on WABC in New York. As Media Matters for America documented at the time, on the April 4 edition of MSNBC s Imus in the Morning, Imus referred to the Rutgers University women s basketball team, which included eight African-American and two white players, as "nappy-headed hos" immediately after the show s executive producer, Bernard McGuirk, called the team "hard-core hos." Earlier in the Hannity s New York City chapter, said that Imus is "a bigot and a racist ... and a misogynist," Colmes asserted, "He s not a bigot and a racist," and added: "He s a satirist. He s doing humor. He s doing satire." Later, Deggans said, "This is about a 25- to 30-year history of cracking these kind of jokes," and claimed that Imus "admitted in an interview with 60 Minutes that he had a producer on his staff to make n-word jokes." Co-host Sean Hannity replied, "Yeah, but jokes. Jokes. You may not like the humor." Hannity then asked, "Should Chris Rock, who says far worse on a regular basis -- have you ever come out and demanded that he be taken off the air?" When Deggans noted that "Chris Rock is not a news and information person," Hannity said, "He s a comedian." From the October 15 edition of Fox News Hannity s your objection to putting him on the air? OSSORIO: It s not a decision I would have made. COLMES: Why not? OSSORIO: ABC, we ll see if it works out for them. COLMES: But why not? OSSORIO: Because, you know, he s had 30 years to be on the air. He s been a bigot and a racist -- COLMES: He s not a bigot and a racist. OSSORIO: -- and a misogynist. COLMES: He s a satirist. He s doing humor. He s doing satire. He takes pokes at everybody. OSSORIO: A lot of people don t find it humorous anymore. [...] COLMES: How long is the right amount of time? DEGGANS: He was basically off for a few months -- he was basically off for a few months. He negotiated a very lucrative end to his contract with CBS Radio, and now he s returning to the air essentially without fully apologizing for what he actually did wrong. COLMES: Well, first of all, he did apologize. He went on Al Sharpton s show and apologized. Al Sharpton accepts him back. Jesse Jackson accepts him back. The team that he allegedly insulted -- I would say "satirized" -- they accepted his apology. Why can t you? DEGGANS: I think Don Imus hasn t really apologized for what he s done wrong. What he did wrong was build a 25- to 30-year broadcasting career on humor that s racist and that exaggerates stereotypes. COLMES: Well, that s what satire is. But you call it racist -- DEGGANS: There s examples going back 15 years, 20 years, where he s called Gwen Ifill, who was then with The New York Times, a cleaning lady. He called another person of color who was an official a quota hire. He s called Howard Kurtz from Washington Post a "beanie-wearing, hook-nosed Jew." I mean, he s used the kind of humor that has been abandoned by other -- COLMES: He also goes after people from the South, on Oklahoma, Okies like he is. He goes after everybody. That s his act. Everybody knew that was his act. They knew that was his act when they hired him. It was in his contract. If they decided to act on letting him go because of those things, he ought to get a warning, which he didn t get, which is why he got a settlement. And, again, what about the free marketplace? You don t like that kind of humor, you don t find it humorous, don t tune out [sic]. Other people have the opportunity to hear what he s got to say if they choose to listen. If advertisers choose to support it, and if ratings will substantiate his appearance, what s wrong with that? [...] DEGGANS: That s the mistake that you re making, is that you re boiling this down to one comment. This is not about one comment. This is about a 25- to 30-year history of cracking these kind of jokes. HANNITY: You keep repeating it, but -- DEGGANS: He admitted in an interview with 60 Minutes that he had a producer on his staff to make n-word jokes. I mean, this is a longstanding-- HANNITY: Yeah, but jokes. Jokes. You may not like the humor. DEGGANS: This is a long standing history. HANNITY: Wait a minute. I was watching Chris Rock over the weekend. Should Chris Rock, who says far worse on a regular basis -- have you ever come out and demanded that he be taken off the air? DEGGANS: First of all, Chris Rock is not a news and information person. HANNITY: He s a comedian. DEGGANS: Secondly, there s a difference between when somebody is inside a group and they make a joke about that group and when somebody is outside of a group. If you look at "The Daily Show" and you watch Jon Stewart... HANNITY: Oh, so if you re inside -- OK. DEGGANS: ... he makes jokes about being a Jewish man that somebody who s not Jewish could not make. There s a difference. HANNITY: Eric, the person that Don Imus made most fun of was Don Imus. The next person he made the most fun of -- and even kiddingly called his wife a ho -- was his wife, his own family, the people on his own show. So it wasn t applying a double standard here, but I find it interesting that you re willing to give Chris Rock a pass.

On the October 1 edition of Fox News Hannity s new book, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They d Be Republicans (Crown Forum): "[Y]ou re quoted as saying, Maybe I m winning the camel jockeys over, " to which Coulter responded: "Yes ... That s actually in the book. That s not a made-up quote." Colmes then asked: "So you have no problem referring to Arabs as camel jockeys?" Coulter responded: "Oh. Yeah. No. They killed 3,000 Americans. I ll be very careful with my language." In response, Colmes said: "[W]hen you refer to an entire ethnicity as camel jockeys, it sounds bigoted," to which Coulter again asserted: "Yes, and it s so mean after they killed 3,000 Americans, and I shouldn t be mean to them," adding, "We have sure moved away from the day when we called them Krauts and Nips." The description of Coulter s book by publisher Crown Forum states: "Now you can read all the quotes that have so outraged her enemies and so delighted her legions of fans. More than just the definitive collection of Coulterisms, If Democrats Had Any Brains, They d Be Republicans includes dozens of brand-new commentaries written by Coulter and hundreds of never-before-published quotations." Later in the segment, Coulter said that her "camel jockeys" comment "was a quote on [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad." Colmes responded: "You were talking about camel jockeys. That s plural." As Media Matters for America documented, Coulter did refer to Ahmadinejad as a "camel jockey" in her February 15, 2006, nationally syndicated column, but she also used the plural version of the phrase "camel jockey" in her book without referring to any individual. From her February 15, 2006, column: If you don t want to get shot by the police, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, then don t point a toy gun at them. Or, as I believe our motto should be after 9/11: Jihad monkey talks tough; jihad monkey takes the consequences. Sorry, I realize that s offensive. How about "camel jockey"? What? Now what d I say? Boy, you tent merchants sure are touchy. Grow up, would you? From If Democrats Had Any Brains, They d Be Republicans, in a passage recounting Coulter s attacks on former Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta and the criticism that ensued: One curious thing about the ensuing outrage is that Hollywood Liberals denounced me faster than the Arabs did. Maybe I m winning the camel jockeys over! After all, they get Christmas presents under my plan. " ANN COULTER S RECENT ATTACK ON NORMAN MINETA IS DESPICABLE, SAID PEOPLE FOR THE AMERICAN WAY FOUNDATION PRESIDENT RALPH G. NEAS. IT IS OUTRAGEOUS TO SAY THAT THIS LONG-TIME PUBLIC SERVANT HATES AMERICA. BUT IT IS UNFORTUNATELY NOT SURPRISING, GIVEN COULTER S HISTORY OF SIMILARLY RABID COMMENTARY, " - Statement, People For the American Way Foundation, March 1, 2002. [Page 10] As Media Matters for America has documented, Coulter has a history of making disparaging comments toward Arabs and Muslims: In a November 30, 2006, syndicated column about the removal of six imams from an airplane in Minnesota after other passengers saw them praying prior to boarding, Coulter claimed that "profiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan" than it is like profiling African-Americans, "because of the history of discrimination against blacks in this country." Coulter added: "What did we do to the Arabs? I believe Americans are the victims in that relationship." In her February 8, 2006, column, Coulter suggested that Islam is "a car-burning cult," and wrote that Muslims have "a predilection for violence." Coulter was commenting on the rash of violence linked to cartoons in European newspapers that satirized the Muslim Prophet Muhammad. After lauding the elections in Iraq as "one of the grandest events in the history of the world" in her February 3 column, Coulter cited reports of Iraqis celebrating in the streets on Election Day and added parenthetically: "Isn t it great to see Muslims celebrating something other than the slaughter of Americans?" On September 12, 2001, responding to the September 11 attacks, Coulter wrote of Muslims in the National Review: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." She was later fired from the conservative National Review Online as a result of those comments. In her book, How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter (Crown Forum, October 2004), Coulter wrote: "I am often asked if I still think we should invade [Muslim] countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. The answer is: Now more than ever!" As Media Matters also noted, Coulter s latest book was released on October 2. Following her appearance on the October 1 edition of Hannity Fox s Today. From the October 1 edition of Fox News Hannity re quoted as saying, "Maybe I m winning the camel jockeys over." COULTER: Yes. COLMES: So you have no problem referring to -- COULTER: That s actually in the book. That s not a made-up quote. COLMES: That s why I m talking to you about it. So you have no problem referring to Arabs as camel jockeys? COULTER: Oh. Yeah. No. they killed 3,000 Americans. I ll be very careful with my language. COLMES: Wait a minute. All Arabs? All Arabs killed 3,000 Americans? COULTER: The point is, they were a little slower to attack me for that than the Jews were. COLMES: All right, but when you refer to an entire ethnicity as camel jockeys, it sounds bigoted. COULTER: Yes, and it s so mean after they killed 3,000 Americans, and I shouldn t be mean to them. COLMES: But "they" were not all Arabs. COULTER: We have sure moved away from the day when we called them Krauts and Nips. COLMES: You re very proud of yourself, aren t you? COULTER: No, I m making a point. We re at war. And what liberals are concerned about is what language we re using -- COLMES: You know what? Wait a minute -- COULTER: -- to describe the enemy. COLMES: You make your living on language. Language is very important. And, in fact, if you re going to try to prosecute a war or if you re going to try to win a war, you don t win it by using nasty language towards your opponent or calling everybody who s an Arab or everyone who s a German COULTER: You don t win it by whining, when that is a quote about Ahmadinejad. That was a quote on Ahmadinejad. COLMES: You were talking about camel jockeys. That s plural. COULTER: And what they re worried about is language being used toward him. And you pretend you re just worried about the language, but as we know from last week, you weren t just worried about the language. Columbia University invites Ahmadinejad to speak there. He is an honored guest there. I m not. The Minutemen are not. COLMES: The Minutemen were invited there. COULTER: This isn t just a question of language. You use language to change the substance of what people are talking about. COLMES: No, I m quoting your language, as you pointed out. SEAN HANNITY (co-host): I want to talk about -- the band is back together. You ve got George Soros funding John Podesta s group, Think Progress, which is attacking the structural imbalance of talk radio. You ve got George Soros funding MoveOn.org, George Soros funding Harold Ickes in Americans Coming Together. We need Media Matters to open up their books. But all these groups are now designed to hurt people like you. They have this phony battle and total mischaracterization of Rush Limbaugh s comments to hurt him. And it seems like they re trying to pick off one conservative after another. COULTER: Right. HANNITY: It s all the Clinton machine, to prepare for her run and hurt anybody that might be an opponent of hers. COULTER: Right. I think the point of my book is -- I wouldn t be too worried if I were a conservative - oh wait, I am a conservative -- because, I mean, that is the cure you sang about, the first chapter of my book. You go through these 10 years of defamation campaigns against me, taking something I ve said or making up something entirely that I never did say, twisting it, changing it, becoming hysterical, leading the news with it. And in every one of the battles, you don t even know -- HANNITY: But isn t the goal -- COULTER: Wait, but not only am I still here, but everyone I went up against has a reputation that has not gone up since that fight.

On the July 25 edition of Fox News Hannity s "advisory council" is made up of several Christian ministers, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim imams, according to a comment posted by Daniel Meeter, a member of the advisory council, on The New York Sun s website in response to an April 24 Sun article attacking the school. Co-host Alan Colmes also noted that the person after whom the school is named, author and artist Khalil Gibran, was a Maronite Christian, an eastern rite Lebanese sect in communion with the Roman Catholic Church. According to the New York City schools website: "The Khalil Gibran International Academy s mission is to prepare students of diverse backgrounds for success in an increasingly global and interdependent society. Our focus is on holistic student development and rigorous academics." Further, as Colmes noted during the debate, "New York City school chancellor Joel Klein has said that if [it] becomes a religious school or anything other than a public school, he will shut it down. They are supposed to teach standard college preparatory curriculum." Klein s quote was aired by New York City cable channel NY1 News. The New York Times also reported (subscription required) on May 18, "the Khalil Gibran International Academy [is] a new dual-language school that will teach Arabic language and culture." From the July 25 edition of Fox News Hannity s right. It s a story that will shock every American. We ll break it wide open right here on Hannity ll debate. We ll let you decide straight ahead. [...] COLMES: Coming soon to a classroom near you, Al Qaeda. Well, that s not my view, but that s what critics of New York s first Arabic public school would have you think. The Department of Education originally scheduled the Khalil Gibran School to open its doors September of this year, sharing space with a public school in Brooklyn. But they ve been forced to rethink the proposition after receiving protests from parents in the neighborhood. Parents are concerned that the school will be a breeding ground for future terrorists. However, proponents of the school believe it s the best way to combat ignorance about Arabic culture. Here to discuss all this, executive director of the Foundation for Arab-American Leadership, Hussein Ibish, and from Stop the Madrassa Coalition, Sara Springer. We welcome you both. Sara, welcome to Hannity s not about the Muslim faith; it s about Arabic culture. SPRINGER: Right. The issue is we really don t know what the school is about because the Department of Education has refused to be clear about what the curriculum is, what the textbooks are, who the publishers of the textbooks are. The lesson plans -- COLMES: Right. SPRINGER: -- the -- whether these teachers are certified. Who will be teaching it. The point of view -- COLMES: Well, actually, in defense of the side other than you in this, New York City school chancellor Joel Klein has said that if it becomes a religious school or anything other than a public school he will shut it down. They are supposed to teach standard college preparatory curriculum. The principal, Debbie Almontaser, says she plans to teach the history of the Arab people. It will encompass international perspectives, and to develop global citizens. They have said all those things in preparation for this coming to the neighborhood. SPIRINGER: Right. That s absolutely true. [...] COLMES: Sara, let me get the other guest in. By the way, interesting, Hussein: Khalil Gibran was a Maronite Christian. IBISH: Right. COLMES: He wasn t even of the Islamic faith. IBISH: No, actually he was quite a devout Christian, and the majority of Arab Americans actually are Christians, no doubt. Many of the professors, if you re drawing on the pool of Arabic speakers in New York, will be Christians as well as Muslims. The board of the school is Christians, Muslims, and Jews. HANNITY: All right, we don t have a lot of time, Hussein --