Tag Archives: Melissa Harris-Perry

national news, Uncategorized

'Quack like a duck'?

Megyn Kelly was right to be aghast at what Melissa Harris-Perry asked of the outgoing U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder.

The Fox News host was astonished — as she should have been — that Perry would ask the AG to “quack like a duck” on her nationally televised talk show the other day.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/10/megyn-kelly-melissa-perry-duck-eric-holder-interview_n_6652134.html

I didn’t see the interview live. I’ve watched a recording of it. I’m wondering as well: What on God’s green Earth is Perry thinking?

Holder has served as the nation’s top law enforcement official since Barack Obama became president in 2009. Yes, he’s made some mistakes along the way and he’s incurred the wrath of many Americans — notably congressional Republicans — over the way he’s run his office.

But I do believe he deserves a lot more respect than what he seemed to be getting from Perry, who is as friendly to the attorney general as any of the talking heads working on cable news networks.

Kelly couldn’t stand the sight and sound of Perry’s bizarre question exchange with Holder.

Neither can I, truth be told.

 

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Harris-Perry issues real apology

There are non-apology apologies. You know them when you hear them.

They’re the statements where the individual seeking to atone for a mistake says this:

“If I offended anyone, then I am sorry for those remarks.”

The implication, of course, is that the individual isn’t apologizing to those he or she did not offend.

The reverse of that are the real apologies, those heart-felt mea culpas that come from deep within, from the heart, or the gut. That’s what I heard Saturday from Melissa Harris-Perry, the MSNBC talk show host who took part in a discussion that got way out of hand.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2014/01/04/nr-msnbc-host-apology.cnn.html

The discussion was a year-end review of political events of 2013. Harris-Perry flashed a picture of 2012 Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, with their grandchildren. One of the kids is an African-American infant adopted by one of the Romneys’ five sons and his wife. The panel went to great lengths over the next few moments to poke fun at the Romneys and singled out little Kieran Romney for ridicule. They were trying to make some ridiculous statement about Republicans’ outreach to the minority citizens.

The response from many circles, not just from conservatives, was ferocious. Harris-Perry was called down correctly by many pundits across the nation for the tastelessness of the segment.

She acknowledged it — all of it — Saturday morning while issuing an apology that turned tearful. And yes, the emotion sure looked real to me.

Harris-Perry did the honorable thing by going on the air to apologize. It’s been said, of course, that the more honorable thing would have been to refrain from saying those disgraceful things in the first place.

Well, we’re all human. We’re all fallible. She made a mistake. She apologized for it in its entirety without qualification.

As for Gov. Romney, he has accepted her apology and wants to move on, as he said this morning on Fox News Sunday. If it’s good enough for Mitt Romney, it’s good enough for me.

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MSNBC jokesters toss a bomb at Romney clan

MSNBC went over the line.

With both feet.

Check out this link, taken from CNN.com, about a disgraceful display of bad taste exhibited on MSNBC, having to do with Mitt Romney’s family and the presence of an infant sitting on the former Republican presidential candidate’s knee.

http://thehill.com/video/in-the-news/194168-lemon-slams-msnbc-for-romney-grandson-joke

MSNBC talk-show host Melissa Harris-Perry is an interesting, intelligent individual who hosts a weekend show on the cable network. For the life of me I cannot fathom why she allowed this discussion making fun of Mitt Romney’s adopted grandson, an African-American infant named Kieran, to make some point about the Republican Party’s difficulty with minority voters.

I’ve long held to the belief that one should not poke fun at family members, or make fun of people’s appearance or the sound of their name. For the network to use a baby to make a cheap political point simply is beyond disgusting.

As the commentators noted on this CNN link, adoption should be saluted as something wonderful and grand. That’s all should have mattered when MSNBC showed the photo of Mitt and Ann Romney with their grandchildren.