Tavis Smiley

Roseanne Barr made me laugh. Alas, it was 20 years ago. It was while she was a guest on Arsenio Hall's late night show and decided to rib the host. It's not often you meet a black nerd, Barr told Hall. Most nerds are white -- like you. If Barr has said anything as piercing since, it's passed my attention. And what she said on the most recent Smiley & West radio show demonstrated how Barr…

Actor James Earl Jones appeared on the public-radio show Smiley & West last weekend and discussed how he stuttered as a teenager. “There’s a certain terror I still have about confronting people.  I can’t debate, I can’t argue, I fall apart...I cannot be an activist, for instance, because of that.” But as Brian Maloney reported, host Tavis Smiley wanted to draw his politics out. Jones…

Let's call a spade a spade: the arrogance, hypocrisy and racism of Salon's Joan Walsh knows no bounds. On PBS's Tavis Smiley Show Monday, this so-called "editor at large" had the nerve to depict some Republicans as "a white, older base that doesn’t quite understand the way healthcare works" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

As NewsBusters previously reported, Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman said Tuesday, "We’re going to be in a lot of trouble if we don't reelect [Barack Obama] because people on the other side of the fence scare me." In the second part of his Tavis Smiley Show interview aired Wednesday on PBS Freeman said, "Women, Hispanics, blacks, there is a large attempt, a great attempt, at…

Oscar-winning actor Morgan Freeman said Tuesday, "We’re going to be in a lot of trouble if we don't reelect" Barack Obama. Appearing on PBS's Tavis Smiley show, Freeman added, "Because people on the other side of the fence scare me" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On his PBS show Monday night, Tavis Smiley welcomed liberal former Sen. Bill Bradley to discuss his political agenda, which began with repealing the Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United decisions on campaign financing. But what stood out most was Smiley ripping the Tea Party as more Republican than American. Bradley suggested “even” the Tea Party are Americans first. “I’m just not sure that…

It's becoming crystal clear that President Obama stepped on his foot while taking a victory lap for the assassination of Osama bin Laden one year ago. Joining the growing list of even liberal media members offended by this shameless act of self-promotion was PBS's Tavis Smiley who on ABC's This Week Sunday actually said, "I just hate seeing the president play into the hands of the right by…

PBS talk-show host Tavis Smiley is doing a media tour with his pal, the Marxist professor Cornel West, and no one at PBS seems to care that this underlines PBS as a hard-left media brand. Noel Sheppard noted Smiley bashing Romney on Hannity. Smiley also bashed Romney last week on the taxpayer-subsidized Pacifica Radio show Democracy Now. Pacifica host Amy Goodman replayed the CNN interview…

Although the list is long and undistinguished, PBS's Tavis Smiley said possibly one of the dumbest things he's ever said on television Wednesday. In a discussion about class warfare and the politics of envy on Fox News's Hannity show, Smiley actually said with a straight face, "No one who happens to be poor wants what Mr. Romney has" (video follows with transcript and commentary):

On Thursday’s Tavis Smiley show on PBS, actress Annie Potts tried to claim that her ABC show “GCB” isn’t a vindictive anti-Christian Hollywood slam on red-state Texas. Potts claims it is designed by Christian creators to “disinfect” the hypocrisy out of Christianity. “I’m getting a lot of letters and tweets and things from people who are Christian people who are happy to see the hypocrites…

While virtually all of the Obama-loving, Super PAC-bashing media have given the President a pass for his campaign finance hypocrisy, PBS's Tavis Smiley stepped off the bandwagon Sunday to speak the inconvenient truth. During his Tavis and West radio show, Smiley said Obama's "one of the worst hypocrites in the country is he now on campaign finance reform" (video follows with transcript and…

Joe Scarborough doesn't just take his Obama-landslide talk to NBC. He also spewed some of it on the Tavis Smiley show on PBS on Monday night. "This past month has been – and I was saying it this morning on the [MSNBC] show – this has been the worst month for the Republican Party since August of 1974 when Richard Nixon resigned, and I mean that." To which Smiley replied: "Wow, wow, wow, wow."…

NPR is supposed to be a very, very civil space to talk. But apparently not when NPR stations air the weekend talk show of PBS star Tavis Smiley and his Marxist professor friend, Cornel West. Brian Maloney at the Radio Equalizer was disturbed by West alleging the media and the politicians only care about the "vanilla side of town" and the hosts were "laughing hysterically at a 'kill Whitey' joke…

PBS host and leftist activist Tavis Smiley called out Republican candidates for their hostility to the poor in America, on Thursday morning on MSNBC. Appearing during the 7 a.m. hour of Morning Joe, he singled out four candidates by name and warned that "we're in a world of trouble" due to their campaign trail rhetoric. As a PBS host, Smiley benefits from public funding. That has not stopped…