Offensive Remarks From MSNBC Make HeadlinesYet Again

In response to a Cheerios commercial featuring a bi-racial family, MSNBC’s twitter account put out a tweet stating, "Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family.”  According to CNN, “MSNBC President Phil Griffin apologized Thursday for what he called an "offensive" network tweet.

This tweet is a clear example of the negative face (Hunter, 136) of politics.  Hunter speaks of the negative face attempting to “discredit the opposition” (Hunter, 136).  In this case, MSNBC made an attempt to discredit the entire Republican Party by making the unwarranted suggestion that they are racist.  Disturbingly, this is not the first time that MSNBC has made news regarding matters of race.  According to dailycaller.com, “In December, MSNBC weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry and her panel of guests mocked a picture of Mitt Romney, his wife Ann, and their 21 grandchildren — one of whom is black.”

The tweet from the MSNBC spokesman regarding the cheerios commercial clearly came from an ugly place.  His failed attempt to make republicans look bad worked directly against him.  This tweet, as well as the previous slander against Romney's grandchild resulted in the entire MSNBC network appearing overly preoccupied with race.  In my opinion, if people did not go out of their way to make such a big deal out of something as insignificant as race, race would not still be the big deal that it is proving itself to be.  This day and age, many families are mixed.  The little girl in the commercial is very clearly a mixed child; therefore it would only make sense that her parents be two different races.  The remark from the MSNBC reporter accomplished nothing except for the fact that it put a negative light on something that really should not have been newsworthy to begin with.