In May 2006, Fox News host John Gibson sparked controversy when he claimed on air that “twenty-five years and the majority of the population is Hispanic” because “Hispanics are having more kids than others” and “white people are having fewer.” Worried about the demographic shift in America, Gibson urged his audience to “do your duty. Make more babies.”
On his radio show yesterday, Gibson returned to the controversy, touting an Associated Press article about the “baby boomlet” in the U.S. in 2006 as vindication for his call that “the dominant, or largest, population sector, which is Caucasians” should “make more babies.” Declaring “I was right,” Gibson celebrated the increased birth rate of “non-Hispanic white women”:
“The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births.” As you can tell, Hispanics are doing the hard work of child raising. “But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were” also “having more babies, too.” A big round of applause for all of you out there having those babies.
Claiming that “people were following my advice,” Gibson exclaimed that he was “not only right,” but “prescient” and that it was time for “a John Gibson victory lap.” Listen to it:
[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/01/GibsonBabiesRedux.320.40.flv]
Gibson also complained about his critics who called him a “racist” for his May 2006 comments. “I was simply saying look what happened in Europe,” said Gibson. Immigrants “having kids like crazy” meant “England wasn’t looking so British anymore” because “Anglos” and “selfish white people weren’t going through the hard work of having babies.”
Demonstrating a lack of self-awareness, Gibson closed the segment by asking his “drooling left wing” critics if they “still think I’m a racist.”
Transcript:
GIBSON: It is John Gibson, I’m gonna go get’ em. Now, this half hour we’re going to deal with an issue that got me in trouble, but as you all know, I enjoy skating on thin ice. It’s what I do for a living. And so I’m going to reprise this dark moment in Gibson’s past because it came up in the news today and it appears I was right. And that people, not only was I right, but that people were following my advice. My advice was that demographic studies showed that the United States birthrate is lagging among the dominant, or largest, population sector, which is Caucasians. Hispanics are having a lot of babies, African-Americans were having a fair number of babies, but whites in America were just barely keeping above the replenishment level of the population. And I was trying to warn people that this phenomena had gone on in Europe, where the native population, the Anglos, if you will to use the phrase from Southern California, were just not having kids. And the immigrants, often labor immigrants from Muslim lands, were having kids like crazy. And all of a sudden, you know, England wasn’t looking so British anymore. And Germany wasn’t looking so German anymore. And Russia was having a real problem because, to put it bluntly, selfish white people weren’t going through the hard work of having babies. And so I, in a tongue in cheek way, you know, did this thing on “My Word” at the end of the TV show about make more babies, and it concluded this way:
TV CLIP: And it won’t be here either if that should happen. To put it bluntly, we need more babies. Forget about that zero population growth stuff that my poor generation was misled on. Why is this important? Because civilizations need population to survive. So far, we are doing our part here in America but Hispanics can’t carry the whole load. The rest of you, get busy. Make babies, or put another way — a slogan for our times: “procreation not recreation.” That’s “My Word.”
GIBSON: Ok, that set off a storm of protest that continues unto this day.
ANNOUNCER: Gibson is a racist.
GIBSON: I regularly get called out by Media Matters for America, the Huffington Post, some of those lefties. I don’t know if the Daily Kos has done it lately, regularly called out. And of course that slobbering twit, who just barely gets out of the bathtub enough in time to go to his show, who calls me a racist.
CLIP OF KEITH OLBERMANN: Ok, so if there were any doubts, John Gibson: racist.
GIBSON: And, all of which, was a whole quote cropping exercise to make me sound like a racist, when I was simply saying look what happened in Europe, we don’t want that to happen here. Now, in other words, get busy. You know, a little peanut butter smear on the leather seats of the BMW is not such a bad thing. Go ahead and have kids. So anyway, today, it turns out the AP medical writer Mike Stobbe — I hold his report in my hand, let me prove it to you — says I was right. In fact, he said “Gibson was right.”
ANNOUNCER: Oh yeah, Gibson was right. Oh yeah. Again. Can you feel that, buddy? huh? huh? huh?
GIBSON: Huh? “Bucking the trend in many other wealthy industrialized nations,” by which he means Europe, Mike Stobbe writes, “the United States seems to be experiencing a baby boom,” in that we are “reporting the largest number of children born in 45 years.” That is a John Gibson victory lap.
ANNOUNCER: Start your engines. The John Gibson victory lap.
GIBSON: “The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006,” and — by the way — My Word was May 2006, so I was not only right, I was prescient, I was right on time.
ANGRY RICH: You’re like an aphrodisiac, John.
FEMALE COMMENTATOR: Ooh la la.
GIBSON: I wouldn’t say that.
ANGRY RICH: Spanish fly, that’s what you are, buddy.
GIBSON: Angry Rich, that would be going a little too far.
ANGRY RICH: They got busy.
GIBSON: Well, I encourage that.
FEMALE COMMENTATOR: What you doing?
GIBSON: Procreation, not recreation
FEMALE COMMENTATOR: Hey shorty.
GIBSON: You got that stuff for a reason, put it to good use. “The nearly 4.3 million births in 2006 were mostly due to a bigger population, especially a growing number of Hispanics. That group accounted for nearly one-quarter of all U.S. births.” As you can tell, Hispanics are doing the hard work of child raising. “But non-Hispanic white women and other racial and ethnic groups were” also “having more babies, too.” A big round of applause for all of you out there having those babies.
ANNOUNCER: (Applause) Thank you.
GIBSON: Now, having been proved right, I am curious if the drooling left wing reactionaries still think I’m a racist, and if they care to apologize. Are you still troubled by the fact that I said Hispanics are doing a good job of having babies and the Anglos seem to have been falling behind. I would actually, they weren’t falling behind, right at that moment they were getting busy. Are you still troubled by all of that or are you willing to reconsider the issue in the cool light of dawn while there aren’t certain provocateurs hanging around, flinging names around as they do when they read from the prompter directly from Media Matters.Triple eight seven eight eight nine nine one zero. Do you still think I’m a racist. Would you care to apologize. Apologies will be accepted graciously.