MSNBC, the black man with guns, and the racist narrative

This is what MSNBC reported:

DYLAN RATIGAN: Alright, guns at town hall rallies, you’re probably familiar. Well, people continue to do it, packing heat at these health care protests. Contessa has the latest. What’s going on?

CONTESSA BREWER: Yeah, we are closely following here, Dylan, town halls and other events around the country today to see who shows up and what they bring with them. More than 20 town halls scheduled from east-to-west, Virginia to Washington state. Yesterday, as President Obama addressed the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Phoenix. A man at a pro-health care reform rally just outside, wore a semiautomatic assault rifle on his shoulder and a pistol on his hip. The Associated Press reports about a dozen people in all at that event were visible carrying firearms. And if the scene looks familiar, that’s because it should, last week a guy stood outside Obama’s health care town hall in Portsmouth, New Hampshire with a gun strapped to his leg and police arrested a 62-year-old before that New Hampshire event for carrying unlicensed loaded gun. And the reason we’re talking about this, a lot of talk here, Dylan, because people feel like, yes, there are Second Amendment rights for sure but also there are questions about whether this has racial overtones. I mean, here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs.

They are actually talking about this man:

Here is the video before the image was cropped:

Allahpundit, and a very NOT suitable for work Ace, are indignant, since MSNBC clearly cropped the footage in order to fit their narrative that “here you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs.” Certainly it’s more important to MSNBC to inflame racial memes than it is to actually report the facts.

But hey, it’s the “righty bloggers” who are the nuisance – Michael Calderone says so:
Righty bloggers slam MSNBC over ‘gun’ clip; network responds

Several conservative bloggers, including Hot Air, RedState, and NewsBusters, have taken MSNBC to task for not identifying a man with a gun at an Obama event as an African-American in a segment that discussed the “racial overtones” of those packing heat at presidential town halls.

Following the shot of the African American man focusing specifically on the gun, MSNBC host Contessa Brewer said that “you have a man of color in the presidency and white people showing up with guns strapped to their waists or to their legs.”

Because there have been several white people showing up with guns — and the “birther” conspiracy theory is still getting attention — it’s certainly fair to ask about racial overtones regarding this issue, and some of the vitriol directed at Obama personally (as opposed to criticism of Democratic policies). It’s also very fair to ask what could possess any American to feel the need to bring a gun to a presidential event, as Chris Matthews recently did.

But by raising the racial issue in this context, bloggers claimed that MSNBC was purposely misleading viewers by not showing that at least one African-American man has also carried a gun to an event.

An MSNBC spokesperson responded to POLITICO: “Contessa was speaking generally and not about that specific person with the automatic weapon.”

Yeah, right.

Thank goodness for the “righty bloggers.” You certainly can’t rely on MSNBC or Calderone to actually show a full photo of the man in question.

Roger Kimball lists the contact information where you can reach MSNBC to protest this.