The Huffington Post is reporting that Thursday night, during a speech to Journalism Students at the University of North Carolina, Fox News Chief Roger Ailes, referred to CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien as “that girl that’s named after a prison.”
The Huffington Post goes on the say that, “Ailes was referring to the Soledad Correctional Facility in Monterey County, California. CNN responded to the remark on Friday. An insider told The Huffington Post, “Roger is wrong. Soledad is named after the Virgin Mary, ‘Maria de la Soledad.’ It’s a name her parents gave her in part because they met at Daily Mass.”
It’s moments like this that remind me just how much in denial men like Roger Ailes are about the changing demographic landscape in America. Although his entire speech was openly condescending and insulting to the very audience he was addressing, Ailes outdid himself by managing to insult women (by calling Ms. O’Brien girl) and Latinos for dissing her traditionally ethnic name all within the confines of a single sentence. That’s potentially about 60% of the voting population, Roger. Maybe more. So, it’s gonna take a lot of angry white men to win an election after you piss off Latinos and women.
The simple fact is the future of the GOP is Latino voters. And given the Tea Party’s rampant anti-immigrant rhetoric, one would think, party leaders like Ailes might want to restrain any urges to make fun of leading Latino media figures by mocking their funny Latino names. Funny Latino Catholic names. This all has feint echoes of Rush Limbaugh’s unfortunate foray into the politics of birth control. Its as if we’re all suddenly privy to the nasty little private conversations people like Ailes and Limbaugh have in their limousines. Good old boy conversations during which we KNOW they say all this shit about women and mexicans and blacks and gays and poor people and the entire middle class and you know, pretty much everyone who’s not them, right there, in the limo.
But taking it public seems a tad over confident. Given that the two MASSIVE voting blocks of women and Latinos are already a bit stirred up at this point and November is just not all that far away.
Read the Huffington Post story here.
Photo: Associated Press. Source: here
About Mark Greene
Oh, now I get it. I kept thinking, “There’s an O’Brian Prison?”
Seriously, though, it could be even more people who would feel insulted by this: don’t forget Irish Americans and/or Catholic Americans.
That being said, I don’t think women actually vote as a coherent bloc of voters. Even devout Catholic latinos don’t all vote the same way. American politics tend to be more complicated than that, I think. There are no doubt many white American women who would see nothing wrong with his little joke.
Another question would be how many of the people who feel insulted are actually people who watch Fox News in the first place. I suspect that he hasn’t really lost very many viewers at all, and may have even strengthened the loyalty of some diehard fans.
All of your points are correct. What is important here though is not the voting population in its entirety, but the folks in the middle. The independents. Those people. The folks that tend to waver one way or another from election to election. They are a slender 8% of the voting population. They do not reside at the extremes of either political party. Now, take that 8% and parse out the women and Latinos. THOSE are the ones you don’t want to insult wholesale. Meaning that when you potentially insult 60% of the population, you’re gonna hit a lot of independents. It’s a numbers game. Insult Lithuanian Dentists, not entire cultures.
I’d take these sentiments more seriously if Democrats hadn’t been on the wrong side of immigration reform in 2007. I remember feeling despair like none other when even George W. Bush, the most reviled president in recent times (and possibly of all time) knew that a path to citizenship was the right thing to do, and the Democrats skipped out.
Then they took power and immigration reform again got ignored, you know, because it’s not really important to them.
But you know what is important to Democrats? Deportation. President Obama has repeatedly set and then beat the record for most number of deportations in a year (seriously, check it out, 2009 was a record, beat in 2010, then beat again in 2011).
It seems like the Tea Party doesn’t really have a monopoly on being anti-immigrant.
Well deporting illegal immigrants is very different to insulting a woman by suggesting she’s named after a prison (because Latino guys are all criminals, you know. Hyuk). It isn’t so much that the Democrats are pushing for immigration reform, it’s that the Republicans end up spouting out ideas like building a huge wall, etc.
HeatherN,
I shouldn’t have to choose the “lesser evil.” My point is that the Republicans might “build a wall” but the Democrats don’t result in improvements on the ground either.
If we’re going to make a statement as “good men” that statement shouldn’t be “The Republicans are terrible!” but rather “This is the right thing to do, and we will hold BOTH parties to it.”
“But you know what is important to Democrats? Deportation. President Obama has repeatedly set and then beat the record for most number of deportations in a year (seriously, check it out, 2009 was a record, beat in 2010, then beat again in 2011).”
Not sure how it works over there, but does Obama personally order deportations? Isn’t he the head of a party in opposition?
Although Bush knew immigration reform was right, the GOP did not.
See article here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19475868/ns/politics/t/immigration-bill-suffers-major-defeat-senate/#.T4tMn-0ZPis
The defeat of the Immigration reform bill was a “…was a victory for Republican conservatives who strongly criticized the bill’s provisions that would have established pathways to lawful status for many of the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants. They were aided by talk radio and TV hosts who repeatedly attacked the bill and urged listeners to flood Congress with calls, faxes and e-mails.”
MSNBC went on to report: “While Menendez and a few other Democrats oppose the bill, the main opponents have been Bush’s fellow sunbelt Republicans. GOP Sens. David Vitter of Louisiana, Jim DeMint of South Carolina and Jeff Sessions of Alabama led the charge, often backed by Texan John Cornyn.”
Mark,
Let me help you out with some history.
The Democrats controlled both houses of congress following the 2006 elections.
This means that the Democrats could have passed an immigration reform bill without ANY Republican votes at all.
But it’s real classy of them to come up with excuses.
Geee Whiz, Mike, I thought you were lecturing us on Bush’s 2007 Immigration reform legislation. Did you just change the subject? Hmmmmm. Can’t imagine why that is.
What is with all this fake concern coming from the left for the future of the Republican party? The Republicans only future is as Democrat party lite. They have no demographic in the future. Whites are going away. Latinos? please…They’ll keep supporting dems. If dems want to put the repubs out of their misery just open up the border like Mike suggested. Then we can have just one power party in America. Hopefully we’ll get the Willy Wonka end game and not the Germany, Russia, China, or Euro state end game.
I want to hear celebrating every time there is a repub misstep. Do progressives not know how to savor victory?
I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not…but I will say that the concern for the Republican party that some Democrats express isn’t fake. The beauty of a party system is that when one party goes too far, theoretically the other is there to provide constructive critique. The vast majority of the issues our government has to deal with really do have two (or more) legitimate sides. Take the economy, for example. It’s a tricky situation, and having only liberal solutions or only conservative solutions isn’t going to really fix things. The U.S. needs multiple parties (most likely it’ll usually be two), for it to thrive.
Let me summarize. Democrats need Republicans because they might be wrong and the repubs might be right on some things? I listen to democrats up to 4 hours a day and I can assure you of 2 things. They despise repubs and they know they are always right. The same can generally be said about the repubs, but we’re talking about dems here. Let’s assume you are right and the dems really DO care…Well let me put their minds at ease. When the repubs crash and burn your party will split and the moderate portion will become the new repubs, and the more liberal portion will become the new dems. Drama and power dynamics will then be reestablished. Carry on…
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic or not…” Thank you very much…
The downfall of the Confederate Party is long overdue. But I’m sure their angry-white-guy base will always find a new way to embarrass America.