Two Reasons the Drudge Report Video Might Still Be Worth Watching
Way back in 2007, conservative bloggers went wild over then-presidential candidate Barack Obama's so-called "quiet riots" speech at Hampton Unversity, a historically black college in Virginia. For all the right-wing consternation over Obama's address, which included a shout-out to controversial Reverend Jeremiah Wright, the future president's words were mostly benign, the kind of pro-black, inspirational speech black politicians give to large audiences of black people as a matter of course. Yes, the speech did contain a few uses of the term "quiet riot," but they were in reference to the daily indignities under which many blacks in America suffer, not calls to arms.
Today, five years after other conservative outlets first attempted to paint Obama's Hampton speech as some sort of angry screed, the Drudge Report, Fox News, and the Daily Caller are teasing a video that looks familiar. Though the "surprise" footage won't be aired until tonight on Sean Hannity's Fox program at 9 P.M., based on a screen cap the Drudge Report has posted, it looks to be from the 2007 Hampton address. In other words, very, very old news.
Naturally, left-leaning pundits on Twitter are already having a laugh and noting that Tucker Carlson, who runs the Daily Caller, tried and failed to make an issue out of the quiet riot speech back in 2007, also. But there are still two things that suggest Hannity's big unveiling this evening might not be a total—and embarrassing—'07 flashback: 1. Drudge is teasing a quote from the speech—"We don't need to build more highways out in the suburbs"—that doesn't appear to be in the Hampton video most have seen online, nor in the original remarks as they were prepared for delivery, and 2. the full speech is almost 40 minutes long, meaning that the edited YouTube clips below are not the full story. With those as caveats, however, it's highly unlikely that if this address contained any bombshells they wouldn't have been uncovered amid the conservative scrutiny five years ago. Of course, that doesn't mean rehashing it won't have the desired effect of terrifying elderly white Fox News viewers all over again.