Fox News seems to have launched a new reality TV show. Broadcast in Nevada, the central character is a rancher who wants to opt out of payment of fees other ranchers pay to graze their cattle on surrounding land. Cliven Bundy claims "ancestral rights" to the land. He owes over a million dollars in fines and penalties for his use of Federal lands. I am glad Fox News does not consider Cliven to be a welfare "deadbeat"!

   Cliven is an enlightened man, too. Here are his ruminations---he raises cattle, after all---on some aspects of race:

    "'I want to tell you one more thing about the Negro,' he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, 'and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids---and there is always at least a half dozen people sitting on the porch---they didn't have nothing to do. They didn't have nothing for their young girls to do.

   "'And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do you do?' he asked. 'They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton.  And I've often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn't get no more freedom. They got less freedom.'" Nagourny, Adam, "A Defiant Rancher Savors the Audience That Rallied to His Side," New York Times, 4/23/14.

   Mr. Bundy has analyzed the problems of race and poverty with a snapshot as he drove through one part of Las Vegas and drawn conclusions. For those cynical enough to compare this Bundy to the people he observed on the front porch of government housing, there is a BIG difference. Those people are lucky if they receive basic housing and subsidies sufficient to eat. They are lucky if they have a functional public school nearby so their kids can obtain an education. But Bundy? He has not paid over one million dollars in grazing fees.

   What will Fox air next? Maybe Bundy's ratings are higher than Sarah Palin's latest foray into TV. She can become part of his show, the way "Petticoat Junction" was part of "The Beverly Hillbillies."