CBS’ Gayle King Under Fire for Not Addressing Anti-Semitic Views Held by Celebrated Author, Alice Walker

 

Edited by: Fern Sidman

It appears on the CBS Morning co-host Gayle King is in some hot water, as of late. The Daily Mail of the UK reported that King had The Color Purple author on her program to publicize her newly released book, ‘Gathering Blossoms Under Fire’ but failed to inquire of Walker about her anti-Semitic beliefs that the world is run by lizard Jews, according to the Daily Mail report.

King interviewed Walker on Wednesday at the Huntington Library Art Museum and Botanical Gardens in San Bernardino, California, but according to the Daily Mail, she did not address Walker’s odious views on Jewish conspiracy theories.

The report indicated that the King interview focused on “Walker’s intimate journal entries over five decades that encompasses her rise to fame; 10-year courtship to a white man in Georgia in the 1960s; private romance with singer Tracey Chapman; 40-year-milestone of The Color Purple, and her views on getting older.”

The Daily Mail reported that King did not ask Walker about her subscription to a bizarre claim that the world is run by a cabal of lizards, many of whom are Jewish.”

‘You write so specifically about how much you don’t like fame. You don’t like all the attention, yet you are stepping back in a very public and very personal way. Why did you decide to do that?’ King asks, CBS News reported.

Walker listens than laughs: ‘Well, I am on my wait out.’

‘What do you mean Alice?’ King responds in a concerned tone.

‘Well I am on 78 and to be able to leave people something they can use is a great joy. I think a life that is honest and a life that was basically wonderful with everything that happened in my life it is a good thing to do.’

The celebrated author, however, was not asked by King about her anti-Semitic beliefs.

In a statement sent to the Jewish Voice, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, the author of 20 books including the pioneering “The New Anti-Semitism” published in 2003 said this:

“Alice Walker is a great writer and Gayle King has the right to conduct an interview in any way she sees fit. I, too, have crossed swords with Alice over the years over the issue of Jews, Judaism, and Israel—however, I know that her marriage to a Jewish civil rights worker with whom she had a daughter soured, and that their daughter chose her Jewish father and his second Jewish wife over her black biological mother. All this is in the public record. How could this not have embittered Alice and caused an otherwise fine mind to scapegoat the Jews and Israel for her own personal heartbreak? Do we judge our artists only on the basis of their worst prejudices—or on the basis of their best work? You decide. On the other hand, normalizing, popularizing, Jew haters is always dangerous, but especially now.”

The Daily Mail also reported that Yair Rosenberg, who describes himself as a ‘writer of DEEP SHTELT at The Atlantic,’ and a ‘troller of Nazis’  appeared outraged by King’s omission in her interview with Walker.

‘Alice Walker is an unrepentant anti-Semite. She has a new book out. If media outlets want to platform her to discuss it, that’s fine. But if they don’t ask about her history of bigotry at the outset, they’re not doing their job of informing the public,’ Rosenberg tweeted.

Former Wall Street Journal and New York Times journalist, Bari Weiss echoed similar sentiments on her Twitter posting the CBS News article that ran of the interview.

‘Alice Walker an unapologetic anti-Semite who believes in lizard Illuminati. But because Jews don’t count, she gets this kind of fawning, uncritical treatment by the mainstream press,’ she said, according to the Daily Mail report.

The Daily Mail reported that in 2018, Walker penned a column for the Times Book Review praising David Icke, a known anti-Semite and conspiracy theorist, and author of the book, ‘And The Truth Shall Set You Free.’

When the story ran, The Times stood by their decision in running the piece.