On Saturday, left-wing radical turned MSNBC host (is that redundant?) Melissa Harris-Perry was missing only the pom-poms, as she trumpeted the plight of a Canadian beauty contestant she described as "born a male...self-identified as female...and had gender reassignment surgery at the age of 19." Harris-Perry gushed, "You go, girl!..we are all going to be watching and rooting for you."
The leftist columnist exclaimed how "May is going to be an exciting month for my feminist friends and me. For the first time, we're going to be able to watch a beauty pageant with pride." After noting how Miss Universe officials backtracked on their original decision to disqualify the now-Jenna Talackova, Harris-Perry added, "Others might want to take note of this turnaround, like the city of Anchorage, Alaska, that just rejected a ballot initiative to add sexual orientation and trans-gendered identity to a list of protected classes." [audio clips available here; video below the jump].
After making her "pride" statement, the MSNBC host admitted that "normally, I wouldn't be so excited, but enter 23-year-old Jenna Talackova of Canada. She's turned the world of beauty pageants on its head." Harris-Perry then summarized how the would-be Miss Universe Canada "became" a woman, despite being "born a male," and how "the Miss Universe organization...reiterated that Jenna falsified her original application, since one of the requirements is contestants be naturally-born females."
The far-left Tulane professor included two soundbites from Talackova, who decried the disqualification as "unjust" and demanded "this rule be eliminated, because I do not want any other woman to suffer the discrimination." Harris-Perry ended the segment with her lobbying for the radical agenda of the cultural left and her cheerleading for the beauty contestant:
We've reached out to the author and pioneering trans-gender activist, Kate Borenstein, for her reaction, and she said this: 'I agree that the better solution would be to strike the rule all together [sic]. But progress and movements happen in increments. I'd say this is a big win, and I think Jenna's a brave, brave young woman to take all this and stay standing, and I applaud her.' As do I, so I have just one thing to say to Jenna Talackova: you go, girl! And we are all going to be watching and rooting for you.
It should be pointed out that on April 4, 2012, voters in Anchorage rejected the Proposition 5 ballot initiative 58 percent to 42 percent. The Alaska branch of the ACLU subsequently raised allegations of voters being disenfranchised, but the city assembly voted on Wednesday to deny their request for a special counsel to look into the matter.
Harris-Perry has a record of using her platform on MSNBC- first as a contributor and later as a host- to push for far-left causes. Back in October 2011, she compared a pro-life ballot initiative in Mississippi to the forced sterilization of black women during the pro-eugenics Jim Crow era (something that Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger advocated, a fact probably lost on the pro-abortion MSNBC host). A month later, Harris-Perry suggested that Republican governors who laid off government workers were "unethical."
Earlier in 2012, the left-wing professor agreed with a fellow academic from Columbia University, who charged that "the Republican strategy is basically to be a white party, and a white Southern party," and added, "And apparently an all-male party." Harris-Perry should tell that to the four governors, seven lieutenant governors, 24 representatives, and the five U.S. Senators who are all Republican women, including the first-term senator from New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte.
