On his 11 a.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Monday, host Thomas Roberts
condemned America's current social contract as being "so wrong,"
launching into an angry rant about the supposed persecution of certain
groups in the country and making demands of his liberal network to move
even farther left: "I want to challenge this network. We had to have an
'I am other' agenda..." [Listen to the audio [1]]
Roberts recited imagined lines of attack against such groups: "Being an
other, whether it's LGBT, because you're then suspected of being a
pedophile and a rabid disease carrier. And if you are a woman, well, you
certainly don't have a right to your own body and your own reproductive
health because if you do, then you're just a slut who wants to sleep
around and use abortion as birth control. And then if you're Hispanic,
well you're just a taker, you're not a maker, and you want to come here
and have anchor babies and you just want to lay off the land."
His fellow MSNBC colleagues – hosts Toure and Melissa Harris-Perry, as
well as legal analyst Lisa Bloom – all nodded their heads in agreement
as he fumed: "The social contract that we have currently negotiated that
is so wrong and how this is happening in a country where we have this
huge group of people, that it's supposed to be a melting pot, but we
treat each other with such disdain it's not even funny."
Toure chimed in: "Amen." Harris-Perry offered: "I will absolutely take
you up on that challenge. If we can convince the folks where we work, I
would happily co-host with you a long-term townhall special around this
or anything else." Roberts excitedly replied: "Let's do it. Let's do
it!" Toure added: "Can I get in on that? I like this concept."
Here is a transcript of Roberts' July 15 rant:
11:15AM ET
THOMAS ROBERTS: And Melissa, while we talk about these [Stand Your Ground] laws, don't we need to do more a lot more about our social contract with each other in this country when it comes to being others? Because as we look at this, we can use this as a great pivot point to talk about race relations in this country.
But being an other, whether it's LGBT, because you're then suspected of being a pedophile and a rabid disease carrier. And if you are a woman, well, you certainly don't have a right to your own body and your own reproductive health because if you do, then you're just a slut who wants to sleep around and use abortion as birth control. And then if you're Hispanic, well you're just a taker, you're not a maker, and you want to come here and have anchor babies and you just want to lay off the land.
I mean, isn't that the – that's the – and I want to challenge this network. We had to have an "I am other" agenda and have a forum for it because others need to unite to talk about this and figure out where we're going as a country. The social contract that we have currently negotiated that is so wrong and how this is happening in a country where we have this huge group of people, that it's supposed to be a melting pot, but we treat each other with such disdain it's not even funny.
TOURE: Amen.
MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: Well, I'll tell you what Thomas, the first thing I'll say is I will absolutely take you up on that challenge. If we can convince the folks where we work, I would happily co-host with you a long-term townhall special around this or anything else, because-
ROBERTS: Let's do it. Let's do it!
TOURE: Can I get in on that? I like this concept.
