I sure wouldn’t want to be the news producer who came up for the graphic on this one…
Fans of Fox News Channel have likely seen this story ad nauseam but if you are not a regular cable channel viewer allow me to get you up to speed:
Last week some producer who thought that he/she was being clever referred to Michelle Obama (wife of presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama) as “Obama’s baby mama” in a graphic that aired during a story in which she appeared.
The full graphic read: “Outraged liberals: Stop picking on Obama’s baby mama.” It was flashed during an interview with conservative columnist Michelle Malkin about whether Barack Obama’s wife has been the target of unfair criticism.
For the record “Obama’s baby mama” was never uttered by any of the news personalities on air, still that is of little consolation to critics like columnist Joan Walsh who referred to the graphic as a slur:
“Do you try to explain that ‘baby mama’ is slang for the unmarried mother of a man’s child, and not his wife, or even a girlfriend?” Walsh wrote. “Are they racist, or just clueless? Isn’t there racism even in their cluelessness, if somebody didn’t know what ‘baby mama’ means, but used it anyway? Even at Fox, won’t somebody have to apologize?”
Execs at Fox maintain an apology isn’t necessary. Big wigs classified the graphic as a producer “exercising poor judgment” during the segment, but the producer was not fired and no other disciplinary action was announced.
In regards to Walsh’s reference to the graphic being a racial slur it should be noted that “Baby Mama” is also the title of a recent movie starring actresses Tina Fey and Amy Poehler (both of whom are white) that follows the lives of two women, one that hires a surrogate to bear a child.
Regardless, if Fox news was trying to keep the focus on the campaign and not on themselves this past incident didn’t help. In the past two weeks, Fox anchor E.D. Hill was forced to apologize on air for referring to an affectionate onstage fist bump shared by the Barack and Michelle Obama as a “terrorist fist jab,” and Fox contributor Liz Trotta also issued a recent apology said for joking about an Obama assassination.
What do you make of the latest Fox-Obama brouhaha?