Salon Calls Kevin Sorbo's Anti-Looting Post 'Racist'

Did you know harshly criticizing the looters who are ransacking the businesses of innocent, hard-working Ferguson, MO residents is both “racist” and “insane?”

So says Salon.com, dealing the race card against conservative actor Kevin Sorbo for daring to call out those who are using the shooting of an unarmed black man as an excuse to steal, trash and, potentially, ruin people’s livelihoods.

The article’s headline starts the hyperventilation: “Kevin Sorbo’s insane, racist Ferguson rant: Calls protestors ‘losers’ and ‘animals.'” The actor did no such thing. He singled out the “Ferguson riots,” not those peacefully protesting the death of Michael Brown by a police officer’s bullets.

Here is what set off the liberal site, posted on the actor’s Facebook page:

Ferguson riots have very little to do with the shooting of the young man. It is an excuse to be the losers these animals truly are. It is a tipping point to frustration built up over years of not trying, but blaming everyone else, The Man, for their failures. It’s always someone else’s fault when you give up. Hopefully this is a reminder to the African Americans ( I always thought we just Americans. Oh, well.) that their President the voted in has only made things worse for them, not better.

Sorbo isn’t saying an injustice didn’t happen. The facts are still coming in, the story has yet to be revealed in full.

Salon.com could argue against Sorbo’s economic attack on Obama, although that might take some creative number crunching. And perhaps squeezing in a shot at the president isn’t wise in this context. Still, dismissing Sorbo’s post as “racist” shuts down a more complex examination of the issues in play.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar recently argued that the Ferguson tensions are due to class warfare, not race:

This fist-shaking of everyone’s racial agenda distracts America from the larger issue that the targets of police overreaction are based less on skin color and more on an even worse Ebola-level affliction: being poor,” the Hall of Famer wrote for Time magazine.

Can we mull that over without dealing from the race deck? Isn’t that a healthier approach?

None of this is surprising. Liberals routinely deal the race card to avoid a nuanced discussion and seek real solutions, such as when faced with conservative arguments against unfettered amnesty.

Lately, said card has been used against celebrities for preposterous reasons. Some, including Salon.com, blasted Taylor Swift this week (who it calls the “poster girl for whiteness”) for a video featuring a crush of dancers, both black and white, twerking away around her. Others claimed Justin Timberlake was suddenly racist for using the “N-word” in a shout-out to Madonna.

Only the “N-word” in question was “ninja,” a word now commonly used to express excellence or great skill in a variety of areas.

Sorbo is a target to some on the Left because he has a strong following and just starred in the sleeper smash God’s Not Dead, an unabashedly pro-Christian feature.

The actor later admitted his wording was inelegant, and offered this follow-up:

Okay….I stand humiliated and humbled. My most sincere apologies for my post on the events in Ferguson. I posted out of frustration and anger over the violence and looting. My words were never meant to hurt the African-American community. My use of the word “losers’ was directed at those doing the looting and vandalising and violence toward others. Anyone who does that is a loser in my book. So I will not apologise to those who are looting stores and vandalising there own community. I am very sorry for the police shooting. To answer violence with violence is not the answer here. Real leaders need to emerge out of that community to deal with the problems with the excessive use of police force. I agree with you that the police action has only added to the reaction of the residents of Ferguson. Yes. I am an idiot and do hold myself accountable for the way my post came off.