
MSNBC Fires Melissa Harris-Perry
MSNBC has long been the home for unabashed liberalism in the cable news wars, but they announced Sunday that they would be cutting ties with their most outrageous radical host. After Melissa Harris-Perry complained to colleagues about her Saturday morning show being repeatedly preempted by breaking news coverage, the network confirmed that her services would no longer be needed.
Harris-Perry brought about her own demise by walking out on her own program this weekend and then emailing her co-workers with an explanation tinged with insinuations of racism. “I will not be used as a tool for their purposes,” she wrote. “I am not a token, mammy or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by [NBC executives] or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back.”
The New York Times published the contents of the email, which immediately put Harris-Perry’s job in jeopardy. An executive told reporters that “it’s highly unlikely” that she would be kept on board following her accusations. On Sunday, the network confirmed that she would be hitting the ol’ dusty trail, disappointing dozens of viewers.
In truth, though, her departure is something of a disappointment. There is no one else in the media who reveals the true idiocy of liberal politics quite like Harris-Perry. While hosts like Chris Matthews and Rachel Maddow have said plenty of questionable things, they’ve never sunk to the depths she has plumbed in recent years. In the spirit of a fond farewell, let’s take a look at three of Melissa Harris-Perry’s greatest hits.
“Hard Worker” a Racist Term
When conservative guest Alfonso Aguilar praised incoming House Speaker Paul Ryan as a hard worker last year, Harris-Perry got her dander up.
“I just want to pause on one thing, because I don’t disagree with you that I actually think Mr. Ryan is a great choice for this role,” she said. “But I want us to be super careful when we use the language ‘hard worker.’ Because I actually keep an image of folks working in cotton fields on my office wall, because it is a reminder about what hard work looks like.”
While her guests practiced keeping a smile in the face of insanity, Harris-Perry said, “In the context of relative privilege, I just want to point out, that when you talk about work-life balance and being a hard worker, the moms who don’t have health care who are working, we don’t call them hard workers. We call them failures, people who are sucking off the system.”
Unless you are a single mom or a slave, you can’t claim to be a hard worker. The wisdom of a liberal.
Darth Vader is Racist
Harris-Perry managed to outdo herself on the subject of racism in December, claiming that Darth Vader himself was a character meant to denigrate black people. “I know why I have feelings – good, bad, and otherwise – about Star Wars,” she said. “I spent the whole day talking about the Darth Vader situation.”
The Darth Vader situation?
“The part where he was totally a black guy, whose name was basically James Earl Jones,” she said. “While he was black he was terrible and bad, awful and used to cut off white men’s hand, and didn’t actually claim his son. But as soon as he claims his son, goes over to the good, takes off his mask and he is white — yes, I have many feelings about that.”
To be fair, Harris-Perry isn’t the first person to make that observation. Kevin Smith’s Chasing Amy begins with a black militant arguing a similar point. The difference, of course, being that Chasing Amy is a comedy and Harris-Perry is just a joke.
Prayer is Islamophobic
Shortly after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino, Harris-Perry told her viewers that she was uncomfortable with Americans praying for the victims and their families.
“Check me if I’m wrong on this,” she said. “I keep feeling that we think we’re praying to some kind of god that is anti-Muslim, counter-Islamic, and we consistently will see Muslims in prayer as somehow dangerous, threatening, as opposed to prayerful in sacred practice.”
Harris-Perry wasn’t the only liberal engaging in “prayer-shaming” that week, but she was probably the most ridiculous. Considering that she was in competition with the New York Daily News, among others, that’s saying something.
Farewell, sweet princess. It’s not easy to find racial injustice in literally everything, but you managed to do it. MSNBC advertisers probably aren’t going to miss you, but we will.