It was just a few weeks ago that MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry came under fire for a segment on her show that poked fun at a picture featuring Mitt Romney’s adopted black grandson Kieran. And the network has made headlines yet again – this time for 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.
Screengrab via Twitchy
It took no time at all for biracial ‘right wing’ families to take to Twitter using #MyRightWingBiracialFamily to post pictures of their loving, beautiful families. MSNBC ultimately chose to remove the offensive tweet, and the network issued a response asserting that the original message did not reflect MSNBC’s position:
Earlier, this account tweeted an offensive line about the new Cheerios ad. We deeply regret it. It does not reflect the position of msnbc.
— msnbc (@msnbc) January 30, 2014
While Glenn was very vocal in defending Harris-Perry earlier this month, the displays of intolerance and racism over at MSNBC are growing too frequent to be passed off as an accident.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
“I have accepted the apologies of MSNBC. We have defended people that we disagree with and said, ‘Look, they don’t mean it that way.’ [But] this is a very big deal because this shows a pattern at MSNBC, and, honestly, Melissa Harris Perry, your apology means a lot less because of this,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “I'm sorry, MSNBC, but you are racist, and we know who you are now… They issued an apology and said, ‘We apologize for this tweet, and it doesn't reflect the network or our values.’ Yes, it does.”
Stu was willing to defend the individual who tweeted the message because that person was really just sharing a message that is inline with the sentiments expressed across the network.
“I got to defend the guy a little bit… If you're at MSNBC and you tweet [that] aren't you in the pocket of what everybody is saying? Every day they're entire line-up is just calling conservatives racist. How could they possibly not think that was appropriate,” Stu asked. “Al Sharpton has a show on your network that's a million times worse than this tweet! They haven't apologized for that yet… Think of what Chris Matthews does every day. The only prism he sees anything through is race.”
While the person who tweeted the message is really just an innocent bystander in this situation, Glenn believes the only way for MSNBC to prove it is truly sorry for this latest example of racism is to fire the person responsible.
“Let he tell you something, MSNBC: There is no excuse for it,” Glenn said. “If that is indeed who you aren't, then you should fire that individual and make sure that everybody knows that you fired him – just like ABC did with the ‘chink in the armor’ [reporter]. ‘Chink in the armor’ is a phrase that everybody uses. And it was a wrong firing. But they so overreacted because of the Mouse.”
“But [MSNBC is] so unafraid of calling people racist… They meant this one,” he concluded. “They meant this. And they think they're going to just get away with it, and they probably will. ‘Oh, we retracted that. We're sorry.’ No, it's who you are.”