The New Yorker magazine has removed the racially charged description of U.S. Senator Ted Cruz as “uppity,” and the author of the article has posted an apology after a strong blowback on social media.
Cruz, (R-Texas), who is of Cuban-American heritage, announced his run for the presidency on Monday at Liberty University in Virginia.
In an essay about Cruz, New Yorker writer John Cassidy originally penned the following.
“The conventional wisdom is that Cruz hasn’t got a chance, and, as far as the Presidency goes, it’s probably accurate. To many Americans, he is the uppity loudmouth who, in the fall of 2013, less than a year into his first term as a senator, helped bring the federal government to a halt.”
The word “uppity” was subsequently scrubbed from the passage.
According to the website Flavorwire , “‘Uppity’ is, to put it lightly, an ugly word. It’s got a long and unpleasant history in this country of being racially loaded, of being used to connote the idea of ethnic minorities — especially African Americans — getting above their station and challenging a white hegemony that should remain untouched.”
Added Breitbart, “‘ Uppity’ is widely seen as a term used against minorities who ‘don’t know their place.’”
“Had any right-of-center commentator used that word to describe a Democrat of minority ethnicity, MSNBC would already be presuming his membership in the KKK,” Twitchy opined .
Although Cruz and Barack Obama have similar backgrounds to some extent (first-term Senators running for president, Harvard Law graduates), most media pundits rejoiced over the Obama candidacy. Cruz, not so much. The aforementioned MSNBC was even forced to make an on-air apology on Wednesday after one its contributors linked Ted Cruz’s preference for country music and “killing some Muslims.”
In a postscript to his article about Ted Cruz, John Cassidy included this update, after thanking the Twitterverse for the “heads up.”
“In describing Senator Cruz’s aggressive actions during his first year in the Senate, I originally used the word ‘uppity,’ which means, according to Webster’s, ‘acting as if you are more important than you really are, do not have to do what you are told to do, etc.’ However, the word also has some disturbing historical connotations that I overlooked, and in applying it to a Latino politician, I goofed. If I gave any offense, however inadvertently, I am sorry.”
Although Cassidy — likely reflecting the magazine’s primary readership — is no fan of the GOP, which is abundantly evident from his writings, it should be noted that the Ted Cruz New Yorker article is not completely unflattering to the candidate.
@CounterMoonbat If “uppity” means a man who spoke flawlessly for 16 hours, not 16 minutes, WITHOUT a TelePrompTer… Then, yeah. @exjon
— Amazon Princess™ (@rpowell8124) March 24, 2015
@JohnCassidy Why is it liberals can insult people of different ethnic backgrounds and no one else can? Cruz is a stand up guy; you are not.
— Alice Pritchett (@honestal1944) March 26, 2015
[Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images News]
