Progressive Magazine: Calling Susan Rice 'Typhoid Mary' Is Racist Because Irish People Were Treated Like Blacks

This has to be a joke. Then again, this is The Nation. While the progressive magazine’s editor and publisher, Katrina Vanden Huevel, was right to say that the Left’s obsession about Russia’s role in the 2016 election is evolving into a “neo-McCarthyite furor,” where running into a Russian foreign official at Starbucks could be viewed as an act of treason. It’s a fair point, though Joan Walsh, formerly of Salon, took umbrage with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) calling former National Security Adviser Susan Rice the “Typhoid Mary of the Obama administration.” For starters, she reiterates what Rice told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell that the unmasking was not done for political reasons, and that she didn’t leak anything. Walsh is an unabashed liberal, so the shameless lies she told the country about Benghazi won’t be mentioned here. Walsh might observe, incorrectly, how the right has affections for racism and sexism, but it gets weird when you try to justify that Irish people were just like black people to hurl a racism accusation at someone. (via the Nation) [emphasis mine]:

In her first interview since the attack, Rice told MSNBC’s Mitchell on Tuesday the claims against her were “absolutely false.” She explained the process Lake had described only sketchily: Every morning, top security officials were given a list of noteworthy intelligence reports. According to Rice, occasionally such an official would ask the head of the intelligence agency that provided the data to “unmask” an unidentified American “in order to understand the importance of the report,” and if there was a threat. When that happened, the agency had “to go through its process…to decide if that information as to the identity of that US person could be provided” to the official in question, who was sometimes Rice herself. She made such requests, she told Mitchell, “absolutely not for any political purpose,” and added, “I leaked nothing to nobody, and never have, and never would.”

…The mere person of Susan Rice has always engaged the right; she’s long been depicted as incompetent, as a liar, and now, as a purveyor of disease. “Typhoid Mary” wasn’t black, but an Irish immigrant, the next on the totem pole back then (though Mary Mallon did indeed spread the disease; the charge against Rice is false and offensive).

“Susan Rice is radioactive to the conservative Republican base,” MSNBC commentator Charlie Sykes admitted Tuesday, adding that she is the perfect distraction for Trump from troublesome allegations that his campaign “coordinated” with Russian government officials to defeat Clinton. It’s not hard to understand why Susan Rice galls the GOP base; let’s hope the media recognizes this as the distraction it is from the real story of Trump and Russia.

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Well, for starters, again, trying to equate Irish and blacks to hash out a racism charge is ludicrous. That’s almost as insane as accepting that Rachel Dolezal, a white woman, is trans-black. Second, there is no real story about Trump and Russia, only broad allegations that have yet to yield any solid evidence of collusion. Also, the information that was unmasked by Rice was, by some accounts, more in line with a private investigator's file, detailing the activities of their everyday lives, according to Rep. Peter King (R-NY). King is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. What national security matter prompted Rice to make this request is unknown--and she didn't share it with Andrea Mitchell.