October 20 marked the second annual "Spirit Day" thrown by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Debate (GLAAD). They say the D stands for Defamation, but they've been very aggressive in pressuring media outlets to refuse to grant time to any conservative guest that dares to question the gay agenda. To celebrate "Spirit Day," GLAAD encouraged the news and entertainment media to wear purple to show their leftist support -- ostensibly for the "LGBT" youth and against bullying, and boy, did they show it.
TVNewser reports two of three evening news anchors -- NBC's Brian Williams and ABC fill-in George Stephanopoulos -- wore purple, and there was even more gay-alliance violet on the morning shows:
On CNBC, the entire “Squawk Box” and “Squawk on the Street” teams participated: Andrew Ross Sorkin, Joe Kernen, Carl Quintanilla, Jim Cramer, Steve Liesman and Simon Hobbs. Also in purple were CNBC’s Melissa Francis, Sue Herera, Scott Wapner, Tyler Mathisen, David Faber, Kayla Tausche, Brian Sullivan, Amanda Drury, Herb Greenberg, Bob Pisani and Bill Griffeth.
On MSNBC, Willie Geist got into the purple spirit, as did Chris Jansing, Thomas Roberts, Andrea Mitchell, Tamron Hall, Martin Bashir and Dylan Ratigan.
All the NBC/CNBC/MSNBC love shouldn't be surprising since NBC-owning Comcast is a GLAAD contributor.
Strangely, there was no purple in prime time: no Chris Matthews, Lawrence O'Donnell, Ed Schultz, Al Sharpton -- or Rachel Maddow, who didn't even manage the purple ribbon Gloria Allred wore on the Joy Behar show (where subbing host E.D. Hill wore pink.)
TVNewser left out CNN, but Anderson Cooper wore a purple tie on "360" -- and a light purple dress shirt on "Anderson" in the afternoon. Rosie O'Donnell wore a flowing purple shirt on her Oprah network show. The ladies on CBS's The Talk also wore purple, as did ABC Nightline anchor Cynthia McFadden and PBS NewsHour anchor Margaret Warner.
CNN's Carol Costello plugged the event just before 6 am on Thursday. "And today is Spirit Day! [Holds up both fists] Millions of people will be wearing purple as a sign of support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender youth and to speak out against bullying." Costello wasn't wearing purple, but she'd just finished talking to CNN financial reporter Carter Evans, who wore a purple tie.
CNN contributor L.Z. Granderson (of ESPN) also wrote in support of Spirit Day and how he tells cashiers he's gay when he buys flowers for his partner on CNN.com.
