Fun_People Archive
20 Mar
Disney's Racist Host

Date: Wed, 20 Mar 96 03:56:16 -0800
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Disney's Racist Host

From: Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting <fair@igc.apc.org>

 From the upcoming April issue of EXTRA! Update, FAIR's newsletter:
(A March 19 press release on this subject also follows.)

DISNEY'S HOST PROMOTES "OUTSTANDING" RACISTS

After FAIR criticized WABC talkshow host Bob Grant for his racial
slurs and his promotion of white supremacist groups (EXTRA!, 1-
2/95; EXTRA! Update, 6/95), he toned down his rhetoric somewhat--
substituting codewords for overt racism. But we kept listening,
because we knew it was just a matter of time before the old Bob
Grant came out.

We didn't have to wait long. On Jan. 26, 1996, Grant took to the
airwaves to promote a conference sponsored by a group called
American Renaissance. Here's what Grant--the most widely heard
talkshow host in the New York City area--had to say:

     There is a group called the American Renaissance. The
     American Renaissance Conference is being held on May 25
     through the 27th, and they say: "Race is still the
     American dilemma. The 'civil rights,' integrationist
     approach has brought none of its promised rewards. Is it
     time to rethink the assumptions of the past 40 years?
     Join us in Louisville, Ky. over Memorial Day weekend for
     a frank, uncensored exchange. Speakers will include: Dr.
     Samuel Francis, contributing editor of Chronicles;
     Professor Philippe Rushton, author of Race, Evolution and
     Behavior; Jared Taylor, author of Paved with Good
     Intentions; Professor Michael Levin, author of Why Race
     Matters; Lawrence Auster, author of The Path to National
     Suicide; and Rabbi Mayer Schiller, author of The Guilty
     Conscience of a Conservative." These are outstanding
     speakers and if I can, I'm going to take my microphone
     down there and tune in.

Who are these "outstanding speakers" that Grant is so eager to
hear?

* Samuel Francis is a former Washington Times columnist (and an
informal advisor to Pat Buchanan), who was fired from his job at
the right-wing Times when his white supremacist views became
publicized. Francis calls for whites to begin a "reconquest of the
United States," which would involve "imposing adequate fertility
controls on non-whites." He does not believe that non-whites
deserve "the right to political equality, the right to vote, or the
right to hold political office, let alone...the 'right' to attend
the same schools, to serve on juries, to marry across racial
lines." (American Renaissance newsletter, 3/95)

* Philippe Rushton, a professor at the University of Western
Ontario, conducts crank studies comparing cranial capacity with
genital size. "It's a trade-off," Rushton explains, "more brain or
more penis. You can't have everything."  He claims that blacks and
whites are separate sub-species with "different reproductive
strategies": While whites typically "emphasize nurture rather than
numbers of offspring," blacks generally "produce more children
but...nurture each one less." (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94)

* Michael Levin, a professor of psychology at the City University
of New York, is a well-known advocate of eugenics who believes
integration can never work: "The reason is two basically
unalterable black characteristics: less intelligence and greater
proneness to violence." (Rolling Stone, 10/20/94)

* Lawrence Auster, author of The Path to National Suicide, argued
at the 1994 American Renaissance conference that the "large and
enduring differences in average intelligence between blacks and
whites" ensure that "blacks on their own can never be expected to
maintain a modern, democratic, civilized society," or "achieve
collective economic equality and other kinds of parity with
whites." (D'Souza, End of Racism)

* Jared Taylor, aka Samuel Taylor, is the organizer who has brought
these leading lights of the racist right together. Publisher of the
newsletter American Renaissance, Taylor described himself as
"racialist" and "white separatist" in an April 1995 interview with
FAIR. "More and more whites are rediscovering what their ancestors
took for granted: a natural preference for and loyalty to their own
race," Taylor wrote in his newsletter (9-10/93). At the 1994
conference, which he also organized, Taylor urged whites to prepare
for civil war: "When it happens...the divisions will be along
racial lines," he said (D'Souza, The End of Racism).

Grant has to be aware of who these people are, none of whom is
"outstanding" for anything other than their racism. In 1993, a
caller to Grant's show (4/26/93) praised American Renaissance, and
quoted this passage from the newsletter: "When neighborhoods lose
their white majorities, schools decay, crime increases, taxes rise,
welfare proliferates, and what was once an outpost of civilization
subsides into barbarism."

Grant's response was to allow the caller to give out subscription
information; Grant then noted that Taylor's publisher told him that
"thanks to the Bob Grant program, the Jared Taylor book has become
a success, albeit a modest success, in view of what it should have
been. But nevertheless, they said that thanks to me, they are now
able to say that they are successful."

It's no mystery why Grant would boast that he's helping white
supremacists succeed. It's somewhat more puzzling why the Walt
Disney Co., which owns ABC, would want its flagship radio station
to promote such views.

If you want to let Disney chair Michael Eisner know what you think
of Bob Grant's promotion of white supremacy, you can write to him
at Walt Disney Studios, 500 S. Buena Vista St., Burbank, CA 91521,
or call 818-560-1000 or fax 818-560-1930. Please send copies of
your correspondence to Sam Husseini at FAIR, fair@fair.org
                               ***

A FAIR Press Release                        March 19, 1996

DERSHOWITZ WAS FIRED FOR TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT BOB GRANT:
   WABC's TOP HOST CONTINUES TO PROMOTE WHITE SUPREMACY

      Does Disney Approve of WABC's Censorship?

WABC-AM pulled the plug on lawyer/talkshow host Alan Dershowitz
after he called WABC's top host, Bob Grant, a racist and a bigot.
"What he is saying about Bob is wrong, so I'm not going to tolerate
that," WABC program director Phil Boyce told the press.

But Dershowitz's charges against Grant are well-documented.  As
recently as Friday, March 15 -- three days before WABC canceled
Dershowitz's show -- Grant was on the air praising a newsletter
that preaches segregation, lynching and the genetic superiority of
whites.  "WABC can hardly claim that it's allowing Grant to promote
racial bigotry in the name of free speech -- when, at the same
time, it's censoring anyone who criticizes Grant's racism," FAIR
executive director Jeff Cohen pointed out.

The publication that Grant touted to his hundreds of thousands of
listeners was American Renaissance, a newsletter published by self-
described "racialist" Samuel Jared Taylor.  "American Renaissance
is dedicated to preserving the English language and preserving the
Western culture," Grant declared.  "I really don't see how this
rates as a Klan-like organization."

But "Klan-like" is exactly what American Renaissance is, as is
obvious from a glance at any issue.  In fact, the October 1995
issue featured an article that called lynching "a system of justice
that was not, in all respects, inferior to the one we have
today....  In lynching there was immediacy, finality, and in many
cases direct participation: The victim or his bereaved could take
personal vengeance."

The publication also promotes apartheid as a policy for the United
States: "Whites must choose between separation and oblivion," an
article in the October 1994 issue declared.

The racism of American Renaissance is frank and undisguised.  The
cover story in the February 1996 issue declared: "Today, the work
of millennia is being undone as the less intelligent races not only
outbreed the more intelligent but push their way into the homelands
of the northern races."  The cover story of the March 1996 issue
claims: "In the white nations, low birthrates, non-white
immigration, and miscegenation are weakening the gene pool."

That Bob Grant understands the real message of American Renaissance
is clear from his comments.  After insisting that the publication
did not claim Western culture had "no room for the input of
others," Grant continued:

     But even if it did, even if it did, there is a valid premise
     for a discussion, the discussion being what we are, what kind
     of nation we are, and where do we go from here.  What is a
     nation?  A nation is not a crowd, a nation is not a group, a
     gang.  Yugoslavia was not a nation, that's why we have the
     problems today in Yugoslavia. The Soviet Union was not a
     nation, that's why it fell apart.  You don't see Norway
     falling apart; Norway's a nation.  So I think it's at least,
     at least reasonable to entertain the idea that we should --
     think on these things.

Grant is alluding to a prominent theme in American Renaissance: The
idea that nationality should be based on ethnicity, not on
citizenship.  "Tribes and nations have always understood
instinctively that cohesion requires blood-kinship and shared
history, and that membership is not open to all comers," the
publication declared in its January 1996 issue.  "White nations
appear to have lost this primeval urge."

Grant's racism -- exemplified by his references to black college
students and churchgoers as "savages" and his description of
Haitian immigrants as "sub-human infiltrators" -- is not simply a
question of personal bile, but is part of a systematic ideology of
white supremacy.  Grant has in the past promoted conferences
organized by American Renaissance (most recently on his January 26,
1996 show) and has allowed the phone numbers of American
Renaissance and other white supremacist groups to be given out over
the air.  (See "Dial H for Hate," EXTRA! Update, June 1995; FAIR
open letter to Phil Boyce, February 26, 1996.)

But it is impossible to discuss this reality on WABC's airwaves, as
Dershowitz's firing shows.  Two years ago, columnist Jack Newfield
was publicly banned from the station because he noted Grant's
bigotry in print.  (Columnist Linda Stasi had earlier been
blacklisted for "excessively personal" criticisms of Rush
Limbaugh.)

FAIR points out that the ultimate responsibility for Grant's
unchallenged racism rests with the Walt Disney Company, which
recently purchased WABC along with the rest of the ABC network.
Disney needs to explain why it allows its host to promote white
supremacism during prime listening hours, while those who criticize
this racist speech are censored.

                               ***

For more on FAIR, send a blank e-mail message to fair-info@fair.org
Or visit our web site at www.fair.org/fair
A good deal Grant's bigotry is documented at:
www.fair.org/fair/wabc-hate.html
fair@fair.org

To subscribe to FAIR's magazine, EXTRA!, call 800-847-3993.

© 1996 Peter Langston