Smarmy and disgusting MSNBC host Lawrence O'Donnell apparently thinks it is his job to lecture GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain about the civil rights movement and about his work in the Department of the Navy. Both of the following clips are worth watching in their entirety, but the good stuff in the first video starts at 7:22, when O'Donnell accuses Cain of sitting on the sidelines while other blacks were on the streets fighting for equal rights. Shortly after, Cain annihilates O'Donnell's question. In the second video, O'Donnell accuses Cain of being a draft dodger purposely avoiding service in the Vietnam war.
Video 1:
O'Donnell: In your book you write, the book you're selling down there at Barnes and Noble today you write, 'The civil rights movement was a few years in front of me, I was too young to participate when they first started the Freedom Rides, and the sit-ins. So on a day-to-day basis, it didn't have an impact. I just kept going to school, doing what I was supposed to do, and stayed out of trouble - I didn't go downtown and try and participate during sit-ins .... counter to our real feelings, we decided to avoid trouble by moving to the back of the bus when the driver told us to.... Dad always said, 'Stay out of trouble,' and we did.'
Where do you think black people would be sitting on the bus today if Rosa Parks had followed your father's advice?
Cain: My father was not giving Rosa Parks advice, here again Lawrence you are distorting the intent of what I said. I was a high school student, the college students were doing the sit-ins, the college students were doing the Freedom Rides. If I had been a college student I probably would have been participating but if you are a high school student in the 10th or 11th grade, you're under 18 years of age, you didn't need to get arrested and be in the middle of that. That was the intent of what I said, relative to me not being involved.
Video 2: O'Donnell tries to take Cain's comments about Occupy Wall Street out of context. Cain said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in reference to the Occupy Wall Street protestors, "If you don’t have a job and you are not rich, blame yourself.”
O'Donnell also had the nerve to accuse Herman Cain of "avoiding the Vietnam war," at 5:33.
O'Donnell: Can you explain how you avoided military service during the Vietnam war and during the draft and why you should be commander in chief if you did successfully avoid military service during the war that came during your what would have been your war years, how you, after avoiding the Vietnam, war why should you be commander in chief?
Cain: Lawrence you know, do you stay up at night to come up with the words in these questions?
A few take aways: If anyone in the media had treated Barack Obama this way when he was running for president as a U.S. Senator in 2008, they would have been immediately accused of racism. I'd also like to point out Harvard graduate Lawrence O'Donnell has never served in the military (considering Harvard for years didn't allow ROTC on campus, I wouldn't be surprised if O'Donnell doesn't even know what ROTC is). In addition, O'Donnell has never worked in a department that heavily aids the military as Cain did during his service to the Department of the Navy and, Lawrence O'Donnell was born in 1951, which means his "war days" would have been during Vietnam. Despite this fact, O'Donnell didn't join.
Final question: Mr. O'Donnell, when did Commander in Chief Barack Obama serve in the military? Oh wait, he was too busy doing other things.
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