Did Tomi Lahren Deserve to Be Suspended?
Right-wing political commentator Tomi Lahren was suspended from her position at conservative network “The Blaze” this week. The suspension was handed down after the 24 year-old Lahren announced that she is pro-choice, a revelation she made during an appearance on “The View”.
“I’m pro-choice” she stated, before going on to describe how this stance fits in with her conservative worldview. "I'm a constitutional, you know, someone that loves the Constitution. I'm someone that is for limited government, so I can't sit here and be a hypocrite and say I'm for limited government, but I think that the government should decide what women do with their bodies."
This seems straightforward enough, and so a considerable brouhaha was ignited when her boss, Glenn Beck, pulled her show “Tomi” off the air. With the political Right spending so much of its time nowadays lambasting the Left for caring about diversity in everything but thought, charges of the pot calling the kettle black were being hurled at Beck from the moment the story broke.
Beck quickly attempted to refute these claims. In a statement released on March 20, he seemed to imply that Lahren’s suspension had nothing to do with her pro-choice stance but rather with her claim that being pro-life is anathema to a Constitutionalist philosophy.
“I would disagree”, he said, “that you’re a hypocrite if you want limited government and yet you want the government to protect life of the unborn.”
So maybe there’s something there.
Other conservative sources have suggested that the embattled host of “Tomi” isn’t pro-life or pro-choice so much as she is pro-Tomi Lahren, seeming to change her position on the issue to suit her audience. A few months before her appearance on “The View”, Lahren was busy making comments that are unlikely to be featured on any commercials for Planned Parenthood.
“The pro-choicers”, she began, “are supposed to be about rare and safe abortions. That’s how they avoid sounding like straight-up baby killers.”
It might make sense, from Beck’s point of view, to expect a little more consistency from his stars on one of the core issues of the Republican platform.
None of this has stopped a handful of liberals, fed up with the persistent “snowflake” charge that has been leveled at them from the Right, from smelling blood here. To them, reasons such as those cited by Beck and others are simply excuses to cover up the reality – Lahren has an opinion they don’t like, and so she has to go.
This argument was made most visibly by Trevor Noah of “The Daily Show”, who has had public clashes with Lahren in the past.
After a brief rant on the way conservatives have mocked liberal PC culture, Noah quipped:
“And then Tomi comes out, and speaks her truth, says that she’s pro-choice, and then suddenly her bosses are like ‘Oh, you like choices? Well how about you choose a new job?’”
It’s unclear yet if there really is a deeper justification behind the suspension, but most people probably won’t care. Conservatives have proclaimed themselves as the guardians of free speech with too much enthusiasm to dabble in shades of grey like this. Politics and nuance don’t usually combine well. When you’re trying to preserve a moral high ground, they don’t mix at all.
