Marc Lamont Hill: Romney Grandson Photo Was Exploitative To Begin With

On CNN today a segment aired regarding the remarks made by the panelists on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry. Host Don Lemon played the clip and went to his two panelists, Ana Navarro and Marc Lamont Hill for their remarks.

Marc Lamont Hill: “Some would say maybe that it’s an exploitative picture that they’re exploiting the kid by hauling out this black person …”

[crosstalk]

“They were pointing out the fact that the picture itself was sort of a spectacle and they were sort of making fun of the Republican party. I don’t think they were making fun of the baby. If they were I’d be right on your side. This was a light moment making fun of Mitt Romney”

Clear? This was just good old-fashioned, harmless, light, fun-poking based on the self-evidently silly and mockable notion of Mitt Romney exploiting a black child to make up for being so white. Isn’t that fun and light-hearted and tra la la?

Please note the New Rule in Hill’s comments. Taking a family photo with a member of your family is exploiting that family member. Using that photo to make fun of republicans as racists is not exploitative at all, it’s just clean harmless horsing around. Why any second now Hill is going to snap a towel at Mitt in the locker room and oh, how we’ll laugh. Good times.

Not for nothing here, but in order for it to be exploitative, wouldn’t it need to have some degree of visibility? This photo wasn’t exactly plastered on posters in Times Square. It was, in fact, sort of difficult to find online.

Hill goes on later in the segment to say, in response to host Lemon’s comments that the panel was using a baby to score points, that “you could argue that [the Romneys] were using a baby to bring attention to their political progressivism.” So again, it’s really Mitt Romney who is at fault for his son adopting the kid. Because he only did it to get off the hook for being so super white and republican!

Now what do people on the left call a black person who ends up in a photo or on a stage or on TV among white conservatives? I can’t recall. What’s that word? Oh now I remember. Token.

Like the original panel participants, Marc Lamont Hill is taking it as a given that the adoption of the child was some sort of ploy on the part of the Romneys to make up for .. well, for being the Romneys. That takign a family photo with the child is by its very nature an exploitation of the child.

Finally, if it weren’t clear enough at this point, Lamont Hill says it is fine when Bill de Blasio brings his adopted black son into photo ops because in his case, its not exploitative. You know, because democrat.

Isn’t that light-hearted and silly and nothing burgers? So move along!


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