There were a lot of double standards flying about when the Media Research Center went after Samantha Bee for tagging a vulgar expression on Ivanka Trump.
Kyle Drennen complained that one reporter pointed out that Bee is a comedian: “When Roseanne crossed the line, the press rightfully criticized her. But when Bee hurled her invective at the First Family, Soboroff’s first instinct was to claim she’s just ‘a comedian.’ The hypocrisy is stunning.”
As is the MRC’s. We remember when Hank Williams Jr. likened President Obama to Hitler, the MRC’s first instinct was to dismiss it as a “bad joke.”
Peter Sifre declared: “It is absolutely wrong to call a woman the ‘C’ word. However, the moral relativism of the left naturally leads to the conclusion that it is allowed if the correct intersectional categories are checked off by the offender and if they agree with the offender’s politics. It would be wrong if it was a random woman on the street but it is okay if it is the president’s daughter. It would be wrong if a man said it but it is okay because Samantha Bee said it. This is the antithesis of individual responsibility.”
Meanwhile, we don’t remember the MRC getting offended by anything Ted Nugent — a current board member of the National Rifle Association and a visitor to the White House under Donald Trump — has done, which include calling Hillary Clinton a “toxic cunt.”
Drennen came back to grouse that one commentator was “blaming President Trump for creating an environment of incivility” that led to Bee’s remark. He forgot that his employer also engages in this kind of blame-shifting, as the headline for this May 20 item by Nicholas Fondacaro illustrates: “ABC Host Pushes Gun Control, Ignores Devaluation of Life by Our Culture.”