Another story arc has begun in the daytime soap that is Trump World. Former Fox News co-president Bill Shine was recently hired as both Communications Director, replacing Hope HIcks, and Deputy Chief of Staff, purportedly to replace John Kelly when the inevitable happens. Shine’s wife, Darla, is quite a piece of work. She authored a book Happy Housewives a paean to traditionalist marriage, and when she’s not busy advocating that paradigm, she spews right wing venom on social media.
“What kind of Pimp Producers are at #CNN passing around the same guest #SamNunberg like a drunk wh... 5 times #JeffZucker should be fired,” she wrote amid Sam Nunberg’s infamous cable news meltdown in March.
If you think this is something, wait until you read her racist tweets. She deleted her twitter account @darlashine, when her husband was hired by Trump, but not before Mediaite got the screen shots. Here’s the text:
“1 out of 10 black boys has autism!” Shine tweeted in February 2016, in a post that managed to combine vaccination conspiracies with race-baiting.
“Where are the black celebrities, sports stars, musicians, why [aren’t] they speaking out tonight against blacks targeting & murdering cops?” Shine wrote in one post after the Dallas, Texas, police shooting in 2016.
She has also weighed in on the cultural appropriation debate: “If white chicks can’t perm their hair – black chicks can’t go blonde.”
“Imagine the protests if 3 white teens murdered a black woman #AmandaBlackburn Only Black Lives Matter I guess,” Darla Shine tweeted regarding the fatal 2015 shooting of Amanda Blackburn in Indianapolis, Indiana.
If you think this is insane, read her thread on use of the ‘n’ word.
“Take the N word out of the music – don’t want to feel guilty for singing songs with the N word in it.”
“Al Sharpton demanding kid Rock denounce Rebel Flag yet Sharpton not demanding Rappers remove N word from music.”
“The recurring verse in Trinidad James rap song is the n word over and over. I can buy, but I can’t sing out or then I’m am a racist?”
“Take the N word, and the C word, and the B word out of lyrics.”
“Don’t use the N word in your songs if you don’t want your teenage listeners to repeat it out loud. Clean up the music! Set an example.”
“@seanhannity @Theblacksphere I never have said the N word out loud and my white children have never either. Blacks stop using the N word!”
“Funny how critics calling to ban Gone With the Wind, Jefferson Memorial, but no talk of banning the N word or Rap songs with N word in it.”
“Remove every rap song that has the N word in it. Take them off the air. If we ban Gone with the Wind, racist rap music goes too.”
Darla Shine finds it necessary to defend the indefensible.
One such example involves the infamous University of Oklahoma fraternity incident, in which racist members of the school’s Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter chanted, “There’ll never be a n----- in SAE, there’ll never be a n----- in SAE, you can hang ’em from a tree but he’ll never sign with me, there’ll never be a n----- in SAE”
Presumably Bill Shine has a muzzle on his wife. If not, we’re in for a spin on Martha Mitchell, crazy wife of then-Attorney General John Mitchell during the Watergate Era. The Nixon administration tried to debunk Martha by claiming she was a drunk. John Mitchell hired a former FBI agent to prevent Martha from talking to the press about Watergate. The agent pulled Martha Mitchell’s phone out of the wall when she put through a call to reporters. She was held against her will in a hotel room and sedated by a psychiatrist after a physical altercation with her captors left her with injuries requiring stitches.
Martha Mitchell was a real character, appearing on talk shows and being dubbed “Martha the Mouth,” but Darla Shine is different. Darla Shine is the voice of evil. It will be interesting to see what her role is, if any, in this already pyrotechnically dysfunctional administration. We’re about to see what happens with Fox News alums right there in the White House.