Source: Janos Kummer / Getty
If conservatives were capable of shame, they would be miserably embarrassed by their knee-jerk reaction to President Joe Biden’s executive order for a grant intended to “support community-based overdose prevention programs, syringe services programs, and other harm reduction services.” As we previously reported, the litany of white nonsense and yellow journalism presented by right-wing pundits and politicians appears to be based on a single report from the Washington Free Beacon that clearly and demonstrably didn’t know what it was talking about.
Actually, scratch that. The Beacon likely knew exactly what it was doing—it had the same access to the actual grant document that everyone else has, after all—but it chose to virtually ignore everything about the initiative in favor of a focus on two things: Black people and crack pipes.
That’s right, the publication reported on a grant that could fund things like FDA-approved overdose reversal medication and provide addicts with overdose education, counseling, health education, and referrals for STD treatment, among many other services. And all the Beacon got from all that was, “The Biden administration is giving Black people free crack pipes and calling it ‘racial equality,’” all because included in the grant was a mention that funds can be used to purchase “safe smoking kits,” which don’t even include crack pipes.
So right-wingers and people who don’t read past clickbait headlines embarked on a thoroughly debunked misinformation campaign.
Last week, Biden talked about being tough on crime.
This week, the Biden Admin announced funds for crack pipe distribution to “advance racial equity.” pic.twitter.com/cnSazcL8bA
— Tom Cotton (@TomCottonAR) February 7, 2022
New in Public Notice: How a bad Free Beacon piece about crack pipes triggered Fox News https://t.co/rsOIBEv87F
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 11, 2022
Will you have to show your vaccine passport to get your crack pipe? https://t.co/Qsh0yPBznj
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 9, 2022
Biden is sending free meth & crack pipes to minority communities in the name of ‘racial equity’
There is no end in sight for this lunacy https://t.co/RLv6cAuLCt pic.twitter.com/WdlzOojkdF
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 8, 2022
But there was one take on the issue that was particularly erroneous, racist as hell, and, well, also kind of hilarious. And that take came from none other than Fox News reporter and “sexy” M&M cartoon advocate Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson says Democrats don’t care about the opioid crisis because it kills off demographics that don’t vote for them. pic.twitter.com/iqnsoRLAqg
— nikki mccann ramírez (@NikkiMcR) February 9, 2022
Carlson’s issue doesn’t appear to be about Biden distributing crack pipes in and of itself—which, again, he isn’t doing—but his gripe with the grant seems to boil down to one question: What about people? (Specifically white opioid addicts.)
“Those 100,000 Americans weren’t from officially marginalized groups, their deaths had nothing to do with the equity agenda,” he said. “Their deaths may have helped the equity agenda by changing the demographics of the country in a way that benefits the Democratic Party. So as far as the Biden administration is concerned, it’s not a bad trend. Sure, a lot of people died from opioids in Joe Biden’s first year. The total body count was the equivalent of significant American cities, the entire population, every man, woman, and child in say, South Bend or Roanoke, Virginia. On the other hand, these are exactly the kind of people the administration hates anyway. So with equity in mind, the White House plans to continue allowing as much fentanyl as possible to come into this country through Mexico.”
Y’all, WTF is wrong with Tucker Carlson?
Never mind the facts that crack pipes were never specifically included in the grant, that Black people aren’t the only ones who smoke crack, and that opioid addicts aren’t in any way excluded from the grant, let’s just talk about how often Carlson defaults to, “they’re trying to get rid of white people.”
Imagine being white in a country that’s still more than 70 percent white and one where the government is and has always been overwhelmingly white—and still being this paranoid about a government-forced eradication of white people.
But beyond that, imagine Tucker Carlson calling himself a journalist. Imagine a “journalist” for a major media outlet falling for clickbait just like every other rando on the internet who failed to do the five-minute google search necessary to find out what the grant actually is. Imagine a “journalist” doing a whore report based on said clickbait without including the least bit of original research.
Of course, this is the same “journalist” who admitted that after doing months of anti-critical race theory reports, he never actually figured out what CRT is.
But like I said, conservatives would have to be capable of shame to see how embarrassing they are.
SEE ALSO:
No, The Biden Administration Is Not Giving Black People Crack Pipes And Calling It Racial Equity
[ione_media_gallery id=”4270938″ overlay=”true”]
window.addEventListener(‘interaction’, function () {
setTimeout(function () {
var s = document.createElement(‘script’), el = document.getElementsByTagName(‘script’)[ 0 ];
s.async = true;
s.src = ‘https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js’;
el.parentNode.insertBefore(s, el);
}, 1000)
});
