Vice Media has been in self-destruct mode the past few weeks, suspending its own owner and digital officer over claims of sexual harassment. Breitbart characterizes the site as left wing, probably in an effort at both siderism, but the rant on the radio today by commentator Gavin McInnes was anything but a liberal posture, attacking both Senator Cory Booker and Barack Obama. Right Wing Watch via RawStory:
“I just realized something. Cory Booker is kind of like Sambo. He’s kind of shucking and jiving for the white man. Cory Booker grew up rich in an all-white suburb. He’s basically a white guy. His parents were very wealthy executives at IBM,” McInnes stated. “But he wants to be a black dude, so he pretends that he’s down with the brothers and he acts outraged about racism all the time—for white people. That gets him votes from whites.”
McInnes included ex-President Barack Obama in his attack.
“Yes, he gets the black vote. Anyone black gets the black vote,” he asserted. “Obama was the least black man I’ve ever seen in my life and he got all the black vote. But what these guys are really trying to get is white votes because that’s the majority of people in this country. If you’re in Japan, you want Japanese votes,”
“And so he plays up the race card again and again, and what a disappointment to his parents. They didn’t play the race card, they just busted their asses and made tons and tons of money. What does he do? He just gets up there and performs for the white man pretending to be from the hood,” he said of the former Newark mayor who ascended to the U.S. Senate in 2013.
Media Bias Fact Check characterizes Vice Media as left of center, which is two notches to the right of Daily Kos, to provide a reference point. Two lightyears is more like it. The New York Times characterized Vice Media as a “bastion of male entitlement” and an employee said this:
“The misogyny might look different than you would have expected it to in the 1950s, but it was still there, it was still ingrained,” said Kayla Ruble, a journalist who worked at Vice from 2014 to 2016. “This is a wakeup call.”
Vice has formed a Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Board, which includes the feminist icon Gloria Steinem and is led by the lawyer Roberta Kaplan; hired a new head of human resources; and terminated three employees for what it called behavior inconsistent with its values. It also forbade romantic relationships between supervisors and their employees — which several current and former employees said were not uncommon and led to many problems.
The next step is clearly a Racism and Stereotype Advisory Board, based upon this right wing rant. Vice made a name for itself reporting on streetwear, drugs and sex and emerged as a global company backed by corporate giants like Disney and Fox, the Times elaborated, but there is nothing leftist or cutting edge about this content. This is Jim Crow.