Columbus day is a touchy subject in American politics nowadays. One can understand the issue of celebrating someone who undoubtedly brought a lot of pain and suffering to indigenous people, but MSNBC went a little further in their critique and seemingly turned it into a partisan issue in their article titled “Republican congressman suggests Columbus discovered the US”.
While MSNBC definitely has a point in highlighting this inaccuracy they needlessly, in my opinion, made it into a partisan question by using said headline and also showing tweets from two other prominent Republican politicians as well as Jesse Ventura who might not be a Republican, but also hardly a liberal Democrat.
If they had gone the route of simply going over some inaccurate facts about the holiday and critiqued the day on its own merits they could have had a bigger impact and maybe even started a serious conversation on the issue. Instead they chose the easier route of poking fun at a political opponent, which honestly is kind of sad.
Media and Politics at SU 