Last night, S.E. Cupp joined the Real News panel to discuss the controversy surrounding MSNBC’s racially insensitive tweet. On Wednesday night, MSNBC’s official Twitter account posted a tweet that implied ‘right-wingers’ would not like the latest iteration of a Cheerios commercial featuring a biracial family.
“Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family,” MSNBC Tweeted Wednesday night, linking to the new ad.
The network quickly took down the tweet, and MSNBC president Phil Griffin formally apologized. But given the race-related controversy that has surrounded various hosts on the network (i.e. Melissa Harris-Perry, Martin Bashir, Alec Baldwin…) over the last few months, one has to wonder how sincere MSNBC’s mea culpa really is.
As S.E. explained, MSNBC – like any cable news network – employs pundits that are paid to express an opinion. In those instances, the topic of race might come up and the conversation might get messy.
“When I was back at MSNBC, I was on a show in which race came up a lot,” she said. “I always welcomed the idea where some less thoughtful pundit would introduce the idea that 50% of the country is racist because they are Republican because I thought, ‘This is great. If liberalism espouses tolerance, I am glad we are showing and exposing that lack of tolerance for what it is.’ I was glad when that opinion was put out there partly because I could shoot it down and partly to expose the real intolerance of some liberals.”
The problem with this particular Tweet, however, is that it came from MSNBC’s official account, which in theory represents the values and opinions of the network at large.
“But when it comes in an official capacity from the network, I think that is deeply disappointing – deeply, deeply disappointing. That tells me a culture has created an acceptance, a willingness, a complicity in allowing that line of thinking to seep out into the mainstream officially,” S.E. explained. “That’s a real problem. And I am sure Phil Giriffiin knows that is real problem… but I don’t know, with Melissa Harris-Perry, Martin Bashir, Alec Baldwin and the list goes on and on, this is a problem that is spiraling out of control for that network.”
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