On her Wednesday, 5/30/18 episode of the TBS show Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Ms. Bee aired a story about the recent immigration issues concerning the separation of children from their parents. During the story, she showed a tweet from Ivanka Trump that included a photo of Trump with her son and called Trump “a feckless c**t”.
The segment was quickly met with harsh criticism from many sources, with some, including Donald Trump, calling for her show’s cancellation. Samantha Bee and TBS apologized for her choice of language. She spent the next day dealing with the fallout from the incident. But by last night, she was complaining that she’d had to waste time on sexism instead of focusing on immigration.
Samantha Bee, maybe next time don’t use vile, misogynist language to make your point, if you want to keep the focus on the issue you intended. I don’t care who the woman or man in question is, that word should never be used because of its implication that female body parts, and women themselves, equal something disgusting. And your implication that the abuse of women isn’t as important as racism is revolting.
Ivanka Trump deserves whatever disdain is thrown at her, but our societal discourse needs to maintain a certain level of respect. Comedians push the boundaries for shock effect, and that’s as it should be, but it’s time for us all to pay closer attention to the internalized misogyny and racism imbedded within common words and phrases. There are better ways to shock people, using insults that apply to all humans. Go for the poop joke, peeps.
I’ve always had mixed feelings about Samantha Bee. I don’t want her to be canceled, simply because she’s the only female late night host, and because of that she fills an important role. No one else on television speaks out on the issues she covers. No one. Bill Maher wasn’t fired when he used racist language, so why should she be fired for sexist language?
Samantha Bee makes a comedy/news/commentary show for adults. Roseanne is the star of a family show. It’s not a comparable situation.
But Full Frontal with Samantha Bee has a track record of using sexist language and assuming all white women (besides herself) are conservatives who voted for Trump, or, at best, lazy armchair liberals who won’t lift a finger to help the people with “real” problems. They need to take a long hard look at their writing style and stop using stereotypes. Having comedy/news shows that point out societal trends, and the acts of individuals and organizations, and comment on them is great, maybe even necessary at this point. It made The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, where Bee got her start, must watch TV. But making assumptions about entire groups of people and then using those assumptions to stereotype and insult individuals or groups, especially using hateful language, will never be okay, no matter who is doing the stereotyping and who is being targeted.
Image courtesy of TBS.
Metawitches 
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