Topic: Media Research Center
A while back, Media Research Center "media researcher" Nick Fondacaro got tired of us pointing out that his main evidence that "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin is a "racist" -- a label he sticks on her every time he hate-watches "The View -- involves his failure to understand how metaphors work, so he directed us to a tweet in which he claimed to list all the ways that Hostin is "racist." As one would imagine, it's much more about whining that Hostin talked about race in a way right-wingers like Fondacaro disapprove than her actually being "racist." Let's go through his list, shall we?
Indeed, his first example, "Says white women are like roaches,"is the thing we've ridiculed him over. What Hostin actually said is that "white Republican suburban women are now going to vote Republican," which she said is "almost like roaches voting for Raid." Again; it's a metaphor; Hostin is simply arguing that women are voting against their own interests -- she specifically referenced health care issues -- by voting for Republicans who don't really care about such things. Fondacaro did not dispute Hostin's argument -- he simply close to be deliberately obtuse (and throw out some right-wing clickbait) by dishoenstly portraying an obvious metaphor as Hostin being "racist."
Example No. 2: "Says white women are subservient." Here's what Hostin actually said, which is just a variation on her earlier argument that white women vote against their best interests by support Republicans:
I think that women, white women in particular, want to protect the patriarchy here, because it's to their benefit. They want to make sure that their husbands do well. They want to make sure that their sons do well. They want to make sure that their children do well. And they want to make sure that they do well. Most of the women in some of these studies are married white women and they do fall in line with what their husbands are doing, what their husbands are voting.
[...]
I think with white female Republicans, you have a Republican Party that is taking away your health right to decide for yourself. You have all of these things that are against women.
Again, Fondacaro didn't attempt dispute her argument, though he noted that co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin -- whom he dismissed as a "self-proclaimed conservative," an allusion to all the Heathering he and the rest of the MRC have done to her -- "pushed back" on it.
Example No. 3: "Says the problem with American gun owners is that they're white." ;In his hate-watching write-up, Fondacaro asserted that Hostin "spewed her toxic racism again when she suggested the problem with gun owners in America was that they had white skin and were 'radicalized' by Fox News, thus a danger to the country." What Hostin actually said was that of gun owners, "largely they're men and they're largely white men." In fact, statistics show that white men own guns in a greater proportion than men of other races. Fondacaro did respond that "during the pandemic there was a surge of minorities who became first-time gun buyers, including black and Asian Americans, and they oppose gun control. And they’ve been welcomed into the gun rights community." He didn't mention that one motivating factor may have been the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes, driven in part by right-wingers like Fondacaro and Donald Trump branding COVID as a "China virus."
Example No. 4: "Say white people are still benefitting from slavery." Hostin did indeed say that "white people really benefitted the most and continue to do so today," adding that "it's so upsetting when people say, 'But I didn't have anything to do with it. I didn't own slaves.' No, but you continue to reap the benefits of it!" Again, Fondacaro made no attempt to dispute the accuracy of Hostin's statement, choosing instead to maliciously smear her as a "racist" for saying it. In fact, as writer Andre Henry points out, there remains a massive asset gap between white America and black America, made possible in part by wealth generated by slavery.
Example No. 5: " Falsely claims Nikki Haley is using a fake name to seem white and calls her a racial 'chameleon.'" In fact, Hostin never claimed Haley used a "fake" name -- that's Fondacaro's word -- but she simply noted that Haley is not using her "real name," which can reasonably interpreted as not using her given first name (which is Nimarata; Nikki is her middle name), and that "if she leaned into being someone of color it would be different" for her in Republican politics. Fondacaro went on to play an attempted gotcha:
Haines stepped up and shot back: “Sunny! You go by a different name!”
That’s right! Sunny’s real name is Asunción Cummings Hostin. And according to her, she doesn’t use that name because Americans are too stupid to pronounce it correctly. “Because most Americans can't pronounce Asunción because of the under-education in our country,” she sneered.
This conversation didn’t sit well with Whoopi Goldberg, whose real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, and she put an end to it.
Fondacaro then touted how Haley responded by claiming that "It's racist of you to judge my name." He obviously doesn't see himself as a racist for judging Hostin's name -- he has clearly exempted himself from the standards he uses to judge others.
Example No. 6: "Says white GOPers only vote for women and minorities to control them." Again, "control" is Fondacaro's word, not Hostin's. The context of the discussion is the twice-failed Georgia Senate campaign of Herschel Walker, whom the MRC enthusiastically supported despite the fact that he was a walking scandal factory; Hostin said that "these white guys" in the Republican party were "using him. I think he knew it and he looked relieved almost" when he lost, adding that Republicans "made that race about identity politics. They tried to find a black man because there was another black man running," Democrat Raphael Warnock. Yet again, Fondacaro made no effort to refute anything Hostin said, just play the "racism" card to shut down discussion.
Example No. 7: "Suggests black/Latino Republicans are race traitors." Fondacaro put words in Hostin's mouth again; at no point did she say the words "race traitors." What Hostin actually said is "I feel like that's an oxymoron, a black Republican," adding that "I don’t understand black Republicans and I don't understand Latino Republicans."
The fact that Fondacaro has to put words in Hostin's mouth to portray her as "racist" -- and to insist that merely bringing up the subject of race is a "racist act -- shows what an utterly dishonest, amoral and cravenly partisan person he is. Then again, if he wasn't all those things, the MRC wouldn't be employing him.
