MSNBC: ‘Spiraling Out of Control’

“MSNBC’s latest public apology shows the network has a problem that is ‘spiraling out of control,’ The Blaze’s S.E. Cupp said Thursday:”

The network prompted outrage Wednesday after it sent a tweet claiming that “the rightwing” would supposedly “hate” a Cheerios commercial because it featured a biracial family. It eventually responded to online pushback by deleting the offending tweet and issuing a retraction.

Cupp is a former co-host of MSNBC’s “The Cycle,” a show on which race “came up a lot.”

“I always welcomed that idea where someone, some less thoughtful pundit, would introduce that idea that half the country is racist because they’re Republican, because I thought, ‘This is great. If liberalism exposes tolerance, I’m glad we are showing and exposing that lack of tolerance for what it is,” she said Thursday on TheBlaze TV’s “Real News.” “It’s all they can see.”

Cupp added that it was also fun “shooting down” these ideas when they were brought up by her former MSNBC colleagues.

“But when it comes in an official capacity from the network,” she said, referring to the Cheerios tweet, “I think that’s deeply disappointing. Deeply, deeply disappointing.”

It may be “deeply disappointing,” but it shouldn’t be at all surprising — and short-term, it’s simply not fixable. As the ideology that once described itself as “liberal” from about 1920 until about 2007 or so has moved further and further left ever since Al Gore ran for the White House in 2000 (and then much more so in the fevered response to his loss), racism has become increasingly hard-wired into the modern left’s mindset. (Not that it wasn’t there previously.) Recall in 2008, during the Democrat primaries, when the late Nora Ephron was trashing Hillary Clinton supporters in the Huffington Post: “This is an election about whether the people of Pennsylvania hate blacks more than they hate women. And when I say people, I don’t mean people, I mean white men.” (So white men aren’t people? Joseph Goebbels, call your office.) Near concurrently, while attempting to tamp down the outrage over his association with Jeremiah Wright and the racialism of his cohorts, Barack Obama described his grandmother as “a typical white person.”

Spencer Ackerman, then of the Washington Independent suggesting on the JournoList, also in response to the Rev. Wright firestorm, “take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists. This makes *them* sputter with rage, which in turn leads to overreaction and self-destruction.”

Or after the election, the seemingly daily insults hurled at the Tea Party as being racist, many of which emanated from MSNBC hosts or regular guests such as Janeane “Racism straight up!” Garofalo. Or the claims that “Maybe fifteen people about fifteen times” shouted the N-word on the steps of Congress when Nancy Pelosi and her giant novelty gavel led the brigade that passed Obamacare in 2010. That effort by the left to smear the right as racist was debunked by the late Andrew Breitbart and colleagues so thoroughly that even JournoList member Ben Smith, then of the Politico declared, “I think you’ve pretty much won this one, no?”

No. Because otherwise, we wouldn’t have had MSNBC’s meltdowns late last year, culminating in Martin Bashir’s racialist-inspired scatology-laden rant directed towards Sarah Palin, and the panel led by Melissa Harris-Perry goofing on Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandson. Etc., etc.

As Reason’s Jesse Walker astutely noted in 2009, elites at the center of power are as paranoid as any fringe group — and certainly, the boardroom of NBC counts as a center of power — one of the centers of power — for this administration.

Of course, when Hillary and/or Elizabeth Warren hit the campaign trail in earnest next year, get ready for the left to pivot on a dime (historically, they’ve always been able to perform sharper and faster 180-degree pivots than Tony Hawk on his best day) to declaring rampant sexism across the land, too.

MSNBC may tamp down its daily racism — if only because it’s currently shining such a powerful spotlight on how the left thinks about its fellow countrymen — but it’s simply too systemic to disappear from the left’s worldview.

Update: QED:

So, is NBC now employing a trickle down policy for its politics? http://t.co/5se9ZmcxOI@instapundit

— Bob Beasley (@13013B) January 31, 2014

At Commentary, Peter Wehner adds, “This incident demonstrates how for some on the left virtually everything is reduced to politics — even a cereal ad. It reveals an obsession with politics that is distorted and unhealthy.” Wehner’s post is titled, “For Leftists, the Personal is Still the Political”; read the whole thing.