MSNBC's Stephanie Ruhle is no stranger to terribly ignorant takes, including and especially as it has to do with blaming conservatives for attacks on LGBT Americans, and other hate crimes. Last month, for instance, she blamed those who dare to speak out against drag shows catered to minors for the shooting at Club Q. This was even after it was revealed that the suspect claims to be non-binary and so uses they/them pronouns and goes by Mx. Anderson Aldrich.
Ruhle is at it again, this time when it comes to blaming "attempts to ban books" for "hate crimes."
During Monday night's episode of "The 11th Hour," Alex Christy highlighted the segment for NewsBusters, Ruhle and Frank Figliuzzi, the former assistant director for counter intelligence, pondered as to if there is "any connection between hate crimes that are targeting race, sexual orientation, or gender identity, and attempts to ban books on these very topics."
Given his position as former director, Figliuzzi might have tried to steer Ruhle in a more reasonable direction. While he did point to a report released that day for hate crimes in 2021 "may be too early right now to say, okay, that's linked to banning books that teach against racism, or the role of race in our society," he didn't stop there.
"But I have to tell you," he went on to say, "a part, a large part of getting over this challenge we're facing is education and erasing ignorance. And if you can't teach race in schools and its role in society, and have people think like the other, and see life through someone else’s eyes, we’ll never get to the solution. That's my concern moving forward."
Figliuzzi is now an MSNBC columnist and contributor for the network, as well as its parent company, NBC News.
There is a lot of unpacking to do here, but "racism" and "the role of race in our society" aren't what is at issue. That too is a misleading leftist talking point, though, as has been the case out of Virginia, where Democrats have tried to claim that Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) wants to take the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. out of the lesson plans.
Virginia also presents an example of what is at issue, which applies to sexually explicit materials that middle-school aged children have access to. There's been a particularly fierce back-and-forth fight in Fairfax County Public Schools, the largest district in the commonwealth and one of the largest in the country, when it comes to students being exposed to sexually explicit reading materials such as "Gender Queer: A Memoir" by Maia Kobabe, and "Lawn Boy" by Jonathan Evison. The district has even mocked parents for their outrage.
It's not that hard to separate not wanting children to be exposed to sexually explicit material, whether that be in reading materials or drag shows, from deranged individuals who think it's okay to kill people. There was chatter--insistence and doubling down upon doubling down even--from liberals that it was hateful right-wing conservatives to who were to blame for the shooting that took place last month at Club Q, a gay nightclub. Ruhle was one of them.
Earlier this year, Gov. Youngkin signed legislation that would inform parents of sexually explicit material. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D-VA), whom Youngkin beat in the 2021 gubernatorial election, tried to campaign on the concern that schools were banning Toni Morrison's "Beloved." McAuliffe served as governor from 2014-2018, during which he vetoed such legislation.
McAuliffe is not the only Democrat to distract and whine about book bans when it applies to books like "Beloved." Far from it.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) made an epic fool of himself tweeting a picture of him reading "Beloved" in an attempt to bash conservative states. Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" was also on the table. As it turns out, that book has also been banned in California school districts.
Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of. pic.twitter.com/z6eJ01NZJe
— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 31, 2022
Then there's Mayor Lori Lightfoot of Chicago, who tweeted pictures of herself reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in Texas.
Lori is banning books.https://t.co/NkzHWgraKW
— BigApplePhoenix (@BigApplePhoenix) May 15, 2022
Lightfood was mocked for how certain Dr. Seuss books were pulled from Chicago libraries, as well as the violence that continuously plagues her city.
Even just the concept of harping on these kinds of crimes is a problem. The Biden administration, including President Joe Biden himself, has been fiercely fixated on "hate-fueled violence." This includes domestic extremism and white supremacists, so much so, that reports indicate the FBI is allegedly doctoring their crime reports so as to inflate the number of domestic terrorism incidents and find white supremacists in order to meet quotas, after facing pressuring from the administration.
