12:30 pm, September 11th | by Laura Donovan
Like many, CNN contributor Erick Erickson said something really stupid recently. During the DNC, the Red State V editor-in-chief tweeted, “First night of the Vagina Monologues in Charlotte going as expected.” Naturally, people got upset and he looked like a jealous, misogynistic coward. Less than an hour later, he issued a public apology, stating, “My apologies to those offended by my tweet. Wasn’t my intention.”
“Sorry” didn’t cut it for a lot of people, and women’s group UltraViolet headlined a campaign to get him banned from CNN. The petition has received more than 100,000 signatures, and while he definitely needed to be held accountable for his words, pushing to fire him is extreme and a waste of everyone’s energy.
We’ve heard a lot of dumb remarks the past few weeks, and we can expect to hear many more as the election nears. Late last month, former Yahoo! News Washington bureau chief David Chalian lost his job for saying GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney would be “happy to have a party when black people drown” in Hurricane Isaac. Chalian was justly ousted and shamed, as he held a tremendous position of power.
Erickson, on the other hand, is a CNN contributor, not a man running a major international non-partisan news site. As pointed out by Salon, the network brought Erickson on board even after he dubbed then-Supreme Court Justice David Souter a “goat f-cking child molester” in 2009, so clearly they haven’t always been super concerned with him making wildly inappropriate comments.
It was the right thing to do for Erickson to swiftly apologize, and while I resent that he found it necessary to mock women during the big event, I think it’s important for everyone else to move on already. There will be plenty more ridiculous statements to dwell upon in the coming months. Stop fixating on this one.
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