It’s been quite a controversial few days for Oprah Winfrey and considering she’s pushing a new movie it’s probably by design. She turned heads last week by comparing Trayvon Martin’s death to Emmett Till, two very very different killings. She doubled down on that story today - Glenn offered a stern rebuke and a recent killing ignored by the media that more closely resembles what happened to Emmett Till.
During an appearance on promoting her new movie, Oprah said, “ The truth of the matter is Emmett Till became a symbol for those times, as Trayvon Martin has become a symbol for this time."
Needless to say, Glenn felt like the comparison was way out of line, and he delivered a scathing monologue on the matter during radio.
" Here's what Oprah Winfrey doesn't understand. That is a made‑up symbol. All of the facts, all of the facts show that Trayvon Martin is not Emmett Till. All of the facts show that race played no role in this... at all."
"So only the people who are trying to hype their shows on MSNBC or to hype their position as a race‑baiter like Al Sharpton, only those who are trying to make sure that their policies are never questioned because they need the race card, and they actually believe the things that Jeremiah Wright said, like the president, and those who are trying to sell and hock their movie. Those people need to have Trayvon Martin as Emmett Till."
Glenn said that instead the icons of race today should be Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian.
"Those names most likely you've never even heard of but because of a listener of this program who called me and challenged me to tell the story, I did earlier this week on television. This will be a little easier because I don't have the pictures to show you on radio. Newsom was 23, former standout baseball player working as a carpenter. Christian was 21, student at the University of Tennessee. They had been dating for about two months, and on the night of January 6th, 2007, they planned to watch a movie at a friend's apartment. When Janet didn't show up the next day, concerned family reported them both missing. It turns out the couple had made it to dinner, but when they arrived to the apartment complex where Christian's best friend lived, they were carjacked by multiple assailants. What followed was one of the most heinous, gruesome, and senseless hate crimes ever. Christian Newsom's evening started with a wonderful date with his new girlfriend, and now here he was, just a few minutes later, gagged with a sock in his mouth. His ankles were bound with his own belt. His hands were tied behind his back, and his face was wrapped with a bandana. His head was covered with a sweatshirt tied around his neck and then he was violently raped with an object and beaten."
"I can only imagine the horror that Christopher experienced when he was forced to walk barefoot on the nearby railroad tracks. There he was shot in the neck and in the back. But the first shots didn't kill him. He fell to the ground where he laid paralyzed. That's after the rape. The assailants stood over him, placed a gun against his covered head and fired, killing him execution‑style. But then they wanted to make sure that they mutilated the body. So they poured gasoline on his body and set him ablaze."
"But... the boyfriend was actually the lucky one. Because they came back for her. Channon Christian, who was taken back to the home of the assailants, where she was forced into a back room of the house. She was hogtied with strips of fabric from a bedding set and for several hours she endured brutal sexual assaults, repeatedly raped in just about every possible way imaginable. This story is so much worse if you go out and actually seek the courtroom documents. But you don't need to know more than raped in every way possible. She was kicked and beaten with several objects, including a broken chair leg. She suffered major wounds to her genital area. She had two major blows to the head. She was still alive and still conscious. Can you imagine what she was thinking? Bleeding, she was finally dragged out of the back room and into the living room. But the assailants realized that they had left DNA on the victim. So they tried to cover their tracks by pouring bleach all over her. Then, realizing that they had left DNA inside of her, they poured bleach down her throat. She was still alive. They then wrapped her body in a black garbage bag, her head in a white plastic grocery bag. They then dumped her body in a garbage can in the kitchen of the house, all of this while she was still alive. This woman who started hours before, just going out to have dinner with her boyfriend and over to her friend's house to watch a movie, now was upside down in a garbage can, her throat burning from bleach, and rape, beaten within an inch of her life, suffocating in a garbage can."
"There was no Al Sharpton on this case. Much to my shame, there was not even a Glenn Beck on this case. This happened in 2007. I had never heard of this story until a listener phoned in last week. There was no one, and still there is no one calling for social justice on this case. The suspects had all been convicted but then the original judge was discovered to have a drug addiction, which got him disbarred, which meant that the dirtbag attorneys went back and said, 'You know what? We can open your case again, open the door for the killers to try to abuse the justice system.' But one have been repeatedly pursuing retrials and appeals"
"It wasn't just guys that did this. There was a girl involved as well. The family has been dragged into court and had to relive this since 2007 over and over and over again."
"The killers were four black men and one black woman. Why is it nobody talked about this case? Do we have to have an Al Sharpton? Do we have to have a Jesse Jackson? Do we actually have to go and protest? Do we have to go and strong‑arm? Do we have to go to the media companies and say, why aren't you doing this, and we'll boycott you if you don't report on this story? Why is it you're not reporting on this story? Is it because it doesn't fit? Is it because it doesn't work to your advantage? I thought we were a country about equal justice. I thought we were a country about being fair. I thought we were a country that was trying to do the right thing."
"We're not the country that's trying to do the right thing. We are not that country. But the good news is we are those people."
"Oprah Winfrey, you disgust me. As a woman who has gone through hell and back and made it, and pulled yourself out by the bootstraps. You made it. You made it. You grew up with hate from your own race, you grew up with rape in your own race and you pulled yourself out. And the American people, both black and white, yellow and red, it doesn't matter the color, they saw you make it! They saw you overcome everything that you had faced, and we celebrated that! So much so that you make $70 million a year! So much so you're the most famous and most accomplished black woman in the history of America! You have your own network because we celebrated that you made it. You disgust me. Why are you telling everybody else they can't make it? Why are you telling us that white people are the problem?"
"Oprah, I'm sorry to point out to you, people are the problem. Doesn't matter what color they come in. Scumbags come in all colors. The scumbags in the 1950s that did that to Emmett Till, I don't think there's a dark enough, hot enough hell for those people."
"You tell the Emmett Till story and it breaks your heart. You tell the Emmett Till story and the thought of his mother opening up that coffin and part of his head falling out because insult upon injury when they put him in, they put lye in there with him to destroy his body. You can't be a functioning human being and not feel that."
"But vengeance belongs to the Lord alone. Justice will never be done here on Earth. But we can strive for it. And I weep for my country because I know God is just. And I weep for my country because we are on the verge and the precipice of just an unbelievable bright dawn. The whole world is starting to understand not politics, not bankers, not power, not houses, not cars, not fame, not stuff, but love. The whole world is on the verge of understanding true freedom, and just leave me alone. Just leave me alone and let me worship God in my own understanding."
"There are bad guys out there, but race has nothing to do with it."
"Oprah, I choose to be the person that America thought you were. I choose to be the person that will overcome the bad things in my life. Nobody's going to tell me what I can and can't do and who I am. I know who I am, and I will not be beaten down by the system, and I will hold those people up that feel the same way, no matter what color. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. Give me the ones that you have told 'You'll never make it,' send them to me, the tempest tossed. Because I hold my lamp beside a golden door."
