Gay Activist Challenges Fox Panel: Would You Be OK with a Holocaust-Denier CEO?
Sunday’s edition of Howard Kurtz’s MediaBuzz on Fox News opened with a heated discussion about the ouster of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich over political contributions he made in 2008 to the anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 in California. Gay rights activist and blogger John Aravosis defended the activism that ultimately led to Eich’s resignation, and raised the hypothetical scenario of a major CEO who happened to be a Holocaust-denier.
Aravosis’ fellow panelists jumped all over him for the analogy, but as he explained later to his conservative critics on Twitter, he was just echoing sentiments made by Breitbart editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro last week. In a post on his AMERICAblog website, Aravosis outlines Shapiro’s defense of Eich to a the BBC’s “World Have Your Say” show, on which he was also a guest. “I’m Jewish,” Shapiro said. “If Brendan Eich had been a Holocaust-denier, but he treated Jews decently at his company, and he had not discriminated against Jews in any of his business dealings, I’d hold exactly the same position.”
Guessing that his fellow Fox panelists, TheBlaze’s Amy Holmes and Fox contributor Lauren Ashburn might not feel the same way, Aravosis asked, “Would you have a Holocaust-denier as a CEO of a company?”
“How can you equate gay rights with the Holocaust?” Ashburn asked Aravosis in disbelief, perhaps not realizing it was an idea that came from Shapiro. “That’s outrageous.”
“It is outrageous,” Aravosis shot back. “And you said under no circumstances should a CEO not get his job because of his political position. I am saying that we actually all agree that under some circumstances, he should not.
Aravosis continued to get hammered for his comments into Monday morning, offering up this defense on Twitter:
Dear GOP trolls: It was darling Breitbart editor Ben Shapiro who brought up Nazis (and defended them!) re Mozilla http://t.co/npuku01EOt
— John Aravosis (@aravosis) April 7, 2014
Watch video below, via Fox News:
[photo via screengrab]
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