Sick: Samantha Bee Says C-Word She Called Ivanka Should Actually Be Badge of Honor
On Wednesday, Samantha Bee continued her great backtrack tour of 2018, during which she tried to convince America she was sorry and her liberal fan base she wasn’t too sorry about calling Ivanka Trump the c-word.
Take, for instance, her attempt to rationalize what she did last week on this week’s show. Please. Yes, that joke may have been outdated the moment Henny Youngman told it, but at least it was funnier — and contained more truth — than her Wednesday mea sorta culpa, during which she claimed she was trying to reclaim the c-word as a badge of honor for women.
Bee, as you may remember, called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c—” and suggested that she should “put on something tight” to seduce her father and convince him that his policies on illegal immigration were wrong.
“A lot of women have heard that word at the worst moment of their lives,” Bee said, according to Vox.
“I don’t want to inflict more pain on them. I want this show to be challenging and I want it to be honest, but I never intended it to hurt anyone, except Ted Cruz.”
Because when you can’t mention that you wanted to hurt someone from the Trump family during an apology for something you said to the Trump family, Ted Cruz will do.
Also, note her apology, which doesn’t really focus that much on the person she tried to inflict pain upon. It also didn’t take notice her other joke about Ivanka Trump, which must have been hee-larious to anyone who’s been the victim of incest.
Bee instead said that when she used the c-word word in the past on her show, it’s been to “reclaim” it. I’m not a big fan of the whole reclamation theory, but in this case, it’s just bunk. She’s trying to lessen the blow by claiming she didn’t really mean to call Ivanka Trump that, and anyway, she meant it as a compliment! Right.
She saved the most absurd part for when she said she was mainly sorry for illegal immigrant children; the media-created firestorm over the Trump administration’s policy of arresting any individual caught crossing the border illegally, thus separating them from their children, was what the segment was initially about.
“I would do anything to help those kids,” Bee said. “I hate that this distracted from them.”
Really, now? How many illegal immigration charities have you done fundraisers for? We took a look and couldn’t run across any, although you have done fundraisers for, inter alia, a charity that seeks to convert hate-mongers, one that seeks to buy bras and feminine hygiene products for women, and of course, needy journalists.
At least the first two have some reason to exist, but the idea that you would “do anything to help those kids” up to and including calling the first daughter the c-word is kind of hollow when it doesn’t include, you know, actually helping them out. Doing a profoundly unserious segment on a late-night cable TV show about a scandal that’s mostly been conjured by the media doesn’t count as helping someone out. It’s never counted as helping someone out, the same way that it’s never counted as being brave.
This isn’t the first time that Samantha Bee has backtracked and it certainly won’t be the last. Her general message seems to be: “How sorry do I need to be while still keeping my job?” She’s thus far spent the last week-and-change trying to find the lowest possible value to this question, and mostly succeeding.
Oh, and Bee wants to know what she isn’t sorry for — men who are offended by the c-word. “I do not care about that,” she said.
The thing is, nobody’s really offended by the word. They’re offended by the fact that you called someone that and used it as a sexist slur against a mother who merely posted a picture of her with her child online. The fact that she doesn’t get that now proves it’s unlikely Samantha Bee ever will.
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