Erick Erickson Is the New CNN Go-to Bigot, Misogynist and Homophobe

In this quote, unquote “post racial” age, CNN has hired a guy who is not just an apparent bigot, but a misogynist and avid homophobe. Erick Erickson, the editor of redstate.com. will begin working at CNN as a political commentaor opposite John King on John King USA.

Guess the brass at CNN haven’t entirely recovered from their rabid racist withdrawals since Glenn Beck left went to Fox News. Those withdrawals probably worsened when Lou Dobbs quit a few months back.

They needed angry old white guy to fill out their lineup. After all, they do have plenty of minorities and women at the network. They wouldn’t want to let the teaparty continget to go unrepresented on the air.

This is not just an insulting move, but it’s also pretty damned stupid. The reality is the teabaggers and right wingers already have their network, it’s called Fox News. They are never going to accept anything other than “fantasy” as being objective news reporting. Even when CNN had Dobbs and Beck on the network, the right-wing still called them “tools of the liberal media.”

What CNN did have was some level of credibility among in terms of being objective in this increasingly partisan political climate. With Erickson, they can just throw that out the window. And they might as well just admit, they could care less about being a trusted news source. They simply are just pandering to the right wing, hoping they can pick up a few crumbs left behind by the boys at Fox News.

Some of Erickson’s claims:

Erickson claimed President Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize because of “affirmative action quotas” (Think Progress, 10/9/09).

He suggested “feminazis were enraged” by an anti-abortion Super Bowl ad because “that’s what being too ugly to get a date does to your brain.”

He urged that “ugly feminists return to their kitchens” (Media Matters, 2/8/10).

He’s a homophobe who asserted that “the full gay rights agenda” means that “men and boys can have sexual relationships free of prudish moral people frowning” (Media Matters, 10/9/09).

Upon Justice David Souter’s retirement, Erickson called him “the only goat-fucking child molester to ever serve on the Supreme Court” (Crooks and Liars, 5/1/09).

He declared that White House spokesperson Linda Douglass “really is the Joseph Goebbels of the White House healthcare shop” (TPM, 10/12/09).

Meanwhile, he suggested that Obama might be worse than Hitler, writing, “Does it say more about the IOC or Obama that the IOC gave Hitler the Olympics, but not Obama?”

As if that weren’t enough, he’s also an advocate of political violence (Yglesias, 4/1/09):

CNN: The Most trusted name in news? Really?

“Erick’s a perfect fit for John King, USA, because not only is he an agenda-setter whose words are closely watched in Washington, but as a person who still lives in small-town America, Erick is in touch with the very people John hopes to reach,”said Sam Feist, CNN political director and vice president of Washington-based programming. “With Erick’s exceptional knowledge of politics, as well as his role as a conservative opinion leader, he will add an important voice to CNN’s ideologically diverse group of political contributors.”

Ideologically diverse? What is Feist talking about? CNN, other than the occasional soundbyte from Roland Martin is center and right of center already. Where is there a consistent progressive voice. What Feist means when he says ideologically diverse is: We have centrist, conservatives, right wing conservatives and now bat shit crazy to boot.

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Editor's Note: In an earlier post, AlterNet's Liliana Segura pointed to Erickson's biggoted tweets: