Nas, who like many hip hop stars has been regularly sneered at by Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly, says the conservative talker and others on the network spew racism that makes Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable news outlet unfit to participate in the public discourse.
His comments come in the wake of a public outcry over comments made by radio host Don Imus, who was fired from CBS radio in April. Imus subsequently sued CBS for terminating his contract unfairly and settled with the network in August.
Nas showed up at the Fox News studios Wednesday to present a petition signed by 620,000 people denouncing racist campaign coverage. The network gleefully spread the rumor that Democratic candidate Barack Obama, the first African American to top a major party ticket, was educated in a Madrassa, referred to his fist bump as a "terrorist fist jab," called Michelle Obama his Baby Mama and hosted a guest who joked about killing Obama. Oh, and the network's anchors seem especially fond of Obama's middle name, Hussein. And any list of Fox's transgressions would be incomplete without mention of O'Reilly's musings on a "lynching party" for Michelle Obama.
Fox wouldn't accept the petition, and O'Reilly refused an invitation to debate Nas, so the rapper took his message to satirical O'Reilly stand-in Stephen Colbert.
"Why do you think Fox News is racist?" Colbert asked, feigning shock. "That's a terrible thing to say. It's Fox and Friends not Fox and racists."
Nas, sitting atop some of the 20 crates he earlier in the day had tried to deliver to Fox News' Manhattan studio, laid into the host Colbert jokingly refers to as Papa Bear.
"Everybody that has eyes and ears can see that this guy is out of control," Nas said of O'Reilly. "He knows what he's doing. ... It's out of line, and the things he's saying is worse than the worst rap lyrics I've ever heard."
O'Reilly has been attacking Nas since the performer was booked for a memorial concert at Virginia Tech University last year. The Fox host said Nas' lyrics are inappropriate, charges he has leveled against other stars in the past, such as Ludacris. Nas told Colbert his lyrics were simply reflecting reality growing up in the inner city. He said television should focus on how guns and violence crept into neighborhoods like his instead of demonizing performers who are simply speaking the truth.
The protest outside Fox's studio Wednesday afternoon was organized with the help of MoveOn.org and ColorOfChange.org. About 150 protesters joined Nas, some wielding signs that crossed out the network's "Fair and Balanced" slogan and replaced it with the words "Fairly Racist!"
Nas raps about the network's bias in the song "Sly Fox," from his new album. He performed an excerpt from it on Colbert's show.
"Fox poisons this country every time they air racist propaganda and try and call it news," he said at the demonstration.
This video is from Comedy Central's The Colbert Report, broadcast July 23, 2008.
Nas, who like many hip hop stars has been regularly sneered at by Fox News personality Bill O'Reilly, says the conservative talker and others on the network spew racism that makes Rupert Murdoch's 24-hour cable news outlet unfit to participate in the public discourse.