From Mediaite:
“On Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry (MSMBC) show, the eponymous host led a panel of entertainers in a rundown of the “photos of the year,” which somehow included a Romney family picture that “a lot of people had emotions about,” according to MHP….“Everybody loves a baby picture,” Harris-Perry said, “and this was one that really, a lot of people had emotions about this baby picture this year. This is the Romney family. And, of course, there on Governor Romney’s knee is his adopted grandson, who is an African-American, adopted African-American child, Kieran Romney.” As Harris-Perry made the introduction, panelist Pia Glenn sang “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same,” a tune whose original lyrics read “one of these things doesn’t belong.” “And that little baby, front and center, would be the one,” she added. …Comedian Dean Obeidallah chimed in by reducing the baby to a token. “I think this picture is great,” he said. “It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person.”
Then the host, without missing a beat and without sensing any irony, said that the next segment would be devoted to answering the question, “Hey..is that racist?”
The amount of pure, blind, unreasoning hatred that would have to be present to prompt supposed news professionals to think it is appropriate mock a white family for its adoption of an African American infant is difficult to overstate. This is, after all, MSNBC, where Chris Matthews, among others, stays up nights trying to think of ways that conservative statements are coded racism. This is the realm of Melissa Harris-Perry, who defaults instantly to racism as the explanation for every Obama Administration setback, blunder or embarrassment. Yet here are the NBC host and her guests, giggling and mocking while saying that an innocent, black orphan infant adopted into a wealthy white family is a “thing” that “isn’t the same,” as every viewer hwo has heard the Sesame Street ditty a million times here’s “doesn’t belong” in his head. I’m pretty sure Chris would be on that in a flash.
Such animus and bias don’t belong in the mind and soul of national media professionals, if they are incapable of keeping these poisons from distorting their judgment and coarsening their conduct. Hate as a prime motivation accomplishes no good, and only bad; it begets more hate and divisiveness. MSNBC has now built a brand that is driven not by rational policy debate but by hatred so powerful and accepted that the ethics alarms don’t go off when a segment is devoted to ridiculing a family for giving a loving home to an innocent child.
CNN’s African-American host Don Lemon was shocked by the segment. “If someone on Fox [said], ‘one of these things is not like the other,’ to a black baby in a white family, what do you think would happen?” Lemon asked. Ah, but progressives can use racist words and methods, you see, because everyone knows that they are really good inside, and have the best intentions! Lemon, to his credit, was not endorsing that dodge, describing the (rival, which is not irrelevant) network as “a bunch of people on the left who all agree with each other and there’s no diversity of opinion…and saying mean, smug things about people who may disagree with them.”
Lemon didn’t go far enough. They aren’t just mean and smug; they are vicious, hateful, and hypocritical. Most of all, they are unprofessional to the core, which is an indictment of MSNBC. The indictment of MSNBC viewers is that they endorse hate, as long as it is aimed at figures they disagree with politically, even when it focuses on conduct that decent, fair, ethical people should be applauding. BuzzFeed says the segment has “conservatives crying foul.” Really? Only conservatives think it’s wrong to ridicule a loving family that, unlike so many white families in the U.S., sees not an African American child in need of a loving home, but a child?
Good to know.
_____________________________________
Sources: The Blaze, Mediaite, BuzzFeed
Ethics Alarms 
Just a guess here, but the Romney family will probably continue to thrive and be happy is spite of MSNBC. Whether the reverse is true is not even questionable. MSNBC will no doubt choke to death on it’s own bile.
Read the first line and “one of these thing doesn’t belong was in my head”.
I really do think they live in a world that only exists in thier own minds, where anyone who doesn’t believe what they do but may do something that could be viewed as good only does it as a self-serving act.
Let me add another cornerstone to the foundation of our hosts’s argument.
Families should be out of bounds for political discussion in the first place. Even people who don’t have to live to the high standards that newscasters are supposed to meet are obligated to leave the children out of the discussion.
There may be exceptions but damned few of them.
One of the lowest points in US politics was during the South Carolina Republican primary when some Bush-supporting group (have they ever been identified?) ran a telephone push poll asking voters something to the effect “Would you be less likely to vote for McCain if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”. This when his adopted daughter had been on TV.
Clearly a low point, but was it a political group or a media group that did it?
Picking a low point would be hard. Critics and comics mocked Amy Carter was she was awkward pre-teen. The attacks on Sarah Palin’s daughters and Down Syndrome son were pretty low.
H-P and the gang’s despicable routine wasn’t so much an attack on the kid as the exploitation of interracial adoption to take political cheap shots and show utter contempt for Romney and his family without provocation.
Chelsea also was mocked for being unattractive. And the Bush twins were followed around by reporters hoping for an underage drinking shot – because college kids drinking is so newsworthy.
Good point. In fact I do not know for sure.
This is too juicy to pass up a reply; but I don’t see the big deal.
“Jesse Jackson won the South Carolina Primary…twice?” – WJC
People don’t like the facts so they attribute them to ulterior motives.
I have no idea what this comment means or is referring to. What”s “no big deal’? What “facts”?
Now we get to rate the apology on the apology scale:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2013/12/31/melissa_harris_perry_apologizes_for_comments_about_romney_s_black_grandson.html
I’ve often said that you can judge the worth of a cause by the worth of its adherents. One tends to shape the other. When a cause is based on bitterness, ego and nihilism, you get this from its media proponents. You need look no further than MSNBC as an example.
The people on the panel that no-one has ever heard of are apparently comedians, that no-one has ever heard of. I’m surprised that the “They’re comedians!” rationalization hasn’t been prevalent. MSNBC continues to ‘Lean Forward’, and move past the old, conservative, reactionary idea that comedy must be, you know, “funny”.
I expected that too.
They have to rip into the adoption, because it has created cognitive dissonance within themselves. Look at it thus:
Principle 1: Republicans are racists.
Principle 2: Someone in the (presumably Republican) Romney family adopted a black baby, and the (definitely Republican) Mitt is holding said baby lovingly on his lap during a family photo shoot.
Principle 2 creates dissonance with Principle 1 in the minds of these loathsome talking heads, because they KNOW Romney must be racist, but then again, he’s sitting there holding a dark-skinned baby, and… ARRRGH! So they instinctively trivialize and attack to reduce the source of the dissonance to an irrelevant punchline.
Just got this on a post from 19 months ago, and thought everyone would enjoy it: “FEDUP” took issue with my criticizing conservative talk-show host Chris Plant’s double ad hominen attack on two MSNBC hosts (he said that Chris Hayes was essentially like Rachel Maddow, “but with a smaller penis”–stay classy, Chris…) by writing…“Please!!! Liberal media types trash conservatives 24/7 and always get away with it. Where are your articles about that? But disparage a liberal and it’s an ethic violation. Hypocrite!”
Gee…I really do need to start focusing on liberal media bias, to be fair. Good point, FedUp!