Wait Wait, Don’t Tell Me this morning made reference to a recent foot-in-mouth remark by White House Spokesman Tony Snow (who used to be at NPR):
“One of the problems with NPR is that there is so much political correctness that if you’ve got a name that looks like it was made up by Rudyard Kipling , you’ve got a better chance of getting hired. I’m a white guy named Tony Snow for heaven’s sake. That’s as white as it goes.” [Link]
This remark got very little coverage by either mainstream or blog media and took some digging to find. It seems to have slipped by most people’s radar screens.
I’m aghast at the very casualness of the race baiting involved in that sentence. Oh yes, those brown people with the funny names, the ones who are taking over NPR by virtue of their skin color, not their talent (How many desis are at NPR anyway?). At the same time, I recognize that it is clearly less of a deal than Joe Biden’s recent remarks, which to me were just a minor kerfuffle I recognize that this is a minor rather than major political sin.
Still, Snow’s remarks are eminently cringeworthy and the sort of thing that brown people should both remember and remind him about, just so that he learns the utter gaucheness of what he said.
“Mr. Snow, this is Somini Sengupta from the Times … one of those reporters with a “Kipling Name” … I’d like to ask you about the President’s policy on …”
