Politics

MSNBC guest suggests Romney’s use of the term ‘kitchen cabinet’ is racist

Jeff Poor Media Reporter
Font Size:

The political term “kitchen cabinet” was coined in the early 1800s to describe the group of informal advisers around President Andrew Jackson. According to a guest on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell” on Wednesday, however, the term is “culturally insensitive.”

Mark Thompson, host of SiriusXM’s “Make It Plain,” told host Lawrence O’Donnell that Mitt Romney should not have used the term at the NAACP convention in Houston.

“This might have been a small thing, but it’s important for people to understand,” Thompson said. “You cannot be culturally ignorant. He singled out one African-American who came with the 20 in his entourage as an African-American that was in his kitchen cabinet in Massachusetts, and he promised that he would remain in his kitchen cabinet if he was in the White House.”

According to Thompson, mentioning African-Americans and kitchens at the same time is a bad idea.

“To talk about being in the kitchen and not talk about an African-American actually being in your cabinet is really not a good metaphor to use with African-Americans,” he said.

O’Donnell then parroted a line from his MSNBC colleague Al Sharpton, who said that Romney wanted to be booed at the NAACP convention. However, O’Donnell offered a twist: Romney, he suggested, wanted to be booed to appeal to “certain racist precincts.”

Follow Jeff on Twitter