Media Research Center chief Brent Bozell has a fit about a new MSNBC promo by Melissa Harris-Perry:
Melissa Harris-Perry declaring in an ad that we must “break through” the “private notion” that “your kid is yours” because “kids belong to whole communities” is an outrage. This isn’t what Mediaite called “a collection of tired progressive cliches on steroids.” This is shredding the notion of family, replacing it with the commands of the state.
MSNBC has awarded itself a new acronym: My Son Needs to Belong to the Collective. How do you sell a private network with this dreadful collectivist advertising?
But as Bozell’s own “news” outlet, CNSNews.com, has reported, Harris-Perry has a daughter, not a son. Changing the gender of Harris-Perry’s child in order to insult her seems par for the course for Bozell.
On top of that, Bozell’s quoting on snippets of Harris-Perry’s words and not providing what Harris-Perry actually said in full context. That’s another clear sign that he’s twisting her words.
Here’s what she actually said:
We have never invested as much in public education as we should have, because we’ve always had kind of a private notion of children — your kid is yours and totally your responsibility. We have’t a very collective notion of “these are our children.” So part of it is we have to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents or kids belong to their families and recognize that kids belong to whole communities. Once it’s everybody’s responsibility and not just the household’s, then we start making better investments.
In other words, Harris-Perry is arguing that Americans treat children as part of a community through investment in public education, and that the idea of people like Bozell that public education is a waste and children are the property of parents instead of a member of society is harmful to children. Harris-Perry did not “shred the notion of family” in favor of “the commands of the state.”
Wait, weren’t Bozell’s employees complaining just the other day that the “liberal media” was focusing only on controversial comments while ignoring the overall point of what was being said? Yes, they were.