“What if you were in love with a girl? Would you marry a girl?” That’s the question MSNBC Host Krystal Ball asked her 5-year-old daughter on the air Friday for a segment on same sex marriage. Ball, best known for her raunchy party pictures killing her ill-fated bid for congress in 2010, now co-hosts MSNBC’s sorry excuse for a knock-off of Fox News’ “The Five.” Apparently, she thought it was a good idea to bring her pre-schooler on the air to illuminate the same-sex marriage issue for her progressive audience.
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KRYSTAL BALL: Can you marry any person? Any person that you fall in love with?
ELLA: Like I might be interested in [inaudible]
BALL: What if you were in love with a girl? Could you marry a girl?
ELLA: Um, only here I can marry a girl.
BALL: Here in New York you can marry a girl?
ELLA: [Animated, clapping rhythmically]: Um-hm. ‘Cause girls can marry girls and boys can marry boys in New York, and girl can marry a boy in New York, too.
BALL: That’s a nice thing, because you want people to be able to marry who they’re in love with, right?
As journalism goes, this stunt from Ball was exploitative, manipulative pap. It ultimately meant nothing and had no value in advancing the dialogue surrounding same-sex marriage. It served only the narcissistic needs of Ball. It allowed her to show off her child and her progressive parenting skills to her friends at MSNBC, and sadly, to the rest of the world for posterity.
I always thought progressives exploiting their kids for political purposes was exclusive to my Facebook friends. But, apparently the executives at NBC News responsible for the increasingly shrill and extreme cable outlet endorsed the idea of their audience observing this spectacle.
If Ball was hoping to illustrate that same-sex marriage was such an obvious issue that even a pre-schooler could understand it, she failed miserably. In fact, it looks as though you need to be coached, nudged, prodded and cajoled into reaching the conclusion Ball seems to think is so obvious and natural.
Ball probably doesn’t realize it, but she unwittingly contributed to one of the most popular arguments against legalizing same-sex marriage: What will schools teach America’s children? If the law of the land will be to treat same-sex marriage as equal in every way to traditionally defined marriage, then what is the logical argument against conversations like this occurring in public elementary schools?
Would gay parents be perfectly justified in suing a school board if all of the books in a primary schools’ curriculum featured traditionally married couples? Of course they would. It wouldn’t be allowed if only white families appeared in text books, so why only straight couples?
Ms. Ball may tell herself that this segment was about the issue, or about the children, or about the burning issue of how to talk to your children about a touchy social issue. But ultimately, I think we all know that this was all about Krystal Ball and her narcissistic need to exploit her child to accomplish her personal political agenda. Sad.
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