Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus fired off a missive Friday demanding an apology from Ebony for an incident involving one of the magazine’s editors. The routine has become the RNC’s bread-and-butter.
Jamilah Lemieux, a senior editor for Ebony, got bogged down in a brouhaha Thursday on Twitter and eventually dismissed Raffi Williams, a black RNC spokesman, as a “White dude telling me how to do this Black thing.”
(Michelle Malkin’s acolytes at Twitchy, naturally, chronicled the whole exchange.)
Conservatives were indignant and Priebus fanned the flames with an open letter on Friday to Amy D. Barnett, the editor-in-chief for the magazine that specializes in African-American culture.
“Raffi deserves an apology from Ms. Lemieux and from EBONY—not just for making assumptions about his race but more importantly for dismissing black Republicans and the validity of their opinions in public discourse,” Priebus wrote in the letter.
By Friday afternoon, Ebony placated Priebus.
“EBONY acknowledges Senior Editor Jamilah Lemieux’s lack of judgment on her personal Twitter account and apologizes to Raffi Williams and the Black Republican community,” the outlet said in a statement on its website.
Does this sound familiar?
Let’s flash back to late-January, when a tweet from MSNBC caused an uproar on the right.
The tweet focused on an ad from Cheerios that ran during the Super Bowl.
“Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family,” the original tweet read.
Within hours, Priebus said that the RNC would boycott MSNBC until it received an apology from the network’s president, Phil Griffin.
Griffin obliged, and even fired the person responsible for the tweet.
Regardless of his actual motivation, Priebus has no doubt been commended for his efforts. Republicans, of course, love few things more than seeing their leaders take on the so-called “liberal media.”
