Media Research Center blogger Jay Maxson already has a severe case of Colin Kaepernick Derangement Syndrome — and it’s getting worse.
Maxson went on a tirade in a Sept. 24 NewsBusters post against a post at Slate defending football players’ kneeling protests, written by John Legend:
NFL protests have given the liberal media a newfound “appreciation” of patriotism and the Constitution. Media covering this movement suffer from selective amnesia about U.S. history, however. Slate’s John Legend is a protest apologist and historical revisionist as well who strains credibility.
In his blog today, Legend argues “The NFL Protests are Patriotic.” He writes, “The president of the United States loves to drape himself in the symbols of patriotism, but fails to respect the ideals at the core of our Constitution and national identity. Trump may love the flag, but he doesn’t love anything it’s supposed to stand for.”
Legend then proceeds to launch into historical revisionism, if not downright fantasy.
[…]The Slate progressive asks if there would have been a Civil Rights Act without the Birmingham protests when Bull Connor unleashed dogs and firehoses on Black children. Legend skips over the fact that Connor was a Democrat. Would the Act have passed without Republican support? No. Democrats Al Gore Sr. and Robert Byrd were among the 21 Democrats who voted against civil rights, but Legend gives credit for it anyway to President Kennedy and President Johnson.
Maxson seems to be unaware that Legend is not a staff writer at Slate. As the bio link to his name states: “John Legend is a 10-time Grammy Awards winner, an Academy and Tony awards winner, philanthropist, and founder of the FREEAMERICA campaign.”
Also, in trying to hang Bull Connor and opposition to civil rights in the 1960s on the entire Democratic Party, Maxson conveniently fails to mention that this opposition was the last gasp of anti-integration southern Democrats in the party, and that Democrats who opposed the party’s endorsement of civil rights eventually became Republican.
In other words, the Democratic Party of the 1960s is not the party of today. So who’s engaging in historical revisionism again?
If Maxson can’t figure out something as basic as who John Legend is, we can probably assume that the rest of his hateful ranting is just as ignorant.