MSNBC Live host Stephanie Ruhle on Wednesday smeared conservatives for caring about cancel culture, calling it unimportant. To help her out, the Washington Post's Philip Bump explained that people concerned about cancel culture are really just old white people worried about "the visibility of a younger less white generation."
Early on during the show, Ruhle went to commercial teasing the future segment, "And later why the right is fixated on the so-called threat of cancel culture and so fired up about children's books instead of passing a bill that a majority of their voters support. Never forget what's going on: we are in the middle of a health crisis and economic crisis and a domestic terror threat. They're talking about kids books. Why?"
Later, Ruhle was joined by Bump and Princeton's Eddie Glaude Jr. where she began by condemning Fox for not covering the January 6 riot hearings in Congress:
But if you were watching Fox News yesterday none of this ever crossed your screen, instead, all day, all night, they spent their time railing against what they say is the latest example of, quote, “cancel culture,” complaining about Dr. Seuss after his publishing company chose to stop making six of his books due to racially insensitive images.
While Ruhle is correct that it was Dr. Seuss' publisher that suspended the books, they did so because left-wing culture warriors have saying for years that some of his books are racists.
Ruhle also claimed that only out-of-touch elites care about cancel culture:
Phillip, isn't this cancel culture debate, this is what I really don't get, it's a debate for the elites, for working class Americans they're worried about putting food on the table, having a job, having health care. It's people who can sit back on their La-Z-Boys and discuss topics like this all day long because they don't have to worry about surviving. How does the Republican Party say they are the party of the working class when working class Americans don't have the privilege of debating Mr. Potato Head, they have to go to work.
Bump claimed:
There is this massive sense of sense disconcertment among the right, among an older, whiter, Baby Boom population which is seen -- Eddie really nails it when he talks about the prominence, the visibility of a younger less white generation through things like TikTok, through things like technology. They are in the face of this older whiter demographic and we saw one of the key spurs for Donald Trump's support was people who felt insecure about the place of whites in American society.
Of course it's not just old white people or cultural icons like Dr. Suess and Mr. Potato Head that are risk of getting cancelled. It's ordinary non-white and young people too. Maybe if Ruhle and Bump focused on those examples, they wouldn't be so quick to describe cancel culture as made-up problem that only disconnected elites care or old white people about.
This segment was sponsored by Samsung.
Here is a transcript for the March 3 show:
MSNBC
MSNBC Live with Stephanie Ruhle
9:16 AM ET
STEPHANIE RUHLE: And later why the right is fixated on the so-called threat of cancel culture and so fired up about children's books instead of passing a bill that a majority of their voters support. Never forget what's going on: we are in the middle of a health crisis and economic crisis and a domestic terror threat. They're talking about kids books. Why?
…
9:49 AM ET
RUHLE: But if you were watching Fox News yesterday none of this ever crossed your screen, instead, all day, all night, they spent their time railing against what they say is the latest example of, quote, “cancel culture,” complaining about Dr. Seuss after his publishing company chose to stop making six of his books due to racially insensitive images. I want to talk about this and bring in Washington Post national correspondent Phillip Bump, we also have Eddie Glaude, he’s the chairman of African-American studies at Princeton University and of course an NBC news contributor. Eddie, what in the world is going on here? Dr. Seuss wasn't canceled. I just said it, his publisher chose to discontinue some titles.
…
9:55 AM ET
RUHLE: Phillip, isn't this cancel culture debate, this is what I really don't get, it's a debate for the elites, for working class Americans they're worried about putting food on the table, having a job, having health care. It's people who can sit back on their La-Z-Boys and discuss topics like this all day long because they don't have to worry about surviving. How does the Republican Party say they are the party of the working class when working class Americans don't have the privilege of debating Mr. Potato Head, they have to go to work.
PHILLIP BUMP: The answer is what Eddie just said. There is this massive sense of sense disconcertment among the right, among an older, whiter, Baby Boom population which is seen -- Eddie really nails it when he talks about the prominence, the visibility of a younger less white generation through things like TikTok, through things like technology. They are in the face of this older whiter demographic and we saw one of the key spurs for Donald Trump's support was people who felt insecure about the place of whites in American society. There's absolutely this undertone to it. So, yes, it is the case that talking about cancel culture is really a distraction from real issues that are out there, but it is an intentional distraction, it is a distraction meant to appeal to that particular aspect of what a lot of white Americans are concerned about, so that they don't have to focus on these things where the Democrats are actually proposing legislation which is much more popular than makes the Republicans comfortable. It is deliberate. The reason we are talking about cancel culture is because they don't have something to say on these other issues and they're very well aware of it.
