Contrary to what I’ve spent my entire adult life believing, even Samantha Bee gets it wrong sometimes.
On March 8, Bee absolutely skewered the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in a Full Frontal segment that started out by poking fun at our current Tweeter-In-Chief.
“Just last year, CPAC was dominated by Ted Cruz supporters and chirpy little shits with bow ties, but Donald Trump, worried about a poor reception, canceled his appearance,” correspondent Michael Rubens said. This year, he observed, the bow ties were replaced with Nazi haircuts. A montage showed images of CPAC attendees with the aforementioned “Nazi haircuts,” but there was a major problem — one of the men featured has a closely cropped haircut because he’s undergoing chemotherapy and radiation treatments for brain cancer.
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The attendee, Kyle Coddington, who writes for the conservative news blog Outset, sent a tweet to Bee shortly after the segment aired. He approached the matter with humor and civility, writing: “Please delete this episode. I look like a balding potato,” followed by: “It’s not a Nazi haircut. Richard Spencer’s is, but mine’s from cancer.” (Spencer was booted from CPAC by fellow conservatives.)
Bee immediately apologized for the joke and Full Frontal has since removed the “Long Day’s Journey Into CPAC” segment from all the show’s social media channels. Rubens, the correspondent involved in the unfortunate error, also responded to the incident on Twitter. In addition to expressing his sincere apologies, Rubens said the show has reached out to Coddington and is making a donation to a cancer research institute.
On Thursday, Full Frontal’s executive producer Jo Miller told The New York Times that Full Frontal will also donate to the GoFundMe account for Coddington’s treatment.
The mistake was incredibly unfortunate and it’ll probably make Bee think twice before she films another segment that spotlights the physical appearances of strangers.
Even the best fall down sometimes — and it turns out that even Bee has less-than-stellar work days. Luckily, she’s using all her available resources to rectify the error.