In her Full Frontal apology last night, Bee complained that the media fixated on a single word in her commentary on immigration, rather than the context in which she used it, as Callum Borchers points out. But there are two problems with her grievance, one of which she self-identified when she said "I shoulda known." As Borchers argues, "all Bee would have had to do, to anticipate how things would unfold, would have been to remember the news cycles that followed President Trump's January remark about immigrants from 'sh*thole countries.' At the time, Bee herself devoted a segment to the president's comment, which she called racist. Though the White House emphasized the context of Trump's remark — 'the president has laid out what he wants to see in an immigration process, and that is a merit-based system,' press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said — Bee, like much of the media, scrutinized his word choice. Press priorities on such stories are debatable, but it seems tactically unwise to use a word that you <i>know</i> is likely to blot out everything else you say.
TOPICS: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee