Alaska Republican Rep. Don Young invoked an ethnic slur by calling Hispanics “wetbacks,” but Media Research Center senior news analyst Scott Whitlock has engaged in a campaign of whitewashing and distraction to paper over that inconvenient fact.
In a March 29 MRC item, Whitlock put “slur” in scare quotes in the headline, tepidly claiming that Young merely “referred to Hispanic migrant workers as ‘wetbacks.'” Whitlock then played its usual distraction game, bringing up that while a senator, Joe Biden “smeared Indian Americans as mostly working at the convenience store 7-11.”
Whitlock seems not to understand the difference between invoking a dumb stereotype and hurling an ethnic slur.
Whitlock followed up in an April 1 item, calling Young’s use of the word merely a “gaffe” he “blurted,” putting “racial” in scare quotes in the headline.
Whitlock went on to complain that an ABC said of Young’s slur, “Hard to spin that one, for sure.” But Whitlock is spinning it as hard as he can.