Bob Johnson drawing by scurv

Bob Johnson, founder and former CEO of BET, echoed former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro’s sentiments that Sen. Barack Obama would not be the leading Democratic candidate if he were white.

Johnson told the Charlotte Observer:

“What I believe Geraldine Ferraro meant is that if you take a freshman senator from Illinois called ‘Jerry Smith’ and he says I’m going to ru for president, would he start off with 90 percent of the black vote? The answer is, probably not…

Geraldine Ferraro said it right. The problem is, Geraldine Ferraro is white. This campaign has such a hair-trigger on anything racial…it is almost impossible for anybody to say anything.”

Johnson, a Clinton supporter, in January, slammed Obama and mentioned “what he was doing in the neighborhood” which appeared to take aim at the Illinois senator for his admitted drug use. Johnson later apologized and stated he’d been referring to Obama’s time spent as a community organizer.

On Monday, Johnson alluded to the incident:

“I made a joke about Obama doing drugs (and it’s) ‘Oh my God, a black man tearing down another black man’. He added, “I don’t think he has that common — what I call ‘I-want-to-go-out-and-have-a-drink-with-you — touch’.”

Obama’s camp dismissed Johnson’s comments:

“This is just one in a long line of absurd comments by Bob Johnson and other Clinton supporters who will say or do anything to get the nomination,” said spokesman Dan Leistikow. “The American people are tired of this and are ready to turn the page on these kind of attack politics.”

TAVIS SMILEY UPDATE

( Photo: Wireimage )

Radio and television personality Tavis Smiley speaks to guests during the Dr. Cornel West “Never Forget: A Journey of Revelations” event last year.

Earlier this week we mentioned Tavis Smiley would be leaving the Tom Joyner Morning Show. Smiley addressed a few issues in his commentary on Tuesday morning.

(listen to the audio version.)

“There is no way to put into words the love and respect that I have for Tom Joyner or the love affair that I’ve had with Tom Joyner Morning Show listeners for almost 12 years now.

Tom’s announcement last Friday about my decision to leave this morning show at the end of June came, I suspect, as a surprise to you and, honestly, as a shock to me.

I had no idea that my dear friend, Tom Joyner, was going to share with you Friday morning what we had just discussed barely 12 hours earlier Thursday evening. But I have accepted Tom’s apology and that is for me, now, old business.

Words cannot convey my abiding appreciation, my deep gratitude for the man who allowed me to express myself: before BET, before NPR, before PBS, before PRI (Public Radio International), before my New York Times best selling books, before my own imprint SmileyBooks, before my High Quality Speakers Bureau, before … well, I think you get my point.

Sometimes I joke that my life is really divided into two periods, ‘BT’ and ‘AT’, ‘Before Tom’ and ‘After Tom’.

Smiley mentioned numerous projects on Tuesday as his need to “clean some stuff off [his] plate”: three documentaries; America I Am: The African American Imprint on America, “the biggest, baddest, boldest, Black exhibit ever created”; and SmileyBooks, in addition to other endeavors.

The complete transcript is available online.

Source: ConcreteLoop.com