Joe Williams for the news website Politico was suspended when the company found his words to be too partisan for their audience. Williams remarked that US presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was uncomfortable around non-whites. He was speaking as their White house correspondent on MSNBC with Martin Bashir when the comments were made. The conversation centred around Romney’s stance on immigration.

Williams stated that Romney feels “very comfortable” around “white folks” and was saying that he was uncomfortable around non-whites. Politico editors Jim VandeHei and John Harris were not happy with the words calling them “unacceptable” and “fell short of our standards for fairness and judgement in an especially unfortunate way.” now he’s looking for another job as a result.

Politico has offered and apology:

Politico journalists have a clear and inflexible responsibility to cover politics fairly and free of partisan bias. This expectation extends to all of the public platforms in which we and our reporting and analysis appears, including cable TV and social media platforms like Twitter.

Regrettably, an unacceptable number of Joe Williams’s public statements on cable and Twitter have called into question his commitment to this responsibility. His comment about Governor Romney earlier today on MSNBC fell short of our standards for fairness and judgment in an especially unfortunate way.

Joe has acknowledged that his appearance reflected a poor choice of words. This appearance came in the context of other remarks on Twitter that, cumulatively, require us to make clear that our standards are serious, and so are the consequences for disregarding them. This is true for all Politico journalists, including an experienced and well-respected voice like Joe Williams.

Following discussion of this matter with editors, Joe has been suspended while we review the matter.

Harris

VandeHei

Frankly I did not find his comments to be offensive, because quite frankly I detected that from him as well. Romney does look kind of awkward around ethnic minorities. Not surprising given that he is both a Mormon and a Republican. Regardless, I believe that a lot of people were offended by that and I think they can just shove off. This is the man’s opinion, he is paid to give an opinion by Politico. If Politico don’t like his opinion, then that is their business and can get rid of him if they want.

However, one must question the point of hiring someone to give opinion and then get mad when their opinion doesn’t match their own. He gave his honest opinion and should not have given anything else.

Interestingly, you should note a terrible double standard here. A lot of conservatives have either subtly accused him of being racist and others have outright called him racist. What’s the double standard some might ask? Well, take a look at what conservatives have been saying about President Barack Obama for four years. They’ve said he hates white people, say he’s a Muslim, say he’s the antichrist. All of this based on absolutely nothing at all. There is no indication that Obama hates White people in anyway shape or form. Yet no one seems willing to throw those people out who say things like that on the air.

It’s down right ridiculous when you consider the unmitigated hate that has been thrown at him by conservatives for the most petty things. (Completely ignoring the real criticisms that should be made of him.) When elected, FOX \news claimed he was going to demand reparations for Black people and was going to take money away from Whites and give it to Blacks. Even several years into his presidency they still claimed he was going to do that. Never mind all the much uglier vitriol that has come out of Glenn Beck and those like him. Never mind all the slanders he has suffered over the right wing fear mongering of the Islamic religion he isn’t a part of.

This is a typical hypocrisy by the bourgeoise media, even the very liberal media like the Young Turks who also completely failed to notice this as well. All kinds of racist accusations and insults can be thrown at Obama for being an African-American, but no one can say a damn thing about Romney and his apparent discomfort around non-Whites.