It's not often that yours truly visits Huffington Post. One of those rare occasions occurred early today as I was preparing the post (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog) about South Carolina Democratic Party Chairman Dick Harpootlian relishing the idea that his party's candidate for Palmetto State Governor in 2014 might send current Republican Governor Nikki Haley "back to wherever the hell she came from."
In writing about Harpootlian's response to the controversy over his insensitive and arguably racist and nativist remark, HuffPo's Alana Horowitz, who serves as its Front Page Editor, wrote that Haley "is no stranger to scrutiny over her ethnic and religious background." To what sort of "scrutiny" did Horowitz refer involving Haley's "ethnic and religious background"? See after the jump:
Earlier this month, a reporter asked her if she gives better tips to Sikh cab drivers.
First of all, Alana, "this month" is May. Last month was April. The incident occurred in early April.
Second and of course far more important, the "scrutiny" wasn't scrutiny at all. It was yet another racially insensitive jab at Haley disguised as a question by an editor (i.e., more than a reporter, and supposedly with more experience and common sense than a reporter) at what's left of Time Magazine:
In an interview with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R), TIME magazine asks if she will tip Sikh taxi drivers more during her visit to New York City.
Haley, who was born into a Sikh family, now identifies herself as a Christian.
"In New York City, which you're visiting for a couple of days, a lot of our taxi drivers are Sikhs. If you get one, are you going to give them a slightly bigger tip?" Belinda Luscombe, a TIME editor, asked Haley.
"I give the same tip to everyone," Haley responded.
See how it works? To HuffPo's Horowitz, if a politician is Republican or conservative, and especially if she is a woman of color, she becomes an object of "scrutiny" simply because a biased editor with nothing substantive on her mind asks her an incredibly inane, insensitive, race-based, and arguably racist question.
Writing such as this explains why I spend as little time as possible at Huffington Post.
See how long a reporter or editor would still have his or her job if they asked Barack Obama if he tipped black cab drivers more generously than other drivers before he became President.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
