IARC Responds to Marco Rubio Slur

Thursday, February 25th, 2010 Blog / Commentary by IARC

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Nina Verghese
IARC Spokeswoman
info@iarcnational.org

Washington, D.C. – Today, the co-chairs of the Indian American Republican Council issued the following statement in response to racially charged name-calling directed toward Marco Rubio, the former Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

“We are disappointed but not surprised by the lack of judgment and blatant disrespect shown to Mr. Rubio by a member of the mainstream media,” said Harry Walia and Danny Gaekwad, co-chairs of the IARC and residents of Florida.  “To see a television commentator on a national program use this type of language is insulting and depicts the true hostility the media has toward conservatives who are considered rising stars.”

On the Joy Behar show MSNBC contributor Donny Deutsch referred to “this coconut Rubio down in Florida.”  He later stated he was using the term to refer to his level of “inexperience,” despite the fact that Mr. Rubio had a successful career for eight years in the Florida House and served in leadership positions including Majority Whip, Majority Leader and Speaker.

Deutsch later said he did not know it was a racially charged term that, according to the New York Times, is used “to depict a person as being brown on the outside and white on the inside.”

“When Senator George Allen made an inappropriate comment and apologized, the mainstream media still went after him with a vengeance because they wanted to defeat him,” said Mr. Walia and Mr. Gaekwad.  “Yet when Senator Hillary Clinton joked that Mahatma Gandhi was a gas station owner and Vice President Biden claimed that all Indian Americans worked in 7-11 stores, the mainstream media barely noticed.  This double standard by the media in their reaction to these types of incidences is startling and blatant.”

“We would encourage people not to watch MSNBC, but after seeing their ratings, we realized that’s already happened.”

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