According to Alexandra Pelosi, daughter of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), HBO executives in New York were horrified at the thought of running a video she made depicting welfare recipients as, in her words, “freeloading welfare queens.”
“I have offended everybody at HBO, in New York,” she told Bill Maher during a segment on this week’s “Real Time.” “All of the people I work with, they said ‘you can’t put that on TV.’ Somehow it was ok to do it to the toothless rednecks,” Pelosi continued, referring to a segment she made last week for the same program showing voters in Mississippi making racially charged statements about President Obama and ignorant statements about federal welfare programs.
We appreciate Pelosi relaying the fact that no one at HBO voiced concerns over the controversial Mississippi video, but we’d also like her to find out if anyone was concerned over the depiction of Gov. Sarah Palin in the mistake-riddled “Game Change” film that the same cable network released two weeks ago.
To Pelosi’s credit, she presented her video, which shows multiple welfare recipients in New York City proclaiming they were at the welfare office to get their “Obama bucks” and that they supported Obama because he “gives me stuff” and “because he is black.” Of course, a person who votes for a man “because he is black” is just as racist as a person who won’t vote for a man “because he is black,” but Pelosi was unable to find a person like that down in Mississippi, even though she try to coax such statements from her subjects.
Maher was sure this video would spark outrage amongst liberals, and perhaps to stifle that outrage he went into a long discussion with Pelosi arguing for welfare spending and against defense spending. But give Pelosi some credit for making the video and forcing it on the air against the pressure she appears to have received from HBO. Even though making this video was a lot easier for her than the trip she took down South. “I didn’t have to go far to find ‘freeloading welfare queens,'” Pelosi said. They were, in fact, right across the street from her New York City home.
The entire sequence, including the “Freeloading Welfare Queen” video is below.
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