Jon Stewart was incredulous last night that Fox News got riled up over President Obama’s oft-repeated metaphor that Republicans “can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.” Pretty harmless, Stewart said, but “have you heard that story the Fox way?” Sean Hannity was outraged to hear the President say Republicans have to sit “in the back” which he said is “not exactly a tasteful reference.” Stewart asked: “You think the President’s saying Republicans have to take it in the butt? That’s filthy! Or is it something even stupider?”
It turns out it was something even stupider. As TPM reported previously, Fox News hosts complained that Obama’s use of “back of the bus” — he actually said “sit in the back” — is a racially insensitive invocation of Rosa Parks. “If this is a racial metaphor,” Stewart said, “you aren’t Rosa Parks. You’re Miss Daisy.”
Though Stewart conceded that “at least we can all agree how offensive it would be for any major political figure to invoke the ugly history of segregation for an election in 2010. In the fall anyway, unless it was Michael Steele in the summer of 2010.” Cue Steele saying in August that Nancy Pelosi will have to ride in the “back of the bus.”
Watch:
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Indecision 2010 - Republicans Can Go to the Back of the Car | ||||
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Jillian Rayfield
Jillian Rayfield is a Reporter/Blogger for TPM, and started as a News Intern in May 2009. She graduated from Cornell University in May 2008 with a degree in Film, and worked as a Research Assistant for a market research firm in London in between.
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