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Up where they walk, up where they run, Up where they stay all day in the suuuuuuuuuuuuuuun

As you may or may not know at this point, MSNBC is no longer the place for liberal politics anymore. And if you watch daily, you may have noticed this slow shift over the past year or so. Sure, there’s still shows like Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes’ All In, but all in all, if you’re looking for real progressive TV, you’re going to have to find it somewhere on the internet. The network is making a strong effort to switch from opinion to hard news, and that’s why you’re seeing fewer and fewer opinion shows and more generic broadcasts, especially during the day.

Unfortunately, it looks like Melissa Harris-Perry was being forced to silence her voice by the network as well, and as of Friday, Harris-Perry has decided that she will no longer do her weekend show.

In a letter written by Harris-Perry, and put out by one of her original producers, Jamil Smith, she explains in great detail why she has made this decision.

Here’s the letter in full:

Dearest Nerds,

As you know by now, my name appears on the weekend schedule for MSNBC programming from South Carolina this Saturday and Sunday. I appreciate that many of you responded to this development with relief and enthusiasm. To know that you have missed working with me even a fraction of how much I’ve missed working with all of you is deeply moving. However, as of this morning, I do not have any intention of hosting this weekend. Because this is a decision that affects all of you, I wanted to take a moment to explain my reasoning.

Some unknown decision-maker, presumably Andy Lack or Phil Griffin, has added my name to this spreadsheet, but nothing has changed in the posture of the MSNBC leadership team toward me or toward our show. Putting me on air seems to be a decision being made solely to save face because there is a growing chorus of questions from our viewers about my notable absence from MSNBC coverage. Social media has noted the dramatic change in editorial tone and racial composition of MSNBC’s on-air coverage. In addition, Dylan Byers of CNN has made repeated inquiries with MSNBC’s leadership and with me about the show and what appears to be its cancellation. I have not responded to reporters or social media inquiries. However, I am not willing to appear on air in order to quell concerns about the disappearance of our show and our voice.

Here is the reality: our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season. After four years of building an audience, developing a brand, and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced. Now, MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive.

The purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show. I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I don’t want back on air at any cost. I am only willing to return when that return happens under certain terms.

Undoubtedly, television nurtures the egos of those of us who find ourselves in front of bright lights and big cameras. I am sure ego is informing my own pain in this moment, but there is a level of professional decency, respect, and communication that has been denied this show for years. And the utter insulting absurdity of the past few weeks exceeds anything I can countenance.

I have stayed in the same hotels where MSNBC has been broadcasting in Iowa, in New Hampshire, and in South Carolina, yet I have been shut out from coverage. I have a PhD in political science and have taught American voting and elections at some of the nation’s top universities for nearly two decades, yet I have been deemed less worthy to weigh in than relative novices and certified liars. I have hosted a weekly program on this network for four years and contributed to election coverage on this network for nearly eight years, but no one on the third floor has even returned an email, called me, or initiated or responded to any communication of any kind from me for nearly a month. It is profoundly hurtful to realize that I work for people who find my considerable expertise and editorial judgment valueless to the coverage they are creating.

While MSNBC may believe that I am worthless, I know better. I know who I am. I know why MHP Show is unique and valuable. I will not sell short myself or this show. I am not hungry for empty airtime. I care only about substantive, meaningful, and autonomous work. When we can do that, I will return — not a moment earlier. I am deeply sorry for the ways that this decision makes life harder for all of you. You mean more to me than you can imagine.

Yours always,

Melissa

That’s an entire network publicly pushing one candidate 24/7/365.

Also, please see Lee Fang’s article (here) where he points out how most political pundits (including those on MSNBC) appear on shows as “impartial” contributors, but in reality they frequently have considerably deep financial ties to the Clintons.

This week Twitter pulled down the trending hashtag #WhichHillary. Coincidentally, Twitter’s CEO Omid Kordestani, recently hosted a Clinton fundraiser last weekend.

I know this might sound conspiratorial or improbable, but money in politics is a real thing, and big money actually buys A LOT of political access, and silences even more dissenting voices.

TWO MORE DAYS UNTIL GELATO* OPENS AT THE HUNTINGTON.

This is the cool new coffee shop where you’ll find it.

If you want to watch a movie where a white filmmaker gains access into North Korea in the name of “satire”, watch The Red Chapel. The filmmaker brings with him Jacob Nossell and Simon Jul, Korean-Danish comedians. Nossell refers to himself as a spastic comic—he has spastic paralysis. They supposedly go to North Korea to put on a comedy show for some kind of “cultural exchange,” but the white guy director has different motives: to make a documentary that exposes North Korea for the sham of a government it really is, and to use Nossell’s disability as part of his critique of how North Korea treats the disabled.

To his dismay, he is having a hard time finding the right footage that fit his purpose. The North Koreans they meet are good at speaking English, pleasant, and polite. They work hard with the comedians to put on a show that might be acceptable to their audience. Their guide, Mrs. Pak, is maternal and kind, and seems to really connect with Nossell, even calling him her son. The North Koreans aren’t monsters, not even the privileged ones living and working in Pyeongyang.The director isn’t happy. He wants footage of the military marching. He wants footage of North Koreans repeating propaganda. He wants to see Nossell insulted because of his disability, because North Koreans are brainwashed into not accepting difference.

At the end, the director is humiliated. The guy is smug, privileged, and cold-hearted about North Korea, and North Koreans. He’s there to make a satirical documentary, dammit, about a culture, history, and people he knows or cares nothing about. Nossell and Jul realize this pretty early on, and their genuine and complex feelings as Korean adoptees shame the director. Nossell especially has a real experience there, with people that look like him and a woman that could look like his birth mother. The North Koreans they meet don’t treat him as “different” because of his disability; rather, he is one of them. This is a Korean concept that the director could never understand—we are one people. The climactic moment at the end when Nossell confronts the director is brave, raw, and emotional, and reveals the callousness and the privileged ignorance behind the motivations of the director.

It’s a joke, the idea that pulling The Interview from production is a victory for the North Korean “thugs” and “terrorists.” It’s a joke, that all the white comedian men on Twitter support their fellow smug entertainer friends by repeating the same, tired old North Korean jokes, racist tropes, and American propaganda. It’s a joke, that what was supposed to be “a joke” movie isn’t funny anymore. No, now it’s a battle against art censorship. It’s a battle against terrorism. It’s a battle against fascism. SMH.

The Interview needs to take a lesson from The Red Chapel. You can’t make a satire about North Korea without looking like a fucking asshole. I, for one, am glad it’s cancelled.

—-

*G wrote some great posts today concerning Americans and their ignorance of America’s role in North and South Korean history, its imperial reign of terror, here, here and here. But you don’t have to read those to know how ignorant Americans are about Korea, despite starting a long and bloody war and still militarily occupying the country. You can ask any Korean American off the street what Americans ask them if they say they’re Korean.

"From the North or South?"

If you think this comedy about assassinating a dictator in North Korea represents artists’ Right rather than another means to thumb an American nose at the suffering of Korean people, then you can unfollow. I’m from the US. I know, for a fact, that Americans don’t fucking know about Korea and Korean history, about the war. They know nothing about the North. They know nothing about China. They know nothing about Russia. They know nothing about Japan. They think they know. And it’s telling that what they know is funny because it’s everything but funny.

You cannot talk about your distant privileges and rights, in this case, without acknowledging the actual history and the actual people. 

TIME

What I saw was a young man see his life flash in front of his eyes. I saw a young man see the world come crashing down around him. It was a death sentence. A fatal decision 2 Halloweens ago would now be the reason that he may never see freedom again. 

It was too much for me to take. 40 years to life, for someone who had no criminal record, and didn’t kill anyone is outrageous. It is unfair, draconian, unnecessary, and just plain wrong. 

The same system that let Zimmerman walk free and told a young white boy that he can’t go to prison because he’s too rich and spoiled, just struck again. The same system that told a man that raped his 3-year-old daughter that he didn’t deserve prison, struck again. 

What pains me the most is the amount of people who have this “lock em’ up and throw the key mentality.” Who honestly believe that it is better to harp on this young man for the terrible thing he did and leave the criminal justice system uncriticized. Not me.

This is not about whether we should prosecute him for what he did. Of course we should. This is about why we are prosecuting him in this way as if this prison sentence does anything to solve our problems in the long run. 40 years to life doesn’t question the validity of harsh gang enhancements. The same gang enhancements that can add up to 10 years on a sentence (violent or non-violent). 40 years to life doesn’t question our overcrowded, cruel and unusual prisons. 40 years to life DEFINITELY doesn’t question the racial disparity in sentencing. 

My goal is to bring nuance to our discussion of crime, gang violence, and who we deem worthy of our concern. Not every black person railroaded by the criminal justice system is going to be innocent, but that doesn’t mean we dull our sense of empathy. 

Accepting his sentence as just gives a concept of retribution to the victims, but it doesn’t help us as a society. It doesn’t.

I choose leniency. I choose looking at this from all sides. I choose rehabilitation. I choose compassion and mercy. I choose fairness and true justice.

This was NOT justice. Justice doesn’t exist in a system that gives black and Latino defendants harsher sentences than white defendants who have the same or similar crimes. 

His father said that, “He made his mother cry, but he saved hundreds of mothers from crying for their children.”

I can’t imagine such pure selflessness. I remember when I was 15, and I couldn’t have done something like this. I don’t think I’m even this selfless now.

Fuck special snowflakes who think like this.

Gurl bye

Your ass ain’t fucking special because you don’t wear makeup.

You’re not fucking better than the woman with large breasts who wears tank tops.

lemme tell you something: I wear tons of fucking make up. I wear short dresses. I walk around with a face that looks about as fake as it can get outside of a fucking barbie doll. and I like it that way. and, despite what you seem to think, no, it’s not because i think i’m ugly. i just fucking like makeup (and trust, i’ve spent years examining my own motivations and how they’re tied to internalized self-hated, fatphobia and misogyny so don’t EVEN cause you don’t know what you’re talking about).

I also read ravenously; engage in discourse regarding philosphy, art, economics, politics, race, gender, sexuality; make subversive art; and love comics and film and music. I’M A FUCKING PERSON IS WHAT I’M SAYING. 

like how fucking deep is this goddamn image when the spine of the book JUST SAYS THE WORD ‘BOOK’.

this kind of bullshit narrative, other than furthering a misogynistic dichotomy that pits women against each other, is also a complete fucking fallacy. A huge majority of average women DON’T DO THIS. you aren’t the lone plain jane in an army of cake-faced, bottle blonde barbies—if you look around, you’ll see that most women just throw on jeans and tops and very little makeup. 

I get that this kind of shit is an attempt to fight back against media-made images of what womanhood is supposed to be. I get it. (thought isn’t it interesting that the “weirdo” in the picture is still thin and conventionally attractive??)

but attacking other women who you perceive as being stupid or carbon copies because of their fucking appearance doesn’t fight back against shit. it actually does EXACTLY what the patriarchy wants us to do—engenders more hatred and competition between women.