It was a glorious Olympic moment. Gabby Douglas, a 90-pound bundle of strength, skill, speed, and power, won the women’s all around title at the Olympics — the first African American to achieve such glory.
Immediately following her feat, NBC cut to a commercial. The ad was for a new NBC sitcom, Animal Practice, and featured a monkey performing on the gymnastics rings.
And before you knew it, the racialists had taken dead aim at NBC, trying to piggyback their cause on top of Douglas’s marvelous victory and take the network to task for their “racist” ad.
The Daily Mail:
Angry viewers lashed out at the network on social media platforms like Twitter, accusing them of racism.
‘Disgusted at NBC for showing Animal Practice with monkey right after Gabby wins her gold,’ one user posted.
Another called it ‘risky.’
In a statement to MailOnline, NBC Sports said: ‘Gabby Douglas’ gold medal performance last night was an historic and inspiring achievement.
‘This spot promoting ’Animal Practice,’ which has run three times previously, is one in a series with an Olympic theme which have been scheduled for maximum exposure. Certainly no offense was intended.’
Of course no offense was intended. And you’d have to be an idiot to take offense in the first place. In fact, most of us probably take offense at the way the race baiters hijacked Gabby Douglas’s golden moment for their own low purposes. It beggars belief that anyone could seriously entertain the notion that the coincidence of a monkey in an ad appearing immediately after a young black teenager won what is arguably the most prestigious competition in the Olympics was deliberate, and hence “racist.”
Why did NBC even bother to respond? The criticism is nonsense on its face, without merit, and so transparently a ploy for attention from people who don’t deserve any notice at all that one wonders at the network’s sensitivity. A bogus issue is made using a bogus charge and NBC apologizes as if it is their fault? Ridiculous.
The extent to which our society has been taken over by these racialist charlatans — where intent means nothing, and the deliberate exaggeration and twisted logic inherent in their critiques is taken seriously by a media that should know better — makes communication a mine field where everyone must not let slip anything that could be remotely used in a racial context without it being blown up into an incident.
NBC should not have apologized.
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