It's not surprising that Jason Riley, a Wall Street Journal columnist and Fox News contributor, has little in common with MSNBC's African-American talking heads aside from race. But in an online video he called them mediocre and accused the network of having ulterior motives for hiring the talking heads.

"I think there's a pattern at MSNBC of them hiring Black mediocrities like Melissa Harris-Perry, Michael Eric Dyson, Touré, and, of course — the granddaddy of them all — Al Sharpton, simply to race-bait," Riley told WSJ Live host Mary Kissel.

He also said that MSNBC hosts promote the idea that “all of Black peoples’ problems are caused by white people, and if you disagree with that, Mary, you’re a racist.”

His criticisms were precipitated by Harris-Perry's recent teary onscreen apology for a segment about Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney's adopted African-American grandchild. Romney earlier this week graciously accepted the apology, but Riley is unable to do so.

Harris-Perry "suggested it was a sort of a segment gone awry, that she had intended the conversation to be uplifting," said Riley, who also penned a column on the issue. "I think the segment went exactly as planned and that her apology was really about the blowback."

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(Photo: Courtesy Wall Street Journal Live)