the kicker

Ah Yes, The "Split Up The White Guys" Strategy

December 1, 2008

Some post-unveiling-of-national-security-team-press-conference commentary on MSNBC:

CHRIS MATTHEWS: Clearly [the team] has the picture we’re looking for. The many faces of Benetton or whatever you want to call it. But clearly representative of America more than previous administrations…

And: “We were talking on the set here and we decided they had to split up the white guys up there to make it look more like America,” said Joe Scarborough as, as my colleague pointed out, MSNBC demonstrated its own adherence to the “Split Up The White Guys” (So As To “Look More Like America”) Strategy:




The rest of Scarborough’s thought:

…Because there were two white males up on that stage. Describe the difference. 1992 Bill Clinton was accused of tokenism, of trying to go out and find a diverse group for the sake of diversity. Here you have so many strong forces that perhaps it just so happened they were diverse. Nobody is looking at this group and suggesting anybody got it through anything other than great qualifications….

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Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.