A-list Hollywood actor Don Cheadle appeared on NBC’s Saturday Night Live sporting a black t-shirt with white letters that read, “Protect Trans Kids” and donning a hat with a logo for Sleeping Giants — the far-left political activist organization that has launched harassment, blacklist, and boycott campaigns against Breitbart News and the Fox News Channel.
It’s no secret that Don Cheadle has long-been one of Breitbart News’ favorite characters to cover. Before he was advocating for the protection of “Trans Kids” on prime-time TV, Cheadle was wishing for Donald Trump to “die in a grease fire.” He later deleted that tweet.
A couple months before the 2016 presidential election, Cheadle appeared alongside his fellow Avengers co-stars Robert Downey Jr. and Scarlett Johansson for a celebrity-studded PSA directed by Joss Whedon meant to encourage voters not to support Trump. In the video, Cheadle called the future president a “racist, abusive coward who could permanently damage the fabric of our society.”
That glorious pro-Hillary political ad spurred this gem of a headline: “Joss Whedon Assembles ‘Avengers’ Stars for Anti-Trump Ad.”
Another Cheadle-inspired headline for the ages is, “Hollywood Implodes over Justice Kennedy Retirement: ‘This Is How You Lose a Country’”
That quote came from Mr. Cheadle, who concluded that the retirement of Anthony Kennedy from the United States Supreme Court would result in America being lost.
“all of our rights are in the balance. urge your leadership to resist when trump attempts to appoint the next swamp thing out of the pez dispenser or kiss it bye bye,” Cheadle said in yet another tweet that has been deleted.
So it was much to our shock when one of Hollywood’s biggest stars, known for his starring roles in hit films from the Oscar-winning drama Crash to Disney’s Avengers franchise, appeared on camera clad in what CNN writer-producer Amanda Jackson declared “a powerful statement.”
It didn’t take long for the Sleeping Giants’ official Twitter account to take a break from its daily Anti-Breitbart smear campaign to celebrate Cheadle wearing a hat with its logo.
“TFW you wake up to 10,000 texts that absolute legend @DonCheadle made an incredible statement on @nbcsnl last night. And also wore a Sleeping Giants hat!!!” the Sleeping Giants Twitter said. “Thank you, Mr. Cheadle, for all of your support.”
The group later posted another gleeful message, saying, “Okay, we tried all day to be cool about the legendary @DonCheadle wearing our cap last night on @nbcsnl, but yeah, fuck that.”
Sleeping Giants, founded by Matt Rivitz, targets companies that purchase advertising space on Breitbart.com. It makes disparaging claims about the site’s news content, describing it as anti-Semitic and or white supremacist. The companies see the Sleeping Giants’ false statements about Breitbart News and move to cease advertising on the site. The left-wing group has duplicated the deceptive tactic to drive away advertisers from Fox News Channel shows hosted by Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson.
The truth is, Breibart News was Founded in Israel by Andrew Breitbart and Larry Solov, best friends who happen to both be Jewish.
Today, Breitbart’s Israel/Middle East bureau chief is radio host Aaron Klein, an Orthodox Jew.
It’s a news site that, according to New York Times magazine, that “pretty good record of promoting women and minorities, at least by the industry’s abysmal standards — including the lead defense correspondent, the national security editor, and the copy chief, all of whom are women of color,” writes Wil S. Hylton in near-nine thousand word expose about Breitbart News.
Hylton, writing in the Times, also notes Breitbart’s “borderline fanatical advocacy for Israel.” It was also Hylton who interview Harvard law professor Yochai Benkler, who led a team of professors and data scientists at Harvard and M.I.T. who researched the “rise and influence” of Breitbart News and came to a “surprising result:”
“One thing that came out very clearly from our study is that Breitbart is not talking about these issues in the same way you would find on the extreme right,’’ he said. ‘‘They don’t use the same language you find on sites like VDARE and The Daily Stormer’’ — two sites connected to the white-nationalist alt-right movement. He paused for a moment, then added: ‘‘Breitbart is not the alt-right.’’
Moreover, Breitbart News is the 11th largest Facebook publisher, is the 60th most trafficked website in the United States, according to Amazon-owned Alexa, and is read by millions of Americans every day — including senior White House officials.
It saddens us to know that Don Cheadle has officially joined the ranks of Breitbart’s blacklisters all because he can’t take the heat.
Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson