If you want proof of how vicious the mainstream media is when it comes to punishing black conservatives for daring to be black and conservative, look no further than the media’s coordinated attack against the openly conservative Dr. Ben Carson for making the exact same kind of argument about same-sex marriage as Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor did on the exact same day.

Tuesday night, during an appearance on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Sean Hannity asked Dr. Carson about his thoughts on same-sex marriage. Here is Carson’s response in full: [emphasis added]

DR. BEN CARSON

Marriage is between a man and a woman. It is a well-established fundamental pillar of society, and no group — be they gays, be they NAMBLA [North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in bestiality — no matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition. So it’s not something that’s against gays; it’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definition of pillars of society.  It has significant ramifications.

It took a few days for Media Matters and the rest of the organized-left to gin up the outrage needed to grab hold of the mainstream media’s attention. But by Friday afternoon, Dr. Carson found himself under direct fire. NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell brought Carson on her MSNBC show for a grilling, as did CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

Mitchell and Blitzer were equally horrified over what they characterized as Carson’s comparing of gay relationships to relationships that are considered immoral and illegal. Carson did apologize, but he also explained (in so many words) that he was not engaging in an argument of comparison, but rather a slippery-slope argument of where changing the definition of marriage could eventually lead.

Obviously that is what Carson was doing. And as shown below, it is a commonplace thing to do and an important consideration when lawyers, judges, and adults discuss significant and fundamental legal changes of the sort raised by the question of same-sex marriage before the Supreme Court. 

But that didn’t matter to a CNN and NBC desperate to publicly destroy a man who “doesn’t know his place.” We’ve seen this media playbook before with Clarence Thomas, and most recently with Herman Cain. (In CNN’s defense, they did not stoop as low as NBC News.)

If you want proof that what NBC News and CNN engaged in yesterday was nothing more than an ideological witch hunt against a racial apostate, where was the outrage from this very same media on Tuesday after Justice Sotomayor raised the exact same kind of slippery-slope argument Carson did, herself citing illegal and immoral examples?

Below is from the official Supreme Court transcript of Tuesday’s oral arguments on the constitutionality of Prop 8, which bans same-sex marriage in the state of California. According to page 46 of the transcript, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (a liberal Obama appointee) compared same-sex relationships to polygamy and the horrors of incest:

JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR:

Mr. Olson, the bottom line that you’re being asked — and — and it is one that I’m interested in the answer: If you say that marriage is a fundamental right, what State restrictions could ever exist? Meaning, what State restrictions with respect to the number of people, with respect to — that could get married — the incest laws, the mother and the child, assuming they are of age — I can — I can accept that the State has probably an overbearing interest on — on protecting the a child until they’re of age to marry, but what’s left?

To be clear, I do not believe Sotomayor compared homosexuality to anything. What she did is what Dr. Carson did: she played devil’s advocate about the slippery-slope of what might come next if we open the Pandora’s box of changing the definition of marriage. And to make that argument, like Dr. Carson, she used illegal and immoral relationships (not homosexuality) as slippery slope concerns should the definition of marriage be held to include gay marriage.

But no one on the left or in the media cared that Sotomayor used the horror of incest to make a point about same-sex marriage — because Sotomayor is a leftist and they know which way she is going to rule. Moreover, the point she was making was obvious.

The point Carson was making was just as obvious. But because the right-leaning Carson is both black and conservative, which makes him a threat to the left-leaning mainstream media’s  attempted stranglehold on the Narrative, doesn’t “know his place,” Wolf Blitzer and Andrea Mitchell and NBC News and CNN played “gotcha” with him to “put him back in his place.”

Mitchell and Blitzer are not racists, but they do need to take a step back and realize that, in their zeal to aid and abet the left, they are wielding the same kind of double standards and show-trials of humiliation we saw in the segregated South. Back then it was all about the use of character assassination to keep blacks from obtaining the kind of political power that comes with public prestige. Today the media and left use similar tactics against those the media sees as “apostates” — especially black conservative men.

And the goal is to send a message that says, “Shut up or this will happen to you.”

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC