Soon — though not soon enough — Soledad O’Brien will be out of our lives forever. On her morning cable news show, “Starting Point,” CNN is already slowly nudging her out. This morning, two other CNN anchors handled the hard news while Soledad and guests gossiped about the Oscars. But that didn’t stop O’Brien from finding a way to work her obsession with identity politics into the mix.
Naturally, O’Brien simply loved First Lady Michelle Obama’s appearance on last night’s telecast. But she was quite down over host Seth MacFarlane’s joke about not being able to understand Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, and Salma Hayek.
The CNN actual chyron (see above) read: “Spanish speaking actors targeted,” and the segment went like this:
Soledad: We’re talking about some of the inappropriate moments by Seth MacFarlane … a joke about Spanish speaking actors. Here’s what he said…
Video of MacFarlane: Well, we’ve finally reached the point in the ceremony where either Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, or Selma Hayek comes on stage and we have no idea what they’re saying but don’t care because they’re so attractive.
Soledad: That, combined with the fact they left Lupe Ontiveros’ name off that “In Memoriam”; I think they had like a hundred names of people they lost during the year. And of course this was a woman who would talk a lot about how she had to put on this heavy Spanish accent to just to be considered for roles in Hollywood. I think the one-two punch of that really made some people angry on Twitter.
Of course, both of O’Brien’s guests agreed that MacFarlane’s joke was offensive. One compared it to the Ricky Ricardo “accent” jokes from 60 years ago.
It really has been something to watch so-called “liberals” devolve into America’s new speech police. The left will go on and on about how awful McCarthyism was — about the terrible censorship of the old Production Code. But who are the modern-day prigs and censors creating a new Production Code? Those very same “liberals.”
Maybe this is just O’Brien auditioning for her next job as a member of some university’s fascist speech police squad. She does look good dressed all in black.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC
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