Twitter’s new CEO, Parag Agrawal, is already stirring up some pretty unhappy conservatives, who have pulled out a decade-old tweet quoting a joke made on “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.”
It was easy to count the hours it took Jack Dorsey to resign as CEO. Agrawal was announced as Agrawal’s successor, before any tweets surfaced and racism accusations were made.
Agrawal had tweeted an excerpt from a segment back in 2010 “The Daily Show,” writing, “If they are not gonna make a distinction between muslims and extremists, then why should I distinguish between white people and racists.”
The comedian Aasif Mandvi actually said the full quote. He was with Stewart and Larry Wilmore. That night, the show was onJuan Williams, a NPR employee, was fired. 2010 during an appearance “The O’Reilly Factor,” Williams commented that when he’s on a plane, if he sees someone “identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslim, I get worried. I get nervous.”
Mandvi & Wilmore replied by making fun of stereotyped actions that they have performed as a Black man or Muslim man to freak people out.
When Stewart asked why they don’t make the effort to change peoples’ minds, Mandvi joked, “If they’re not going to make a distinction between Muslims and violent extremists then why should I take the time to distinguish between decent, fearful white people and racists?”
In a Follow-up tweetAgrawal pointed to the fact that he was actually quoting Mandvi on that fateful night in 2010. Agrawal’s criticisms this week do not address that. Instead, they skewer him for posting the quote.
“This is Parag Agrawal, Twitter’s new CEO and the person who’s going to be deciding what kind of speech is allowed on Twitter,” Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted.
Clay Travis, a political commentator, asserted that Travis had said, “Things are going to get way worse on here with @jack gone.”Check out these more angry tweets.