John Gormley, yesterday:
Ooh! I can answer the question! Global doesn’t have anything against white people. Global ran Andrew Russell’s story about the make-up of Trump’s cabinet (which is, factually, mostly white, male, and rich, which, also factually, isn’t demographically representative of the country he was (technically) elected to lead) because it’s news.
And that homogeneous make-up is, arguably, a problem — because a room full of white, rich dudes is saddled with a narrow range of life experiences informing their public policy. They won’t have experienced racism, sexism or poverty, and as a result they’re much less likely to understand ordinary people’s real, lived experiences.
So the make-up of Trump’s cabinet is absolutely a legitimate topic for a Global news story — especially after all the racist (“Mexican rapists”) and sexist (“Blood coming out of her wherever”) things Trump has said.
It sure as hell isn’t racist against white people, as Gormley implies.
That said: to me, if anything in Global’s tag line is conspicuous, it’s that it doesn’t mention how rich Trump’s cabinet is. But we’ll let that pass because Russell’s actual Global article sure does:
The 17 people Trump has so far selected for his cabinet or for posts with cabinet rank have a combined wealth of $9.5 billion including DeVos – whose net worth is estimated at roughly $5.1 billion, according to Forbes.
I wish John Gormley worried more about narrow-minded, self-interested business elites being handed the keys to the U.S. government by a horrible, horrible man, and less about imaginary racism against white people.
