Downfall: "The View" Continues to Plummet...Invites Disgraced ESPN Journalist to Bash Trump
I’ve always personally felt that the title of ABC’s gabfest “The View” was missing something. I’m not personally opposed to calling it “The View,” per se. I just think the three words “… from the left” ought to be appended to it.
Every morning at roughly 11 a.m. (or thereabouts, depending on your local affiliate), the American Broadcasting Company airs what amounts to a paid political advertisement for the Democrat Party, in which a gaggle of female liberal celebrities vigorously lambaste anything and everything to the right of Hillary Clinton’s campaign platform, along with the token conservative allowed to be in their midst. (That “conservative” is currently Meghan McCain, proof positive that actual conservatives were a bit much for their taste.)
The show has come under fire in recent weeks, particularly after Joy Behar essentially called praying Christians — or at least Christians who pray like Mike Pence — mentally ill. Now, the show is back in the spotlight after an appearance by Jemele Hill, the ESPN journalist who called Donald Trump a white supremacist and was later disgraced with a suspension due to a tweet urging the boycott of Cowboys owner Jerry Jones.
Five months after she tweeted that “Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists,” she appeared on the liberal talk show where she defended her statement against what amounted to cursory opposition (it might be better to simply call it curiosity) from the aforementioned Ms. McCain.
Donald Trump is a white supremacist who has largely surrounded himself w/ other white supremacists.
— Jemele Hill (@jemelehill) September 11, 2017
“I still stand by what I said,” Hill told McCain when asked whether she was still willing to stand by her statement, according to The Daily Beast.
She added that “I don’t think that his supporters are white supremacists.” They do, however, suffer from something just as bad: the dreaded disease privilegeitis whiteus.
“What I would say, though, is that they have the benefit and privilege to be able to distance and disassociate themselves from certain issues,” Hill said.
“Me, as a woman of color, I feel vulnerable to certain behaviors, certain policies, certain things that he’s said and done. And so all of that was part of that response, feeling that vulnerability. If it doesn’t impact you directly or if you don’t feel that, it’s probably harder for you to understand it.”
Hilariously, Hill didn’t think calling the president a white supremacist surrounded by white supremacists — and not being particularly eager to clarify at the time that she didn’t think it applied to his “privileged” supporters — would amount to much.
“I did not expect in that moment that it was going to become what it became,” Hill said.
Really, now.
Let’s be clear here: white supremacist is a rhetorical hand grenade that isn’t to be tossed around lightly. It is someone who literally believes in a master race, believes it is white and, in an American context, is usually willing to use violent means to defend it and to target members of other races.
A white supremacist is not, I repeat, is not someone you believe to be insufficiently supportive of causes and positions that you associate with people of color. It is not someone who doesn’t ascribe to postcolonialist dogma. It isn’t someone who didn’t like President Obama, or who thinks that the Black Lives Matter movement has been prone to excess, or who supports their local police, or who thinks that illegal immigration is, well, illegal and ought to be punished as such.
None of these things are white supremacist. None of these things have ever been white supremacist. Labeling them as such does not, alas, change that salient fact. If Hill has information that the president is himself or is surrounding himself with “American History X” types, she as a journalist has the obligation to come forward with this information for the good of the country. Until that time, it’s fair to say her statement is objectively false.
As for her thoughts that white people who support Donald Trump are privileged and just don’t get it, I would propose that it might be the other way around.
Let’s not forget that Hill has gone further than simply calling Trump’s supporters privileged. In an appearance on Al Sharpton’s MSNBC show, Hill compared the president’s State of the Union speech to “racial pornography,” ostensibly painting them as mindless, lustful consumers of bigotry.
Hill has ensconced herself deep within the insulating bubble of the political media — which ESPN, a former sports network, is now a member in good standing of. These are the people who thought Donald Trump could never win and then failed to understand the reasons why, simply labeling it either bigotry or a hitherto unknown darkness of the heart that had affected Americans.
The idea that blue-collar, middle-income Americans, who often have their acceptable range of opinions dictated to them by the American media, are privileged beyond opinion-makers like Hill simply because of the color of their skin would be funny were it not so pernicious.
Her clarifying statements on those individuals since the tweet — that anyone who voted for or supports the president is a vicious automaton, blinded by their privilege and nourished on “racial pornography” — are reprehensible. The fact that she wasn’t given anything resembling a grilling on them by the women of “The View” is equally sickening.
But hey, it’s all good to call Christians mentally ill. Right, Joy Behar?
Please like and share on Facebook and Twitter if you agree this is another low for “The View.”
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