Another glaring media double-standard

In the days leading up to the Restoring Honor rally on Aug. 28, I remember the liberal blogosphere and then their friends in the mainstream media parroting a story about one man's message to rally-goers, urging them to avoid areas in Washington, D.C. with historically elevated crime rates. The media was quick to point out that these areas of the city are also predominantly African-American and -- as this man clearly spoke for every single one of the thousands descending on D.C. -- the crowd was just a bunch of awful racists.

I would think that a truly balanced media would also be on the look-out for other seemingly divisive rhetoric in the days leading up to the "One Nation Working Together" rally on Saturday -- and maybe this time they can come up with something actually racist?

How about Rev. Curtis Gatewood, a prominent NAACP employee in North Carolina and an official "field director" for the upcoming One Nation march? Fortunately for the lamestream media, Yes, But, However blogger David Stein has essentially done all their homework for them and compiled an extensive list of the vile, hateful, anti-semitic, and, yes, racist things Gatewood has said in the past. Here are just a few:

"TO AMERICA - HAPPY 4TH OF YOU-LIE! ‘THE HOME OF THE BRAVE (or did you mean to say ...OF THE 'SLAVE?')'; ‘THE LAND OF THE FREE (or did you mean to say .. OF THE 'TREE' where my ancestors were hung for recreation?)'; ‘SWEET LAND OF LIBERY' (sic) or did you mean to say ‘CHEATED LAND FROM BIGOTRY'? THERE WILL BE NO ‘INDEPENPENCE (sic) DAY' until the ‘TRUTH .. MAKE YOU FREE'! MEANWHILE HAPPY YOU-LIE."

“Any solider who truly wants to ‘defend his/her country’ should REFUSE to fight in Afghanistan, Iraq or in any other foreign country until something is done to eliminate and further prevent the threat of White domestic terrorists here in America. They are the ones who are threatening and better positioned to kill the President, Congressmen, and other U.S. citizens.”

"[U]nfortunately, the Tea Partiers are not reasonable people. Their philosophy comes straight from the garbage can of hate-radio, hateful “FOX noise”, Glenn Beck, Limbaugh, and other hateful racial demogaguery designed to spark a revolution that would overthrow the first Black President. They are driven by the same philosophy as KKK – ignorance and racial hatred.”

On June 28, 2010, Gatewood appeared on the Richard Brown Show, a North Carolina radio program. During his appearance, he went off on a baffling riff about how immigrants specifically come to this country because they want to “target” black people by selling them drugs (view the entire hour-long interview here).

And for the tea partiers who have been wrongfully accused of racism by Gatewood and the NAACP, Stein offers this:

The NAACP could not produce any video or audio evidence to back up the claim that the “n word” was hurled at black Congressmen during protests over the healthcare bill. But here, at a rally co-organized by an NAACP leader [Gatewood], we have both video and audio evidence of [President Obama] being called that very word.

A single random blogger's comments were extrapolated to condemn an entire march and Glenn Beck himself.  But will the media even bat an eye at Gatewood's comments and his ties to the NAACP and the "One Nation" march?

In all honesty I don't think they will, nor do I really think they should.  I think it was wrong to take one man's comments and use them to broadly judge an entire group of people as they did for 8/28, just as it would be wrong to assume that every person who shows up for Saturday's "One Nation" march agrees with Gatewood's comments.

But if the media insists on holding one group to such strict standards, they should at least apply them fairly and hold both sides accountable.