Rick Santorum Cancelled – Dropped by CNN Over Native American Comments
“Prominent Indigenous-led organizations including the National Congress of American Indians and Illuminative have spent weeks demanding that CNN fire Santorum over his remarks.”
CNN has dropped former senator and Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum as a contributor over comments he made about Native Americans a month ago.
Santorum has been a regular presence on the network as a political analyst, following events such as political debates and elections.
Jennifer Bendery reports at the HuffPost:
CNN Drops Rick Santorum After Racist Comments About Native Americans
CNN has terminated its contract with senior political commentator Rick Santorum after racist, inaccurate remarks he made about Native Americans, HuffPost has learned.
Santorum, a former Republican senator and two-time failed GOP presidential candidate, sparked outrage last month after claiming there was “nothing” in America before white colonizers arrived and that Native people haven’t contributed much to American culture, anyway.
“We birthed a nation from nothing. I mean, there was nothing here,” Santorum told students during remarks at a Young America’s Foundation event. “I mean, yes, we have Native Americans, but candidly, there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture.”
Prominent Indigenous-led organizations including the National Congress of American Indians and Illuminative have spent weeks demanding that CNN fire Santorum over his remarks. National civil rights groups have also called for his firing. CNN has stayed silent on the matter.
But on Saturday, a CNN senior executive told HuffPost that the network quietly ended its contract with Santorum this week.
The timing of this seems rather curious. Santorum’s comments were made a month ago, yet CNN has been under fire all this week over a report that host Chris Cuomo advised his brother, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, on how to deal with his sexual harassment scandal.
Chris Cuomo still has his job. In fact, he wasn’t even suspended.
Santorum’s role on the network was to be a reliably anti-Trump conservative voice. Perhaps the network no longer feels they need such a person.
Either way, leftists seem positively overjoyed with the decision, judging by the reactions on Twitter:
CNN terminated Rick Santorum’s contract and I’m just wondering why it took so long.
— Scott Dworkin (@funder) May 22, 2021
CNN finally terminated Rick Santorum after his racist comments about Native Americans. For heaven's sake, that took way too long!
— Amy Siskind 🏳️🌈 (@Amy_Siskind) May 22, 2021
CNN Cuts Ties With Contributor Rick Santorum
It's about damn time.
https://t.co/4o2CbRCulV— 🖕🏻Aunt Crabby Calls Bullshit 🖕🏻 (@DearAuntCrabby) May 23, 2021
CNN fires Rick Santorum as pundit who should have never been hired.
They should rehire Marc Lamont Hill who should have never been fired. https://t.co/gb7wUIwVLr
— ChuckModi (@ChuckModi1) May 23, 2021
HOLY SHIT, Rick Santorum has been shit canned by CNN!
AWESOME Saturday news!
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) May 22, 2021
CNN just canned Rick Santorum for being totally ignorant.
FINALLY!
— Grant Stern is fully vaccinated (@grantstern) May 22, 2021
I doubt many conservatives will lose any sleep over Santorum’s ouster. It’s not like they watch CNN.
Featured image via YouTube.
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Comments
“Dropped by CNN” is a step up in the world.
But it doesn’t cancel out “was willing to work for CNN.”
It was a idiotic comment to make, shame it gets him fired when Leftists will make stupid comments daily without a blink of a eye from them.
No irony that the discussion about Santorum’s “idiotic comment” is in English. Thus, proving his point.
What was so ignorant about it? What exactly was here before the the Europeans showed up and started building?
Native American culture has contributed to American humor. Almost everything about Indian culture has made its way into a joke.
Those who assimilated are fine but the culture left behind remains risible.
The essence of wokeness is pretending not to notice stuff.
See, I might have argued exactly the opposite. When somebody brings up Native American contributions to the USA, my very first thought is Navajo Code Talkers. If they had all assimilated into English, we never would have had that wartime advantage. Sometimes, your value lies in your uniqueness.
I am a quarter native, while I don’t care for Santorum, his comments are dead on. native Americans lived a stagnant existence because they were not smart enough to advance. Most certainly, they did not treat each other well. I see no moral high ground within American natives.
My thought has always been that the stagnation was due to the privilege of “being taken care of” by socialist big government, after having been sequestered into the most resource poor parts of the continent, damaging both their desire and their ability to independently make a better economic society for themselves.
That doesn’t explain the thousands of years before the europeans came.
They were in harmony with nature and didn’t overpopulate the Country.
They did not have a lot of disease but had knowledge of healing plants that took care of most problems
We brought a lot of crap along with the wheel and horses
Still can’t wrap my head around that they killed off horses
They didn’t overpopulate the country because they lived hand-to-mount and kept slaughtering each other. And the rest of it is just BS.
Kinky Friedman, in wise Indian voice, on possession: “You can’t own land, you can’t own a horse or a dog or a waterfall, You can only own a casino.”
I see no evidence that casino’s have greatly improved most Native American lives.
I see no evidence that the casino’s lose money. Perhaps we just need to track where it goes. We will probably find Hunter Biden has his fingers in it.
I am confused. These “native american” groups had Santorum sacked when he said the present Western culture was not built on native culture while at the same time these groups are purging the nation of any reference to native culture in daily America. If the “White Western” culture was so bad why are so many things and places in the US still named after the vanquished natives? Every state has plenty of residual native references. American Indians did not build Seattle nor Chicago. If all of this is “stolen” , then remove every trace and confine names and places to just the reservations. Fade it to nothing. Part of the issue is the misplaced idea that if things were different it would be their Seattle or their Honolulu that they built and created… exactly the same outcome but that they would “own” it rather than stuck in bone and stone cultures.
When Europeans came to America, the indigenous people were still in the Stone Age. I’m not exactly sure why this is looked upon as admirable.
Regarding the stone age, can we get on with returning Iran to the good old days?
Not to mention the tribes routinely made war on each other, tortured captured male prisoners to death, and enslaved the women and children.
But since they weren’t capitalists and had no private property Marxists consider them innocent and pure.
He should have mentioned that Native Americans practiced slavery in America before 1619.
…before 1492….
Where is Phil Sheridan when you need him?
The Native Americans are upset because someone pointed out that they did absolutely nothing with the absolutely richest chunk of rocks on this planet. If they had participated independently in the bronze and iron ages then it would have been more of a challenge to take over the country. As it was, their technology was limited to hollowing out logs and making tools out of rocks. If one were to look around, there isn’t much call for those skills or the skills that were derived from that technology.
In fairness it isn’t acceptable to disparage ethnic cultures in polite society nor has it been for several decades. Of course he was going to get s–t canned. That a person in a prominent public position doesn’t know the the social norms for this sort of stuff is unserious.
There were a number of ‘native’ cultures that developed, rose and fell in N. America. Some of which existed alongside the colonies. The ‘native part is not exactly precise as their is evidence of three or more waves of migration each displacing the other.
Of course he didn’t mention the the 5 ‘civilized’ tribes who had adopted the colonial cultural models. Individual land ownership, farming, small business, newspapers, schools and even attorneys. Ultimately their success created envy and they were, mostly, removed forcibly to OK; ‘trail of tears’.
Which is why my great great grandmother was part of the Cherokee tribe that hid and didn’t wind up on the Trail. Be successful and pay dearly for it (just in case someone wonders on the arithmetic… my grandfather was born in 1865)
Bob,
Same here with Cherokee ancestors. Also Upper Creek. Though it was my great grandfather that was born in 1865.
My Scots ancestors that settled in the Carolinas, Tenn and eventually Alabama were right at home. Small bands of extended family owing allegiance to the larger tribe/clan? Check. Historical past time of small scale raids and skirmishes while thieving from neighboring but different tribe/clan? Check Mountains? Check. Not exactly cordial relations with the English? Check
Lots of intermarriage and children within and without the benefit of marriage.
Great great grandmother married a white…. great grandfather orphaned when parents driven out of area for mixed race marriage. A kindly white couple took him in and that is how “we” blended into society. Virginia/Carolina mountain area.
Western NC/Tenn/ NW Georgia area… you bet a lot of Scots there. Even in the early ’60’s you didn’t go places without an invite and someone knowing you were coming. That area didn’t take kindly to either Johnny Reb or Blue Belly showing up.
We know what Rick meant. He’s not talking about individual or tribal contributions to America history. There was no existing singular nation stretching from Sea to Shining Sea before the United States Their geopolitical status was tribal.
Eastwood,
No nation spanning the continent (or contemporaneous seems implied)…sea to sea …before the US.
If one discounts the Spanish who did so from Florida to CA, the British across Canada, or the several pre Columbian empires in Mesoamerica then sure. Also have to exclude the early Mexican Republic.
I get what you are trying to say but it’s more accurate to state no Non European culture in post Columbian history has spanned the continent. Even that isn’t wholly accurate either.
Nitpicking, and not particularly accurate. None of those colonies was a “nation”.
Txvet2,
Canada is a Nation that is continental in scope. As was the Republic of Mexico immediately following it’s successful revolution. To say otherwise is factually inaccurate.
If you want to say the pre Columbian states in Mesoamerica are nitpicking….. I can accept that.
I get that I should have clarified better, but glad thaf yoy understand what Rick Santorum (and I’m unsuccessfully pointing out) is saying is a correct lesson of history.
Native American cultures didn’t have the same concepts of property rights, and other concepts of Western Civilizations. To say that different Native American “Nations” is analogous to a country is a dishonest analogy that Leftists like to use.
Eastwood,
Now this is accurate. Lack of western notions of individual property rights and emphasis on group v individual rights was incompatible with Western culture. Left them vulnerable and unable to compete.
Yes the Iroquois Confederation had some elements analogous to the period under the Articles of Confederation but no serious person believes that our Constitution was modeled upon them.
Though I maintain that the 5 ‘civilized tribes’ in the southeast had adopted western cultural elements like individual property rights, agrarian methods, public schools ECT.
They did so because they realized without them they wouldn’t have any chance. Ultimately they got royally hosed. Dispossessed and forcibly removed to OK.
It’s impossible to judge people of 150+ years ago with modern standards. Apples and Oranges.
Sanctimonious rabidly NeverTrump RINO gets booted from CNN. I can’t stop laughing.
CNN is doing us all a favor. Any squish bites the dust.
All because he forgot to mention casinos.
CNN loses token conservative voice. Seeks to hire fake conservative voices in future (Romney, Cheney, etc.)
Needle for ratings probably won’t move but can only go down.
Oops, cat ran across desk, I accidently downvoted.
We need ti help CNN, by making Romney & Cheney available.
Chris Cuomo: let me fellate my brother Andrew on air so I cannot report on his sexual assaults and mass murders. Meh.
Brian Stelter: Trump is literally Hitler whose white supremacy nazi racism killed every one with RUSSIA RUSSIA COLLUSION COLLUSION. Meh.
Jake Tapper: Trump is literally Hitler whose incompetence killed every one with Covid19 before his white supremacy nazi followers violently overthrowed the government. Meh.
Rick Santorum: From a Eurocentric cultural perspective, America was a wilderness until the 18th century. KILL THE RACIST HERETIC!
Because CNN cares.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/santorum
My oddball take … Santorum’s comments are a sad commentary on Euro-American culture – having steam-rolled Native American culture and not adopting any of their ways …
Not burdened by possession, taking from the earth only what they need to live, moving with the seasons and food supply, and having a spiritual and relational connection with life.
There was an old commentary which said that the reasonable man lives within his world as it is, whereas the unreasonable man alters the world to fit his needs. Basically, all progress comes from unreasonable people. I would like to note a bit of similarity between the commies and the original Native Americans, wherein each declines to advance themselves through what could be construed as hard work and innovation. Perhaps the commies at CNN fired Santorum because he insulted their spiritual brothers. I am starting to think that those who claim to take the high road are trying to distract from the fact that they were never motivated enough to leave the valley, where gravity eventually delivers stuff to them, along with the occasional landslide and/or avalanche.
To the degree man’s progress destroys nature, is self-extinction our ultimate success?
On the contrary, it is precisely man’s mastery of nature, and his refusal to adapt himself to it when he can adapt it to him, that will preserve him from extinction.
They were in harmony with nature and didn’t overpopulate the Country.
They did not have a lot of disease but had knowledge of healing plants that took care of most problems
Not burdened by possession, taking from the earth only what they need to live, moving with the seasons and food supply, and having a spiritual and relational connection with life.
Please stop with all of this bollocks. It’s thoroughly, laughably untrue and can be disproven in a matter of minutes. It’s Rosseauvian “noble savage” mythmaking.
The book I treasure most, opens with Eden of which man was caretaker and closes with man’s return to the garden, fed by a river, at the center of which is the tree of life. My observation above is Native American life in the spiritual / communal sense is closer to original creation than European industrialization / institutionalism.
Europe influence “paved paradise and put up a parking lot” …
The Aztecs and Maya practiced human sacrifice on a widescale. Their entire religion was based on it. The people in Cahokia, in what is now Illinois, also practiced human sacrifice. Excavations uncovered a mass burial on the site of Mound 72. Over 280 skeletons of sacrificial victims were uncovered at just one site.
Indians in the Southwest practiced cannibalism. Researchers studying an Anasazi settlement in southwestern Colorado found conclusive evidence from preserved pieces of human excrement that were found. The pieces contain human proteins that could be there only if the subjects had eaten human flesh.
More than 40 sites scattered around the Southwest contain human bones that show distinctive evidence of having been butchered and cooked. Hundreds of other examples could be shown of tribal warfare, mass killings, human sacrifice and cannibalism. Ancient Native Americans were far more savage than you can imagine.
It’s a wonder they didn’t eat the pilgrims.
That’s a good point. Well, I guess those Indiains were pretty friendly. I was only highlighting the worst examples and they were from further back in time. Didn’t mean to be negative. I enjoy reading your posts and mostly agree with everything you write. So keep up the good work.
The local tribe really liked the added firepower of the Pilgrims. That first Thanksgiving was mostly with Indian braves and after the meal (they brought deer and turkey)… shot rifles. William Penn through treaty with the Indians obtained “Penn’s Woods”. So not all one sided.
Going west… the early survivors embraced many Indian ways of woodscraft. Didn’t pick that up in Dover.
Back at you, UserP. 😉
No it’s not, this land was pristine when European settlers arrived
Disgusting really what we have done and now the Dems just keep pouring more and more people into it
We have so many foreigners it’s hard to see how we exist in 20 years
No, the land was NOT “pristine” when European settlers arrived. Anything but. But in any case, what’s so good about “pristine”? Nature-worship is pagan.
couldn’t have happened to a more balless scumbag
f you Rick, you ass licker
He may be in the literal sense of the expression. His overwhelming obsession with homosexuality when he held office was quite noticable, and – to me – it shouted “closet case”.
In short, the LADDIE doth (didth?) protest too much methinks.
The non-racist perfectly accurate comments by Rick Santorum on founding the United States and what the intellectual basis of our country was based on are objectionable by the media which makes fake news by editorializing (i.e. calling the comments racist).
Media are truly the worst scum on the planet.
When hubby and I visited Santa Fe and Taos we stopped at a park where the locals were selling their wares. I made a comment about “Native Americans” and was immediately corrected. The woman told me that she was not Native American. She said that everyone born in America was Native American. I asked what she called herself. She said I’m American Indian.
“She said I’m American Indian.”
I guess she didn’t realize she was being racist. /
It was a stupid comment for him to make because it’s wrong, for example, half the states in America come from or are Indian names. Is that trivial? Lots of English words taken from various tribes, city names, school mascots (OH NO!), corn, tobacco, art, etc. It’s a significant list. Did they build skyscrapers and rocket ships? No. But to say “there isn’t much Native American culture in American culture” is just idiotic.
CNN was looking for any excuse to fully purify itself with leftist propaganda. Why anyone even half-pretending to be on the right would work for them I don’t even know.
Names are trivial, the constitution and our polity was influenced almost entirely by British sources which isn’t surprising because it was British colonists who identified themselves as having had their rights as Englishmen violated.
There really isn’t any native American influence in the constitution.
Yes, names are utterly trivial.
When I saw on Ground News tha CNN had canceled Rick Santorum, I was more surprised that CNN had a working relationship with him, than I was that they’d canceled him.
I mean, seriously, Rick Santorum was a CNN talking head? Really?
LOL, I know, right? I did know he was there, but only because I work for LI and have to keep up with such things. Otherwise, I would never know about it, though, because like the vast majority of Americans, I don’t watch CNN. Ever. They have like five viewers, I think, that don’t work for CNN, so it’s hardly surprising that no one even knew Santorum was there . . . and can’t summon up much give a damn that he’s gone.
There are colleges and airports that are paid to keep CNN on so it does have reach.
The Native Americans didn’t even utilize the wheel, what exactly was here before the Europeans showed up?
Well no they didn’t utilize the wheel. They didn’t have draft animals so not a whole lot of point.
I get your point but please don’t forget about cultural diffusion. As societies and cultures come into contact ideas, technology and experiences are exchanged.
All in all the tribes in the Southeast took the ball and ran with it. Developing an alphabet and writing, printing press, newspapers, public schools, ECT. They adopted Western agricultural methods, embraced individual property rights, built towns and farms. Some became specialized craftsman… even attorneys.
Look up a guy named John Ross and go from there if you have any interest in the subject of the 5 ‘civilized tribes’.
Every time you go to the grocery store you see people using the wheel without draft animals
The wheel isn’t only useful with draft animals, you could see here the cart is too small for a draft animal https://i.pinimg.com/originals/30/e9/10/30e91087c84b5e670058103a8d830e61.jpg
Natives did advance technologically when they encountered Europeans but they actually were thousands of years behind in tech, and didn’t have any political influence.
Danny,
Where do you go shopping that replicates the uneven terrain of a forest or the prairie or desert or mountains?
That must be one heck of a grocery store. My local grocery has extremely flat and perfectly even surfaces which seem of considerable benefit to the carts.
Every time I push the cart outside the confines of that perfectly artificial store environment onto the pavement the the cart starts going whanky. One of the wheels inevitably turns sideways. Then it makes hella noise.
I’m sure you can come up with a better example than your failed attempt with a flipping shopping cart. Even homeless people who seem to specialize in their use outside of a store don’t try and trudge outside anyplace lacking pavement.
Riddle me this, what was the technology level in Britain pre Rome v 200 years later? 1000 years later? 1500 years later?
The surviving roads built by Rome were superior to any other roads in Britain as late as the early 19th century. Where was the Anglo Saxon contribution to the advancement of engineering something as basic as a road?
The Scots sure as hell didn’t have an all weather road network nor the Welsh for that matter.
Let’s not climb too high on a culturally arrogant hobby horse. Pun intended.
The fact is that for the first 40 or so years of our existence as a nation, most Native American tribes sided with every enemy we had, every chance they got. And the atrocities were mind boggling.
Early Americans had a right to dislike them.