Everyone makes mistakes, right? Kellyanne Conway might make more than her fair share of them, and she does them on television, repeatedly, and her mistakes come with much more drastic consequences than most people’s, but sure, mistakes happen.
That’s why when she slips up and makes reference to the “Bowling Green Massacre” rather than “Bowling Green terrorists,” we may want to cut her a bit of slack. (Or not, you do you.) However, when she used the term multiple times in multiple interviews, that’s not a mistake. If it is, she deserves to be criticized for being so careless. But more likely, it’s deliberate manipulation and fear mongering.
She coined the term “alternative facts,” and then, when called out, tap danced her way into a justification of the “mistake,” citing a conflation of “alternative information and additional facts.” But she does not address the root problem of the phrase, which is the spreading of misinformation.
So no, Kellyanne Conway’s mistakes do not necessarily deserve to be overlooked, mostly because we don’t believe they are mistakes. She pushes the line to see how much manipulative semantics-butchering she can get away with, and then when she gets called out, she plays the victim and says the press is picking on her.
And now she’s really digging the bottom of the excuses barrel to get that point across. In an interview on CBS, she draws comparisons between her dismantling of the English language, and the Best Picture mix-up at this year’s Academy Awards.
I see mistakes on TV every single day, and people just brush them off. Everybody thinks it’s just so funny that the wrong movie was, you know, heralded as the winner of the Oscars. You say, “Well, that’s just all in good fun, things happen.” Well, things happen to everyone.
First of all, in what world was that error “all in good fun”? When La La Land was announced as the winner instead of Moonlight, was a huge mistake, and everyone I know saw it as such. The internet practically drowned in thinkpieces in the aftermath, and two accountants nearly lost their jobs. I think it’s pretty clear that the takeaway from that night was not that “things happen,” but rather, “mistakes have consequences.”
Also, Kellyanne Conway working to convince the American people that facts aren’t as important as spin is not the same thing as a mix-up at the Oscars. I wouldn’t think that had to be said, but here we are. One is a movie (a great movie, but still a movie) and the other is the counselor to the President.
(via HuffPo, image via screengrab)
—The Mary Sue has a strict comment policy that forbids, but is not limited to, personal insults toward anyone, hate speech, and trolling.—
Follow The Mary Sue on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, & Google+.
