Fox's Gibson says....I don't know, something about racists

By Lee Russ

Saturday, September 09, 2006 at 05:52 PM

I certainly don't look to Fox news, or its on-air "personalities," for truth or objectivity.  But incoherence shouldn't be the norm even for Fox.  Should it?

Here's the one and only John Gibson, defending the most recent Schwarzenegger nonsense on racial characteristics, from the Fox web site:

Not Every Observation on Race Is Racist

Friday, September 08, 2006
By John Gibson

As Sigmund Freud supposedly said: Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

Same with things that are said about race. Sometimes something said about race isn't racist, but sometimes we're all just too PC to face up to that fact.

For instance, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was caught on tape saying something about a fellow California politician -- a woman, a woman he likes -- which a lot of people are gasping was racist.

Schwarzenegger said: "Cuban, Puerto-Rican, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

He was talking about Bonnie Garcia, a Latina legislator. Garcia says she is not bothered by the governor's remarks. She refers to herself as a hot-blooded Latina -- very passionate about her causes and issues.

But The L.A. Times got hold of the tape and printed the remarks and the implication is that the governor is racist because he said what he said.

He isn't.

Not every observation made about race is racist. And when a person makes an observation about race it isn't always, per se, racist.

So can we just lighten up?

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.

So, just in case I missed it, exactly where does he say why Schwarzenegger's comments aren't racist?  Is it now kosher, even at Fox, to write a critical piece without including the criticism?

Just for the hell of it, I'll assume that Gibson is trying to say that Schwarzenegger's comments don't necessarily mean that Schwarzenegger thinks Latinos are inferior.  That's a fair assessment, actually.

But folks, you don't have to think a given race is inferior to be guilty of racism; you only have to think that race "accounts for differences in human character or ability."  And frankly, I think it's fair to say that someone who expresses racism is a racist.

So, one, Gibson's piece is ridiculous.  Two, Schwarzenegger clearly thinks that race accounts for differences in human character.  Three, I think that's racism and racist in character, regardless of any technical definitions of those terms. Four, no I don't think Schwarzenegger was saying that Latins are ultimately inferior in some horrible sense.  Five, isn't it bad enough that Schwarzenegger clearly swims in that cognitive mix of simplistic thought and sterotypes?