This video's been making the rounds and it's worth watching, just for the bare flicker of recognition in Bill Scanlan's eyes when the C-SPAN host realizes that this is going to be one of those calls... and by "one of those calls," I mean "that time that Bill from North Carolina calls up to complain about how C-SPAN isn't taking enough calls from white people, and how they ought to change their name to BLACK-SPAN.
CALLER: Yeah, I'd like to make a little respectful criticism here about C-SPAN. The last two guys I know were white guys. But you have black folks calling in on the Republican line, independents...and you have so many of them. I cannot believe this is just an accident. If you keep on with the way you have been programming you should change your name from C-SPAN to BLACK-SPAN. I mean, I know they have an opinion, but I wish that they would be honest and call in on the right line. Every one of them thinks that Obama is Jesus Christ, and they do not like when anybody criticizes him. Well, I didn't hear all this anger when George Bush was in. I mean, all they did was criticize George Bush. Every day you would hear "He lied, he lied." I do not know how some many of these folks if they are 10% or 12% of the population, seems to be 80% of your callers. Now, I do not know what you can do about it, but I'm just about ready -- and I think a lot of other republicans or conservatives are about ready to go somewhere else.
Mediaite's Jon Bershad points out that this isn't the first time Scanlan's had to sit through a hateful diatribe, noting that, "In January he got to have a discussion with a caller who wanted less Jews on the air." On that occasion, the Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg didn't care much for Scanlan's noncommittal approach to taking the call, assailing him for not doing anything to challenge the caller or cut him off.
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