At the Inner Circle Show, an annual New York City event where journalists gather to crack wise about the day’s politics, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio took part in a skit that joked about “colored people time.”
Via NBC News:
During an appearance alongside “Hamilton” cast member Leslie Odom Jr. and Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton at a black tie event with influential journalists and politicos in the Big Apple this past Saturday, the mayor was teased for taking his sweet time to endorse the former New York senator.
“Thanks for the endorsement, Bill,” Clinton quipped. “Took you long enough.”
To which de Blasio replied: “Sorry, Hillary, I was running on C.P. time.” An audience member can be heard shouting – “No!” – after the line was delivered and was met with only a smattering of chuckles. The term “C.P. time” refers to the racially insensitive term “colored people’s time,” which has perpetuated the stereotype that African-Americans are lazy, unreliable and often late to appointments.
Watch the extremely awkward exchange below:
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While de Blasio has been roundly criticized on social media, the networks have taken very little notice.
Via Mediaite:
The moment received extensive online and print coverage, including criticism from liberal outlets like Jezebel, New York Daily News, Gawker, Salon, Raw Story, and Fusion.
But if you get your news from cable networks, you’d be forgiven for not knowing that the moment even existed. A search of the major three cable news networks finds that in the 60-hour period since Saturday night, there has been virtually no media coverage of the “C.P. time” joke.
As of this writing, Fox News has covered the joke twice, the first time on Red Eye (which airs at 3:00 AM) and the second time this morning on America’s Newsroom. Fox is the only network to have aired the joke and do an actual segment on it.
NBC News defended the mayor’s joke saying his “use of the phrase could be considered ironic, since his wife, Chirlane McCray, is black.”
So we’re going with the old Bill-knows-black-people defense, eh? The only surprising aspect of this whole affair is that Hillary Clinton didn’t slip into her Negro dialect.
Imagine had this joke been made by Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. It would absolutely destroy their political aspirations in a heartbeat, leading every major news outlet for days and weeks to come.
If a white Republican even thought of making a joke on ‘CP time’, Salon and Fusion wouldn’t be able to get out a racism piece quick enough.
— Britt (@brittaufait) April 10, 2016
Cross-posted at the Mental Recession
