The tweet read: "So Ahmadinejad wants to be first Iranian in space - wasn't he just there last week?" with a link the the Yahoo News article following. After facing some backlash, McCain tweeted, "Re: Iran space tweet - lighten up folks, can't everyone take a joke?" One response was from Michigan representative Justin Amash who responded to McCain's second tweet saying, "Maybe you should wisen up & not make racist jokes." Yousef Munayyer of the Palestine Center in Washington remarked, "What a racist tweet from John McCain! Imagine the outcry if it was said of a Black leader or Jewish leader!" Many more people responded with similar remarks.
Did McCain go too far by jokingly comparing the President of Iran to a monkey? Or are people overreacting? Do you agree with Munayyer's comment?
5 comments:
I think that McCain's comment was really rude and very disrespectful. I think that he went way to far with his comments and I agree with Munayyer's comment to a point. I think that McCain has no right to be putting statements like that online for people to see. As a politician it is not right to put statements like that out there for people to see, even as a joke.
I agree that what McCain did was something that he probably shouldn't of done so that backlash like this wouldn't happen. Twitter is not a place that this should happen because you will get comments and accusations like he is receiving. While we may never know whether it was a joke (most likely) or simply out of racism, lot's of politicians make the same mistakes. We can't forget Joe Biden here http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/08/15/joe-biden-s-chains-comment-and-the-racial-double-standard.html. All I'm trying to say here is that a non important issue here is being blown up to way more attention than it should be receiving.
Obviously, this kind of derogation is completely inappropriate for anyone to say. As a man of middle heritage, I am especially appalled at McCain's comment. But not only is this completely immoral on McCain's part, but it is really quite unintelligent. I don't know if he was in his right mind when he posted this, but no politician should ever let something like this come to light. Backlash is inevitable against a public figure like him and he may have just breeched the hull of the boat that is his political career.
It's completely unacceptable for anyone to make such a horrid comment, especially a public figure with any degree of influence over the thoughts of the public. Whether it is in a formal setting such as a speech or an informal social media site like twitter, it is disgusting and utterly reprehensible.
That being said--are we confident this was actually John McCain? It seems to me like someone would be hired to run a twitter account for him. Not that it really matters, the comment was made and the backlash is happening.
While McCain's comment was a bit careless, I don't see the need for all this outrage. After all, just look up "George Bush monkey" and you'll have plenty of images of George Bush's infamous monkey face. Also, it seems that McCain was just making fun of Ahmadinejad, not all Persians so I'm not sure if this could actually be called racism and McCain is probably not a racist man, considering his adopted daughter is from Bangladesh. Ultimately, I think McCain's comment was not too well thought out but does not seem to warrant such an outcry.
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