Samantha Bee is upset that her efforts to get noticed are working.
In the most recent episode of her TBS show, “Full Frontal,” Bee pleads for immediate action on immigration reform. She also calls Ivanka Trump a “feckless c–t.” And it’s your fault you noticed.
“You know, the thing is our show is steeped in passion,” Bee said Thursday as she accepted a Television Academy Honors award.
She added, “Every week I strive to show the world as I see it, unfiltered. Sometimes I should probably have a filter. I accept that. I take it seriously when I get it right, and I do take responsibility when I get it wrong.”
Bee continued, complaining that her message on immigration reform had been overshadowed by her very premeditated decision to call the president’s daughter a “feckless c–t.”
I am not making this up.
“Stories about 1,500 missing unaccompanied migrant children flooded the news cycle over the weekend,” Bee told her audience Thursday. “So last night we aired a segment on the atrocious treatment of migrant children by this administration and past administrations. Sometimes even the ones who look best in swim trunks do bad jobs with things. Our piece attracted controversy of the worst kind.”
She added, “We spent the day wrestling with the repercussions of one bad word, when we all should have spent the day incensed that as a nation we are wrenching children from their parents and treating people legally seeking asylum as criminals. If we are OK with that then really, who are we?”
I wrote yesterday that she is an attention-hungry coward. But, my God. I didn’t know it was this bad.
Bee wanted some cheap and easy buzz, so she put a naughty, oh-so-edgy word in her immigration monologue. It paid off at first, as she was soon rewarded with exciting headlines claiming her monologue “tears into,” “shreds,” “rips into,” and “rips” Trump’s daughter.
But the minute Bee encountered some pushback, she caved hard. She immediately said whatever was necessary to ensure there would be no cost to her. She even put out a doe-eyed “apology,” saying, “It was inappropriate and inexcusable. I crossed a line, and I deeply regret it.”
We know now after that awards ceremony that this apology is nonsense. She’s clearly not sorry. In fact, she blames everyone else for the fact that there were consequences to her supposed zinger. She sounds more annoyed that she had to do extra work to get the attention she so clearly craves.
The funniest thing about all of this is her absurd suggestion that it’s your fault that her broader point about immigration reform was lost amid her name-calling.
She scripted this. She prepared this. She performed this. But it’s your fault for listening.
Bee knew what she was doing. If anything, she may have made a miscalculation in assuming she’d get full protection from all sides from the news media. That her prepared slur is what stuck out the most isn’t her audience’s fault. They’re not the ones writing her lines.
