From The Huffington Post: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-sniveling-apologizers_b_4715109.html
Cenk Uygur
02/03/2014
First, let me be clear that this is not intended for the hosts on MSNBC. It’s management that’s the issue. The way Phil Griffin has his hosts trot out for one apology after another is revolting. At least, he included himself in the genuflecting to the right-wing last time around. The whole display is pathetic.
Let’s also be clear about another thing. Phil Griffin, who happens to be the head of MSNBC, is not a liberal or progressive. I worked at MSNBC, I talked to Phil Griffin many times, I know Phil Griffin. He is not remotely progressive. All he cares about is success in his own career. He even basically admitted in this recent interview that he would head a conservative network if it made more money. The idea that he represents progressives as he keeps groveling to conservatives is absurd and sickening.
First of all, the last two apologies were not at all necessary. Melissa Harris Perry called Mitt Romney’s black grandson gorgeous (go back and check the tape). Yes, it would have been nice if someone on the set said, “God bless their hearts for being open minded in adopting someone outside of their race.” This is about as minor an infraction as I could imagine. Instead we got a tearful apology that was hard to watch and hard to stomach.
Now, there was a tweet sent out about how some right-wingers might not like a biracial ad by Cheerios. Gee, I wonder why they might think that. Maybe it’s because some right-wingers already had hateful things to say about that ad (yes, they don’t represent all conservatives, but once again, this is the most minor infraction in television history). The MSNBC employee didn’t make up that reaction — it already existed online. How many times has Bill O’Reilly characterized all liberals as saying something based on what some readers in the Daily Kos or The Huffington Post comments section said? Only about a million times.
Maybe that person at MSNBC who sent the tweet got the idea from a recent ad that caused outrage on Fox News because it included a Muslim woman and her husband who is in the U.S. military. They said this ad was only blocks from the site of 9/11! That is 100 percent bigoted response from the right-wing to an ad that involves two people from different backgrounds. Bingo.
Maybe they would have gotten the idea that Republicans don’t like biracial couples because of a poll in the Republican primaries in the South where 21 percent of GOP primary voters in Alabama and 29 percent of the Mississippi GOP primary voters said that interracial marriage should be illegal.
Can anyone in America say with a straight face it is unclear which party in America is more racist? One of the parties had this thing called the Southern Strategy, where they decided being racist toward blacks would get more white voters in the South. Care to guess which party that was? If you’re still unclear on that or completely ignorant, maybe the last two RNC chairs could help you because they both apologized for their party’s blatantly racist strategy.
Continue reading at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cenk-uygur/the-sniveling-apologizers_b_4715109.html
