In One Tweet, Howard Kurtz Erases Joy Reid, Don Lemon, and the Entire Country of Myanmar
Hours after MSNBC announced Alex Wagner will succeed Rachel Maddow in the 9 p.m. slot, Fox News Media Analyst Howard Kurtz reacted by falsely claiming Wagner is Black, and mistakenly said she’d be the only Black host on cable news in primetime.
Kurtz has since corrected the record and apologized for the error.
“Alex Wagner, whose MSNBC show was canceled in 2015, has been named Rachel Maddow’s replacement four nights a week,” he said in a since-deleted tweet. “She’d be the only black host in cable prime time”
In fact, Wagner is not Black. Her mother is an immigrant from Myanmar and her father was White.
Moreover, even if Wagner were Black – but again, she is not – she would not be the only Black primetime host. MSNBC’s Joy Reid hosts The ReidOut at 7 pm ET. While some may argue that “primetime” begins at 8 pm ET, CNN’s Don Lemon hosts Don Lemon Tonight between 10 pm ET and midnight.
Kurtz later tweeted he’d been mistaken.
I was in error on two points: Alex Wagner, taking over for Maddow 4 nights a week, is Asian-American, and Don Lemon is obviously a black host in that 8-11 time period. My apologies to Alex and to my followers for not being more careful, given dangers of quick-response tweeting
— HowardKurtz (@HowardKurtz) June 27, 2022
The omission of Reid and Lemon as Black hosts was a curious one, coming as it did from the host of MediaBuzz on Fox News every Sunday at 11 am ET, where Kurtz specifically focuses on the media industry.
As someone whose mother hails from Myanmar, Wagner is half-Burmese, a demonym derived from the country’s unofficial name of Burma.
Seinfeld fans will recall Myanmar is where J. Peterman fled after abruptly leaving his company in the episode “The Foundation.” Later, in “The Urban Sombrero” episode, Elaine tracks him down in the Burmese jungle, where she finds he’s gone mad. Peterman repeats one of the most famous lines in literature – “The horror! The horror!” – from a character similarly situated in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.
The character’s name is Kurtz.
