Appearing on “Meet The Press” on Sunday, Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan and National Review editor Rich Lowry gave a sharp reply to NBC correspondent Katy Tur after she tried to defend Samantha Bee’s vulgar attack on Ivanka Trump.
“This spark of the culture wars with Roseanne and Sam Bee. Is this about our inability to deal with race in this country?” said host Chuck Todd. “That’s what the Left sort of sees it as, Joshua. Or, is this about a double standard in that we sort of hold… we’ll hold folks on the Right more accountable with their bad tastes than we will on the Left?”
After hearing from commentator Joshua Jordan, Noonan insisted that public figures need to take responsibility for their comments in the public square.
“I am very glad to see a certain amount of backlash against them, almost as if the American people are saying, ‘Stop it already, this is terrible. You’re making it worse,'” said Noonan.
Tur responded by attempting to gloss over Bee’s comment and turn the conversation into a condemnation of the Trump administration.
“I do think what’s unfortunate here is that the Samantha Bee controversy, it’s now overshadowing what is the story that she was trying to bring attention to, which is a story that families are being ripped apart at the border,” she opined. “That this administration is claiming there is a new law when it’s just a policy and they’re taking families apart even when families are coming in, according to reporters, asking for asylum. That is a real issue. That is not being covered because we’re all talking about Samantha Bee using a word that she should not have used.”
Noonan did not let that stand.
“It wasn’t just a word,” she retorted. “It was an obscene personal attack … and that did obscure her point, but that also showed maybe she wasn’t serious about it.”
Lowry weighed in by dismissing the Left’s attempts to blame Trump for Barr’s tweet and lamenting the failure of so many in key institutions to take responsibility for being better “stewards.”
“I don’t think Samantha Bee and Roseanne are really comparable,” said Lowry. “I think some people are saying Trump enabled Roseanne Barr. She has been a kook for 20 years. And her Twitter timeline has been grotesque for 10 years or however long she’s been on Twitter. But Samantha Bee was hired to be a partisan vulgarian. And underlining something Peggy said, my friend Yuval Levin of National Affairs makes a point, the problem with institutions: no one considers themselves an insider anymore has a responsibility for being better and being a steward. Everyone considers themselves to be an outsider.”