MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell suggested talk show host Rush Limbaugh Monday night was “racist” for suggesting that Mitt Romney highlight President Obama’s past admitted use of cocaine and marijuana – questions Democrats hounded George W. Bush about during the 2000 campaign.
Limbaugh suggested during his show Monday that Romney hit back hard at the president’s drug abuse to change the narrative, saying:
“You say: ‘Look, pal, when I was out creating jobs, investing in businesses, and growing this economy, you were at Columbia smoking weed and snorting coke. You write about it in your book. You talk about how you got into Columbia and the Harvard Law Review, and you didn’t have to do anything. That’s what was great about it to you! You loved getting into Columbia ’cause all you had to do was go to class, get your grades, and smoke a little weed! Well, I was out building the country when you were doing that.’”
The president recalls in his 1995 autobiography Dreams From My Father how “pot, booze and a little blow” had helped him in his youth and that he was on the road to being a “junkie” and a “pothead.”
“All of those racist stereotypes that Rush was using are things that Mitt Romney can’t say,” O’Donnell said.
Yet many of the so-called “racist stereotypes” feature prominently in the president’s book, such as on page 93 where he suggests his drug abuse had him on the verge of lurching toward “the final, fatal role of the young would-be black man.”
Liberal Democrats had no such qualms about making drug abuse an election issue during the 2000 presidential campaign. Liberals rallied behind rumors featured in a book titled The Fortunate Son that then-Gov. George W. Bush had snorted cocaine when he was 26 and that he had gotten off because of his father George H.W. Bush’s political connections.
Both Bushes flatly denied that the claims were true, and the book’s author J.H. Hatfield was ultimately discredited after his criminal record came to light, causing its publisher to pull the book.
Liberals still seized on the cocaine story as late as 2007 despite the fact the book where the initial allegation had surfaced had been discredited, which stands in contrast with Obama’s admitted cocaine usage.
Huffington Post columnist John Seery wrote in a January 4, 2007 column titled The Bush Cocaine Chronicles: Complicity and Cover Up by contrast that the press needed to stop treating Bush’s reported cocaine use with “kid gloves.”
Lawrence O’Donnell: Limbaugh Racist for Saying Obama Smoked Weed and Snorted Coke | NewsBusters.orgIt’s really becoming difficult keeping track with all the things the liberal media claim are code for racism these days. On MSNBC’s The Last Word Monday, host Lawrence O’Donnell accused conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh of being racist saying Barack Obama smoked weed and snorted coke (video follows with transcript and commentary): LAWRENCE O’DONNELL, HOST: In the spotlight tonight, Republican campaign strategist Rush Limbaugh.
via Newsbusters
