Mike Pence Gives Blackface Comedian-Hosting Radio Show an Interview
”The idea that the vice president would dignify that kind of program with his office should be alarming,“ Media Matters president Angelo Carusone tells TheWrap
Vice President Mike Pence is under fire for granting an interview to conservative Texas radio host Michael Berry, known for featuring a blackface comedian on his show.
Berry, who hosts a nationally syndicated talk show on iHeartRadio, regularly booked a blackface performer using the stage name Shirley Q. Liquor, whose been called “America’s most appalling comedian” by Rolling Stone. Earlier this year, Berry was forced to apologize for mocking Chicago homicide victims on air.
“Here’s a guy who plays bingo with his audience about the murders in Chicago,” Angelo Carusone, president of progressive watchdog Media Matters, told TheWrap. “The idea that the vice president would dignify that kind of program with his office should be alarming.”
On Monday, Pence spoke to Berry and his colleague, KTRH radio host Shara Fryer, about the federal response to Hurricane Harvey, which dumped thousands of gallons of water across southern Texas and parts of Louisiana.
The news triggered a swift condemnation by Media Matters, which claimed Berry “has a long history of making sexist, homophobic, anti-Muslim, and anti-African-American comments on his radio show.”
In response to the backlash, Press Secretary to the Vice President Marc Lotter told TheWrap in a statement:”The Vice President conducted an interview on a highly-rated radio news station during an emergency situation to reach out to those who have been negatively impacted by Hurricane Harvey. The interview was scheduled with Shara Fryer.”
A White House official familiar with the situation told TheWrap Pence’s team only found out that Berry would be conducting the interview as the segment began.
Berry has been criticized for mocking Chicago homicide victims in his regular segment: “Chicago Weekend Crime Report,” which included a bingo game in which listeners were asked to guess where in the body victims were shot.
“He reads out reports from shootings in Chicago,” Carusone explained. “The bingo card has a series of injuries on it: ‘shot in the arm,’ ‘shot in the leg,’ and you mark your bingo card. It’s just like bingo but you’re playing it with the lives and limbs of predominantly black people in Chicago.”
Berry was later forced to apologize. But a week after ending the regular segment, he told his listeners that he hadn’t “had any racial conversations since I got in trouble, so maybe we’ll delve back into that,” adding “we all” miss the segment.
“At least they’re not indiscriminately firing at black people,” Berry added. “At least they’re saying, ‘Are those the black people, because we want to make sure we get the right ones?’ even if they didn’t.”
Berry has also been scrutinized for regularly booking Chuck Knipp, a white comedian best known for his character ‘Shirley Q. Liquor’, also known as the “Mammy Welfare Queen.”
“It’s the same blackface stuff you would have seen 100 years ago that has disappeared from our society for a long time and he resurrected it,” Carusone said. “Berry even put up a billboard promoting his radio program with Shirley B. Liquor on it. That’s how much that character was a part of the show.”
Pence’s interview comes just two weeks after President Trump defended far-right protesters at the Charlottesville rally, saying they were not all neo-Nazis and placing blame on “many sides.”
White Nationalists Seek to 'Top' Charlottesville and 7 More Shockers From Vice News Doc (Photos)
Monday night's episode of "Vice News Tonight" on HBO took a deep dive into the violent white supremacist rallies that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. The short documentary has gone viral, featuring interviews with white supremacist leaders as well as with victims and activists in Charlottesville. Scroll through for the eight biggest shockers from the doc.
Vice News/HBO
1. White supremacists are proud of their violence.
"Of course we're capable [of violence]," said Christopher Cantwell, a white supremacist speaker for "Unite the Right." "I'm carrying a pistol, I go to the gym all the time. I'm trying to make myself more capable of violence."
2. White supremacists want a leader who is more racist than Donald Trump.
"I'm here to spread ideas, talk, in the hopes that someone more capable will do that," said Cantwell. "Someone like Donald Trump, who does not give his daughter to a Jew... A lot more racist than Donald Trump. I don't think you can feel about race the way I do and watch that Kushner bastard walk around with that beautiful girl, OK?"
Vice News/HBO
3. The alt-right wants to mimic "camaraderie" of the left.
"We don't have the camaraderie, we don't have the trust level that our rivals do," said Cantwell. "And that camaraderie and trust is built up through activism, and that is one of the tactics that we are adopting."
Vice News/HBO
4. The alt-right is ready to come out of the online woodwork.
"We are stepping off the internet in a big way," said Robert Ray, a writer for the white supremacist site Daily Stormer. "For instance, last night at the torch walk, there were hundreds and hundreds of us. People realize they are not itemized individuals, they are part of a larger whole because we have been spreading our memes, we have been organizing on the internet... as you can see today we greatly outnumbered the anti-white, anti-American filth... We're starting to slowly unveil a little bit of our power level. You ain't seen nothing yet."
5. White supremacists think their freedom of speech is under threat.
"We had a federal court order to have this rally... They don't want our speech because we're telling the truth," said David Duke, the former Grand Wizard of the KKK. "We're talking about the ethnic cleansing of America and the destruction of the American way of life and a new Bolshevik-style society, with no freedom, no freedom of speech in this country. That's really where we're going in America and that's gotta change."
Vice News/HBO
6. Charlottesville residents feel unprotected in their own city.
"We told city council we did not want them here," said Timothy Porter, a Charlottesville resident. "They let them come. We told the police we did not want them here. They let them come. I had to jump out of the way, I almost got hit by the car my f---ing self... This is my town. We did not want those motherf---ers here, and now we got bodies on the ground."
Vice News/HBO
7. Violence harkens back to civil rights era of 1960s.
"I have a great-grandfather who literally has told me the same stories of what I have experienced today," said Montae Taylor, a student activist at the University of Virginia. "And the fact that I can look at what's going on and see what my grandfather was talking about--it's not scary, but it's appalling."
"This has always been the reality in Charlottesville," said local activist Tanesha Hudson.
Vice News/HBO
8. The alt-right want to "top" what happened in Charlottesville.
"I think [the car plowing into the crowd] was more than justified," said Cantwell. "The amount of restraint that our people showed out there I think was astounding... I'd say [the next protest] is going to be really tough to top but we're up to the challenge... I think that a lot more people are going to die before we're done here, frankly." Watch the Vice News doc here.
Alt-right members say they’re just getting started
Monday night's episode of "Vice News Tonight" on HBO took a deep dive into the violent white supremacist rallies that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, over the weekend. The short documentary has gone viral, featuring interviews with white supremacist leaders as well as with victims and activists in Charlottesville. Scroll through for the eight biggest shockers from the doc.