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Melissa Harris-Perry Goes Nuclear Over A Man Criticizing Her: Maybe ‘He Was There to Kill Me’!

   DailyWire.com

If you ever see MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry in a hotel lobby, do not express any dissatisfaction with her work. She’ll likely think you’re trying to kill her … and then write an absurd far-fetched piece about it while she simultaneously claims symbolic self-martyrdom.

Harris-Perry, who is also a professor at Wake Forest University, explains that while she was at the Iowa caucuses earlier this week with a couple of dozen of undergraduate students, a man in a public hotel lobby criticized her and asked how she “got credentialed to be on MSNBC.” What followed was a spinout of hyperbolic-fairytale proportions, filled with what-ifs that have no basis.

“I don’t know if he was there to kill me,” begins the dramatic story.

Monday night I was sitting in a hotel lobby in downtown Des Moines with my back to a wall of windows, my eyes fixed on the TV, my attention wholly focused on early caucus results. I didn’t notice until he was standing right next to me, much closer than is ordinary or comfortable. When he started he speaking it was like he was picking up in the middle of sentence, finishing a conversation we had begun earlier, but I couldn’t remember ever meeting him.

After small talk about his wife also being a professor too, the mystery man wondered, “What I want to know is how you got credentialed to be on MSNBC.”

“Well. It is not exactly a credential…” answered Harris-Perry.

“But why you? Why would they pick you?” the man responded.

That was enough to unleash complete panic in the MSNBC host, “Now I know something is wrong. Now his voice is angry. Now a few other people have stopped talking and started staring. Now he is so close I can feel his breath. Before I can answer his unanswerable question of why they picked me, he begins to tell me why he has picked me.”

“I just want you to know why I am doing this,” said the man.

Of course, when most read that line, they may think that he is explaining what just happened; why he confronted her and explained why he did not like her work and felt that she was under-qualified to be on MSNBC.

Harris-Perry, on the other hand, thought he was trying to kill her. Seriously.

Oh – there is a this. He is going to do a this. To me. And he is going to tell me why.

I freeze. Not even me – the girl in me. The one who was held down by an adult neighbor and as he raped her. The one who listened as he explained why he was doing this. She freezes.

I freeze. He speaks. And moves closer. Is there a knife under the coat? A gun? Worse?

Harris-Perry then says that somehow “Nazi Gernamy” was invoked into the conversation before this maybe-murder was about to go down. Thankfully, her students save the day.

And I can’t hear all the words. But I catch “Nazi Germany” and I catch “rise to power.” But I can’t move. I am lulled by a familiar powerlessness, muteness, that comes powerfully and unexpectedly. It grips me. Everything is falling away. Until in my peripheral vision I catch sight of a ponytail, the movement of an arm, the sound of familiar young voices and I remember… my students.

She dramatically adds, “I don’t know if he was there to kill me. I know they were there to save me.”

But before this obviously embellished (if even real) story is over, the MSNBC host finds a way to commit that aforementioned act of symbolic self-martyrdom.

As he’d invaded my space with angry, incoherent cruelty, I heard a voice in my head roar, “Not in front of my students!” I did not think, “No! Get away from me!” I thought, “Not in front of my students!”

Ridiculous though it may be, my dominant fear was that if this man maimed or killed me my students would fail to achieve the learning outcome of the Wake the Vote program, which is charged with helping them hone tools of democratic deliberation, perspective-taking, conflict resolution, and civic engagement in diverse settings. It was the fear of a ruined lesson plan that propelled me out of my seat and away from the potential attacker.

Finally, the cherry on top comes in the form of a plug for her newly-bestowed honor, “[J]ust hours before my students performed their unknowing act of heroism, my university bestowed a breathtaking title of honor. Wake Forest University has named me the first Maya Angelou Presidential Chair.”

Again, even if her excessive fear was real—although this is highly doubtful since, as Breitbart News notes, no filing of a police report was ever mentioned—it was clearly irrational from what Harris-Perry describes in her colorful story.

This whole story really puts a damper on the whole “you can’t make this stuff up” bit, because, well, you know …

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