Opinion

KERNS: ‘Tweet While Black’ And You Might Offend The Language Police

Jen Kerns Contributor
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From Kevin Hart to Heisman winner Kyler Murray, “tweeting while black” is the latest offense to the liberal language police.

Over the last several days, the politically-correct language police have attacked two of the most talented African Americans in the United States.

First, they skewered actor Kevin Hart for offensive tweets posted years ago — ultimately costing him a job as host of the 2019 Academy Awards.

After taking down Hart they moved on quickly to attack the young African American quarterback of my alma mater, the University of Oklahoma and the winner of the elite Heisman trophy over the weekend.

In the case against Oklahoma’s Kyler Murray, the media scurrilously attacking a young man just out of his teens for tweeting the word “queer” when he was just 14 to 15 years old as a middle-school student.

It is difficult to gage precisely why the mainstream media are so keen to target African Americans’ free speech.

Perhaps it’s payback to African Americans who have historically opposed gay marriage — a rebellion that the so-called “gay mafia” deems an unforgivable sin that must be punished by death (of a career, that is.)

Perhaps it’s because African Americans have left the plantation of political oppression, switching sides to support President Trump at an unprecedented rate of 36 percent — four times the percentage who voted for him just two years ago.

Perhaps it is also because the Republican president has has a hand in lowering the African American unemployment rate to the lowest point in recorded history – numbers that the left cannot deny.

Perhaps it is also because African Americans are speaking for themselves — from Kanye West to Candace Owens, and even Nick Cannon. In the attack on Hart, they wasted no time pointing out the liberal hypocrisy of homophobic tweets from white females Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, and Amy Schumer, which received exactly zero media coverage.

While it’s hard to tell precisely what triggered the outrage, one thing is certain: it’s a terrible time to “tweet while black.”

The irony in all of this is that far-left agitators are the biggest offenders of not only verbally attacking those who disagree with them, but physically attacking them as well.

Our campaign was one of the first to experience it firsthand a decade ago during California’s Proposition 8 campaign in 2008. In the battle over whether to uphold the will of millions of voters who had already decided a decade earlier that marriage should be between a man and a woman, gay opponents verbally attacked individuals in our campaign, doxxed my home address on the internet as the spokesperson for the campaign, and vandalized campaign signs and the private property of campaign supporters as the campaign got heated.

Our campaign was one of the first to experience it firsthand a decade ago during California’s Proposition 8 campaign in 2008. In the battle to uphold the will of millions of voters who  decided a decade earlier that marriage should be between a man and a woman, liberal opponents verbally attacked individuals in our campaign; doxxed my home address on the internet as the spokesperson for the campaign; and vandalized campaign signs and the private property of campaign supporters as the campaign got heated.

The hateful left called for boycotts of any company who dared to donate to the Proposition 8 campaign including Marriott Hotels, Bolthouse Farms (the makers of those tiny, delicious baby carrots), the Catholic Church, the Mormon Church and others. They even “outed” the names of private citizens who contributed to Proposition 8, releasing their names overlaid on a map of their respective neighborhoods because gays were “entitled to know which of their neighbors” opposed gay marriage.

The same has been true of the left’s behavior against Trump supporters in the last two years. While they often call Trump a dictator, their own actions are more fitting to the authoritarian title.

Take, for example, the attacks on young people rallying for President Trump in San Jose last year. Supporters were egged, beaten, and chased from the event’s lawn because they were Trump supporters.

In San Antonio, Texas a grown man ripped a “Make America Great Again” hat off of the head of a boy, threatened the boy and dumped soda on him at a Whataburger simply because he was a Trump supporter.

In addition, at the University of California at Berkeley last year young Republicans were physically and verbally attacked and forced to shelter in place in university buildings, while objects were lit on fire around them as campus police stood by and did nothing to protect the young conservatives. (The riotous behavior of the Antifa thugs was so egregious that UC Berkeley settled the case for $70,000 last week.)

In each of these cases there was actual, physical violence committed against Republicans – not just silly social media comments from years ago.

Whatever the reason for their fake outrage over actor Hart’s and quarterback Murray’s old Tweets, the left’s wildly hypocritical performance on the issue of attacking others is so laughable it ought to win an Oscar.

Jen Kerns (@JenKernsUSA) served as spokeswoman for the California Republican Party; spokeswoman for California’s Proposition 8 on marriage, which went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court; and as a Fox News writer for the 2016 U.S. presidential debates.


The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.