What if Arizona State Senator Al Melvin told an Arizona Daily Star reporter in an interview: “I say tomorrow Huppenthal trots his Mexican mistress – or better yet, takes a page from Babeu’s book and bring a brown skinned boyfriend!” Can you imagine the outrage?
And if he had put it on Facebook instead? It would have been immediately shared with hundreds of his political opponents’ friends to gather scathing comments and public scorn.
The outrage would be warranted, and just like every other conservative who has been caught saying insensitive, stupid, or outright racist and homophobic lines like the one above, he would offer up himself on the altar of public humiliation to be butchered by pundits who serve up his flesh to ideologues until their blood thirst was satisfied and the audience’s appetite was sated.
But that only happens to conservatives.
When liberals get caught posting insensitive, stupid, or outright racist and homophobic lines on their Facebook page like: “I say tomorrow Huppenthal trots his Mexican mistress – or better yet, takes a page from Babeu’s book and bring a brown skinned boyfriend!” Crickets.
And that is exactly what happened; crickets and the reporter earned two “likes” from his friends. ‘Oh boy, you made a funny,’ they must have thought to themselves as they clicked on the thumbs up icon.
When a school teacher who discovered the racist and homophobic comments and challenged the reporter on Twitter, said reporter responded, “takes a pretty good imagination to view that as homophobia, but if it please you….”
An imagination? No. One does need an imagination to believe that the line; “I say tomorrow Huppenthal trots his Mexican mistress – or better yet, takes a page from Babeu’s book and bring a brown skinned boyfriend,” smacks of racism and homophobia. The objectification is unmistakable.
It would take an imagination to believe that a liberal would be held to the same standard as a conservative, if they wrote that line. It would take an imagination to believe that a liberal would apologize for any comments they make.
It doesn’t happen, and they don’t have to.
They control the media, so they control the narrative. They alone decide what is and is not inappropriate, hateful ugly, and subject to shaming.
Steller wrote, “We can thank Huppenthal for making these and many other eye-opening comments because they show him for what he apparently is: A narrow ideologue with delusions of intellectual grandeur.”
To which we respond, “We can thank Tim Steller for making these and many other eye-opening comments on Facebook and Twitter because they show him for what he apparently is: A narrow ideologue with delusions of a sense of humor.”
Outrage is mine sayeth the lib. No alter of public humiliation will be readied for Steller’s insensitive soul. Instead he might win the spot as the opening act for the utterly humorless Fitzsimmons at the next conservative blood bath.