The Rev. Al Sharpton is currently conducting a series of meetings with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in an effort to put an end to what he says are Rush Limbaugh’s racist rants that have become routine on his radio show.
Sharpton recently appeared on MSNBC, where he and host Ed Schultz discussed their disapproval of Limbaugh, as well as Sharpton’s efforts with the FCC.
“We have a series of meetings going on, and we’re going to see the FCC next week,” Sharpton said.
“We’re not going to stand by and allow publicly regulated radio and television to just go for marketing and promoting this kind of racism.”
Sharpton is particularly offended that Limbaugh continues to label all new Democratic policies as reparations for slavery.
“The objective is unemployment, the objective is more food stamp benefits, the objective is more unemployment benefits, the objective is an expanding welfare state,” Limbaugh said on his show earlier this year. “The objective is to take the nation’s wealth and return it to the nation’s ‘rightful owners.’ Think reparations. Think forced reparations. Obama’s entire economic program is reparations,” he said.
Schultz criticized Limbaugh, calling his language “racially-charged hate speech” and acknowledged that other conservative Republican congressmen are following Limbaugh’s arguments.
Rep. Steve King recently argued that the claims of the Black farmers and the American Indians, who were discriminated against by the United States Department of Agriculture, are all fraudulent.
“We’ve got to stand up at some point and say, ‘We are not going to pay slavery reparations in the United States Congress,’” King said. “That war’s been fought. That was over a century ago. That debt was paid for in blood and it was paid for in the blood of a lot of Yankees, especially. And there’s no reparations for the blood that paid for the sin of slavery. No one’s filing that claim.”
“Rush Limbaugh has the right to say whatever he wants to say. He can’t do it, though, on publicly regulated air waves. The FCC has a responsibility to set standards, to say the public can not be offended based on their race or their gender in this country…”, said Sharpton.
Numerous conservative bloggers have spoken out against Sharpton after he stated that he is encouraging the FCC to take action against stations carrying Limbaugh’s show.
