The MSNBC meltdown over Amy Coney Barrett
Deranged.
Related highlights:
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Things are not well at MSNBC.
As the Senate moves closer to confirming Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, staffers and contributors at the left-wing network are engaged in something like a slow-motion meltdown, the commentary growing increasingly hysterical by the day.
MSNBC contributor Zerlina Maxwell, for example, saw similarities Monday between Barrett’s COVID-19 face mask and Margaret Atwood’s dystopian fiction series The Handmaid’s Tale, where women are raped as a matter of business and treated as property within a patriarchal theocracy.
This is completely healthy and normal behavior. Nothing to see here.
Later, on Tuesday, host Chris Hayes, who promoted an absurd conspiracy theory last week alleging the White House had doctored a video to make it appear as if it was recorded on the South Lawn, had this to say of the effort to confirm Barrett to the Supreme Court:
“The thing I find most notable about ACB's answers today is that the GOP traded a hundred thousand American lives for her seat on the court, and there are thousands of Americans walking around healthy right now who will be sick and dead by year's end.”
Where does one even start? The GOP killed 100,000 for a Supreme Court seat? Is he saying that many people have died since Barrett’s nomination? How does the GOP plan to kill thousands more? And how does Hayes link these deaths to the U.S. Senate exercising its constitutional duty to give the president its advice and consent? Does even Hayes know what he is talking about?
Totally normal stuff!
Then, there is MSNBC senior producer and Twitter junkie Kyle Griffin, who acted offended Tuesday after Barrett said, “I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not ever discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.”
Griffin complained to his more than 900,000 social media followers, “‘Sexual preference,’ a term used by Justice Barrett, is offensive and outdated. The term implies sexuality is a choice. It is not. News organizations should not repeat Justice Barrett's words without providing that important context.”
This one example of the MSNBC slow-motion meltdown is especially annoying. It is a play-pretend newsman choosing the most uncharitable interpretation of Barrett's remarks, and all so he can call for newsrooms to affix what amounts to a parental advisory label to her public statements. Allow me this aside.
The American Psychological Association recommended in the 1980s that the public retire “sexual preference,” arguing that it “suggests a degree of voluntary choice that is not necessarily reported by lesbians and gay men and that has not been demonstrated in psychological research.”
But the term “sexual preference” continued to appear everywhere in major media and mainstream discourse, with no malice intended, even after the APA’s recommendation. In fact, it was not until 2006 that the Associated Press even updated its style guide to replace “sexual preference” with “sexual orientation.” Yet even after that update, the term continued to show up in popular media, appearing everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to Reuters to ABC News to the Atlantic. It even appeared as recently as 2014 in a press statement from the office of Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.
Clearly, it takes time for language and habits to change. Just because people are not as up to date as they can be does not mean they intend offense. That is why the APA itself said of its recommendation that because “no universal agreement exists on terminology, and because language and culture continually change, [its recommendations] should be considered helpful suggestions rather than rigid rules.”
Like most acts of speech policing, Griffin’s complaint Tuesday has nothing to do with encouraging open-mindedness and inclusivity. It has everything to do with using language as a cudgel against a political opponent. Barrett obviously meant no ill intent, but Griffin is responding as if she did because he wants to attack. Barrett is the enemy.
If it is any consolation to the MSNBC producer, as he sits there stewing in a rage of his own making, he is not alone. The entire left-wing cable network appears to be having a bad time this week, and it is all because Barrett will almost certainly be your next associate justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.