Rich Lowry seemed to have used the racial slur in place of the term "migrants" while speaking to Megyn Kelly on her SiriusXM show. He's now claimed he didn't.
My thoughts: this was not an accident. This was testing the waters.
I wonder what the person who absolutely insisted to me yesterday that this wasn't about black people in general would have to say about this...
I don't know. I mean, he does sound like he catches himself, and he isn't that good of an actor. But then, who the hell has that just... ready to go to the point where it just blurts out by itself? Like, how often do you have to say that out loud for it to just hijack your train of thought? It's almost less damning if he did it on purpose, honestly.
Even if this was just an "innocent" slip up it's not like what he said wouldn't have been racist otherwise. The dude is defending the false claims about Haitian immigrants. It's still racist.
Even during the Reconstruction Era, Indiana was both staunchly Republican and full of the KKK. And there was no shortage of racism irrespective of party in Congress during the height of the Civil War. The myth is that the Radical Republicans of the 1860s and 70s represented the party population as a whole, rather than a vocal minority within an ascendant movement that managed to squeeze in a few good reforms before Hayes sold it all down the river.
Republicans barely abolished slavery even with half the country in Time-Out. And they were crucified for it in elections to come.
My thoughts: this was not an accident. This was testing the waters.
The staff at the National Review have always been neo-confederate trash and I have no trouble believing Lowry simply uses this word on such a routine basis that it slipped out during an interview with another arch-conservative media figure.
These folks are racists and it shouldn't be seen as surprising when they show all the symptoms of a bigoted mind.
Okay I didn't watch the video until looking at your link and saw the whole "he started saying migrant wrong" bullshit and was like, "okay maybe that is what happened.". No, this dude straight throws a hard r n word out casually, unmistakable as anything else.
I saw the dumb defender say he was conflating immigrant and migrant but I replayed that part a dozen times. It really, really sounds like an 'N' as the first letter. It definitely was not him beginning to pronounce 'immgr'. You can plainly hear it.
But even if we gave him the benefit of the doubt, the fact that Megyn Kelly completely ignored it and the fact that he didn't apologize immediately and explain it says volumes about both of them. Why didn't Kelly even say anything? Maybe she's so used to hearing it in her circles, maybe even saying it, that it didn't even register as something unusual to her and she didn't notice it.
It seems seems dubious to me too. But the 'gr' in migrants would sound roughly the same as 'gger.' The problem is... well. He seems to start it with an 'n' and then also mis-inflects the 'i'?
It would be like trying to say 'clickable' and instead saying 'slacker.'
I meant an accident in the sense of "I said something racist out loud when I meant to only say it in my head." But I don't think that was the case here.
I wondered if this might turn out to be somebody reading something into something, but Nope, he said it clear as a bell. You don't accidentally say that unless you're thinking it. This is obviously a word this guy uses frequently, and he even seems proud of himself for it.
I don't sympathize with this dudes rhetoric at all, just adding that from his mouth movements he does seem to be making an "m" sound not an "n" sound with his mouth.
He's probably still really racist, but I've got racist family and if they ever decide to drop a "hard r" you can see it in their face. I do think it was a case of trying to say "immigrants", flubbing it, then just saying "migrants" because he realizes what it sounds like. Even the forced laughter afterwards has a sort of "oh shit that didn't sound good" vibe to it.
Again, not defending this guy. But we have to remember, all sides of politics can spin stuff to fit their agenda, so we have to be discreet in our decisions and judgements, that's how we stand apart from all the people just sucking down the news as gospel truth.
I was all but bending over backwards trying to hear how it might have been just a slip, bringing to bear the fact that both words have a nasal consonant and hard 'g' sounds, but... nope. He enunciates an 'n' again, clearly after he's done saying "Haitian" and therefore where it doesn't belong, and then he gets all the way to the hard '-er', a “murmur diphthong” that simply doesn't exist in 'immigrant' or 'migrant'. The most charitable explanation with any plausibility whatsoever is that the n-word is a part of his spoken vocabulary and he failed to censor himself quickly enough.
I'm gonna be honest, this is a stretch. I watched the clip. Whatever he was about to say definitely sounds like it was starting with an M, not an N. His lips are in a closed shape at that moment, which you'd see with an M sound and not an N. With the context of what he's saying, it really sounds like he was trying to say "migrant" and "immigrant" at the same time.
Don't get me wrong, this dude's a dipshit for dozens of other reasons. But there's nothing here this time. This really doesn't seem to be worth any amount of energy.
I think you're hearing what you want to hear and getting a hit of the righteous outrage. Misspeaking is a thing, dude. You say "plausible" sarcastically, as if it weren't actually 100% plausible lol
Sometimes I hear an m, sometimes an n. Not gonna shit on you. BUT he doesn't say migr- as if he's going to say migrants with the short I like he claims he did, he says -IGGER. You have to simultaneously fuck up two different ways to say it that way. It would be mig-rants, not migger-ants.
Sure. I'd still say that he just fumbled his words, as people do everyday. Importantly, it's incredibly stupid to hyper focus on someone possibly saying a naughty word when the whole Haitian migrants story is full of real, undeniable, tangible racism. Missing the forest for the trees.
Your headphones suck because he definitely lead with the "n" and not the "m". I know the difference in sound between n and m and it was an n. In fact around the 0:35 mark he said, "complaining about Haitian nigge-mngr-migrants". I don't know how to spell him correcting himself.
Nah man, you're hearing what you want to hear. Just look at his lips - they come together as they would with an "m" sound. The exact same way they come together shortly thereafter to say "migrants" properly.
Compare his mouth movement to when he says "in", his lips do not move together.
Or keep hearing what you want to hear, I don't care. Nothing I say will change your mind.
Yeah, I'm not 100% convinced either. It doesn't sound like he used the n-word, nor that he caught himself halfway through saying it. People screw up speaking all the time, and on rare occasions it can sound like something offensive.