Fox News contributor says poor people "have a slave mentality"

Angela McGlowan believes that receiving government benefits is like being completely dehumanized and mistreated

Published May 1, 2014 8:31PM (EDT)

 Angela McGlowan   (Screen shot, Fox News)
Angela McGlowan (Screen shot, Fox News)

Because it was a slow-news day — at least for everyone who'd decided the Donald Sterling story was only interesting if the Clippers owner was a Democrat — Fox News decided to spend a chunk of its day on Thursday talking about Barack Obama and Abraham Lincoln.

To no one's surprise, the word "slavery" came up. And, again to no one's surprise, it would've been much better for all involved if it hadn't.

After a Fox News host set up a segment by quoting from a recent column by National Review's Rich Lowry — in which the man who introduced "starbursts" into the political lexicon unsuccessfully tries to tie together a bunch of anti-Obama talking points with a reference to Abraham Lincoln — the discussion soon began swerving all over the place.

Yet as is almost always the case when a Fox News segment has no real point and features references to either Lincoln or talking heads who are of color, poor people were eventually compared to slaves... because using government benefits is just like this, apparently.

"You do have a slave mentality today, even though we had the LBJ Great Society, we have a people enslaved on the government dole!" said conservative pundit Angela McGlowan. "We have people paying for people to have more kids out of wedlock, paying for more people to go to prison, instead of getting a job."

"So we do have a problem with slavery today, as Lincoln did back in the day" McGlowan continued, "even with LBJ's policies, because you have certain people that want Obama-phones, free phones, free food stamps, and the whole nine yards..."

You can watch McGlowan say what the smiling white Fox News host never could below, via Media Matters:


By Elias Isquith

Elias Isquith is a former Salon staff writer.

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