I was pleasantly surprised upon reading John Hawkins’ recent post, Liberal Loses His Job For Using Racial Slur Against Black Conservative at RWN. Racist attitudes and/or otherwise vile behavior by prominent lefties is usually excused or ignored by media elites, but not in this case.
There are very few things that liberals and conservatives agree on, but one of them is that racial slurs are extraordinarily offensive.
A Minnesota-based publishing house has dropped one of its authors for calling a black conservative woman an “Aunt Tom” and “ignorant c–t” on Twitter.
Author Scott Colbert has since deleted the Friday tweet to Crystal Wright, known as “@GOPBlackChick,” and locked his Twitter feed, but not before conservative commentator and bestselling author Brad Thor highlighted it on his own Twitter account. Thor, a frequent Glenn Beck television and radio guest, replied to Colbert: “Did you just hurl a racial slur at my friend?”
Thor then proceeded to tweet Colbert’s publisher, KHP Publishers, Inc., and many of Colbert’s followers a screenshot of his epithet.
By Saturday, KHP had posted a message on its website announcing it had terminated its contract with an author, whom it did not name, due to an “inexcusable” incident.
“[T]he author made a racial slur at the person with KHP material plastering his Twitter page’s background. This involved the company, and we saw the results of this on our own Twitter page this morning,” KHP wrote. “[W]e find this inexcusable. In sticking to our own ‘zero tolerance’ model, we terminated our contract with this author immediately and his book is in the process of being removed from stores.”
It turns out the company’s CEO is white and married to a black woman, thus Colbert’s behavior hit a raw nerve. Colbert’s “progressive” bona fides were not able to absolve him.
Would that have been the case when the Viacom-owned children’s network, Nickelodeon was faced with a similar dilemma. Michelle Malkin, speaking as a disgusted parent of two Nickelodeon watching children, explained what happened after one of the lead characters of the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” TV series engaged in shockingly vile behavior on Twitter, last Fall.
One of the lead characters (“Leonardo”) will be voiced by actor Jason Biggs. On August 29, Biggs published vile, lewd messages on his public Twitter account attacking the wives of the GOP presidential ticket during the Republican National Convention. The Nickelodeon TV star joked about digitally sodomizing GOP Rep. Paul Ryan’s wife, Janna, and sexually degraded Mitt Romney’s wife, Ann, by referring to her body parts in a similar pornographic manner. He also mocked Christians and their faith. Wrote Biggs: “Clint Eastwood talking to a non-responsive stool sorta sums up Christianity in a nutshell, huh Republicans?
Biggs then publicly re-tweeted (shared) his actress wife, Jenny Mollen’s, own misogynist jab at Mrs. Ryan: “People are cheering off screen because Janna Ryan is showing her t*ts.”
Biggs cravenly attempted to erase the evidence by deleting his X-rated tweets without apology or acknowledgment. But the Internet is forever. My editors at Twitchy.com, the conservative Twitter curation and aggregation site, preserved the twisted messages and pressed Nickelodeon for corporate accountability.
On September 1, Nickelodeon ignored swelling parental outrage over Biggs’ shocking vulgarity. Instead, the network promoted Biggs’ public Twitter account on two of its official social media outlets. The “@TMNTMaster” account run by the network promotes “all things Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” and has more than 2,500 followers — including parents and children. The “@NickelodeonTV” account has nearly 700,000 followers — including parents and children.
Both official Nickelodeon accounts, which have been peddling the “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle” program debut with a nonstop ad blitz rivaling a presidential campaign, encouraged fans to check out “@jasonbiggs” — making access to Biggs’ filth just a click away.
Biggs had littered his public Twitter timeline with profane anatomical references, incest jokes, oral sex, dental dams, sexual aids, toilet photos, more digital penetration jokes, and creepy jokes from his wife about helping himself to “eighth grader (deleted)” at the Nickelodeon Teen Choice Awards.
Entertainment media remained silent about the controversy. But cable news anchor (and mother of two) Megyn Kelly broke the stonewall on her Fox News show on September 4. Unable to quote the foul language on her program, she let viewers know that Biggs’ tweets were “really disturbing, vile and hateful.”
Only then did Nickelodeon step up and release the following toothless statement:
“The offensive comments made by Jason Biggs _last week on his personal Twitter account do not reflect our company’s_ views or values, and we condemn them. Nickelodeon does not support or_ condone the use of graphic or vulgar language on any of our platforms. _It was our mistake to link from our “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” Twitter feed to Jason’s personal Twitter account, and we quickly _corrected our error. We also insisted Jason use better judgment and_ discretion in public communications while affiliated with our brand.”_
As Malkin noted, Biggs continued his not-safe-for-kids, sick spewage, but unlike Colbert, whose online offenses actually pale in comparison, he has been able to keep his job at at the amoral children’s network, Nickelodeon. Some companies are to big to shame, it would seem.
Nice Deb 