In one of the most bad faith campaigns in a career of many of them, hard right wing groups demanded an apology from Samantha Bee for calling Ivanka Trump a “feckless c*nt” after Ivanka Trump posted a photo of herself holding her baby as the story of the missing 1,470 migrant children who went missing raged on. This was done in response, in part, to Roseanne getting her show canceled for comparing a black woman to a cross between Planet of the Apes and the Muslim Brotherhood, which, one would posit, is a lot worse than one woman calling someone mocking grieving immigrant mothers the c-word, but, hey. That’s neither here nor there!
The quote said in full:
“Let me just say, one mother to another, do something about your dad’s immigration practices, you feckless c*nt. He listens to you. Put on something tight and low cut and tell him to fucking stop it. Tell him it was an Obama thing and see how it goes, OK?”
This fervor over this quote has already at least gotten one sponsor, AutoTrader, to drop Samantha Bee’s Full Frontal. Bee, surprising onlookers, ended up issuing an apology for her joke’s language, saying:
I would like to sincerely apologize to Ivanka Trump and to my viewers for using an expletive on my show to describe her last night. It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.
— Samantha Bee (@iamsambee) May 31, 2018
Responses quickly flew in — with many of Samantha Bee’s supporters being unsure as to why she apologized in the first place, and some pointing out that the idea that a liberal show has to be canceled because a conservative show got canceled is both dumb and silly in equal measure. Here are some of the responses to Samantha Bee’s initial controversy and her apology.
It’s insane to me that prominent Republicans have spent the last DECADE saying Obama is a terrorist who should lynched, Michelle is secretly a man, Hillary runs a satanic pedophile ring…
But the left calls right-wing criminals & hypocrites a bad word and it’s a problem now? https://t.co/ze69YMeFis
— Jules Suzdaltsev (@jules_su) May 31, 2018
ADVERTISEMENT
https://twitter.com/itsa_talia/status/1002260685127061504
Is the media really going to play along with being more outraged with what Sam Bee said about Ivanka than with what Trump hasn’t said about Puerto Rico?
— Schooley (@Rschooley) May 31, 2018
the only reason for the samantha bee backlash was conservatives wanting retribution for roseanne, giving in to insincere outrage campaigns is only going to make it worse
— Ashley Feinberg (@ashleyfeinberg) May 31, 2018
https://twitter.com/ira/status/1002256945686839296
That last status also hits the issue on the head — why are we allowing the kinds of people who are outraged a racist got fired define what is or isn’t okay to say about another person. It’s clear their allegiance is more to the conservative party and Ivanka Trump rather than women or people of color. The entire argument is made in bad faith, especially considering how much WORSE stuff Donald Trump has said about women — or that the passion today is directed from them at Samantha Bee and not the thousands of children traumatized and having their lives thrown into chaos by being separated from their parents.
Destroying a child’s life certainly feels more offensive than saying the c-word, and that the focus of the conservative outrage focuses on the word rather than the issue at hand might be one of the most offensive things in this entire mess.
ADVERTISEMENT
The campaign to get Samantha Bee to apologize also followed a sort of aborted campaign to get Bill Maher off the air for comparing Donald Trump to an ape, but upon realizing no one on the left actually likes Bill Maher it was swiftly abandoned. Hey, let’s get back to that. That guy said the n-word on the air for like no reason. Let’s go back to dumping on Maher, that was fun.
What do you think? Should Sam Bee have apologized? Let us know in the comments, or on Twitter @WhatsTrending.
