We already know MSNBC has a history of promoting racism by giving constant airtime to Pat Buchanan, but now this atmosphere of promoting racism has floated on over to CNBC. Chris in Paris has the details:

What an amazingly ignorant thing to say. The CNBC editor rips Meb Keflezighi for not being American-enough and as a ringer for winning marathons. Forget that his family left Eritrea as refugees, and he attended high school here and then became a naturalized US citizen over ten years ago. Yes, that is the clear sign of a ringer. Who out there doesn’t flee war just to win a race?

Keflezighi won the New York Marathon this weekend and many have been praising the fact that he was the first American to do so in nearly 3 decades. Some how though he isn’t “American” to Darren Rovell, the CNBC editor who wrote:

It’s a stunning headline: American Wins Men’s NYC Marathon For First Time Since ’82.
Unfortunately, it’s not as good as it sounds.

Meb Keflezighi, who won yesterday in New York, is technically American by virtue of him becoming a citizen in 1998, but the fact that he’s not American-born takes away from the magnitude of the achievement the headline implies…

Given our disappointing results, embracing Keflezighi is understandable. But Keflezighi’s country of origin is Eritrea, a small country in Africa. He is an American citizen thanks to taking a test and living in our country.

Nothing against Keflezighi, but he’s like a ringer who you hire to work a couple hours at your office so that you can win the executive softball league.

The positive sign was that some American-born runners did extremely well in yesterday’s men’s race.
If any of them stand on the top step of the podium in Central Park one day, that’s when I’ll break out my red, white and blue.

I wonder what Comcast thinks about this racism problem at a company they are looking to take over? MSNBC and CNBC have no both given platforms to known racists, and apparently without any remorse. Perhaps its time for people to turn off these networks and show them that the American people won’t tolerate it anymore. While MSNBC is the only cable news network I can tolerate, I have cut my daily viewing of them by over 75%. They feel mighty enough to bash other networks for obvious race baiting tactics, yet they won’t acknowledge their own problems. I wonder if Keith Olbermann will even mention this guy in World’s Worst? It has all the key components to attract Olbermann – racism and sports. Somehow though I doubt it will happen.

UPDATE (3:00 est):

Rovell has issued a somewhat apology over his article:

Yesterday, I wrote an article about New York City Marathon men’s winner Meb Keflezighi. Let me be clear: Meb Keflezighi is an American and any suggestion otherwise is wrong.

The debate currently on the blogosphere is over whether or not Keflezighi should count as the first American man winner of the race even though he was not American-born.

I said that Keflezighi’s win, the first by an American since 1982, wasn’t as big as it was being made out to be because there was a difference between being an American-born product and being an American citizen. Frankly I didn’t account for the fact that virtually all of Keflezighi’s running experience came as a US citizen. I never said he didn’t deserve to be called American.

All I was saying was that we should celebrate an American marathon champion who has completely been brought up through the American system.

This is where, I must admit, my critics made their best point. It turns out, Keflezighi moved to the United States in time to develop at every level in America. So Meb is in fact an American trained athlete and an American citizen and he should be celebrated as the American winner of the NYC Marathon. That makes a difference and makes him different from the “ringer” I accused him of being. Meb didn’t deserve that comparison and I apologize for that.

So Rovell jumped on to the racist bandwagon without even doing a little bit of research? I still stand my original claim that NBC-Universal has a racism problem. Kovell couldn’t wait to put an article out dismissing Keflezighi’s status of being an American citizen, so he ran to the presses with an article whose main point was based on a falsehood. If this is journalistic integrity then I am glad I turn to the blogs for my news.