Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner fired back at contributor Richard Fowler after he asserted that former Teen Vogue editor Alexi McCammond’s ouster was rooted in race.
Fowler argued on Friday’s broadcast of “The Faulkner Focus” that McCammond’s abrupt exit was proof “black girls aren’t given a chance to grow up” and learn from their mistakes. (RELATED: ‘Why Are We Doing This To Ourselves?’: Megyn Kelly Decries ‘Bulls**t’ Standard That Cost Teen Vogue Editor Her Job)
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Fowler began by suggesting Teen Vogue had made its first misstep when McCammond was hired without input from the staff.
“They made an executive decision. They didn’t get staff buy-in. And as a result, Alexi has actually become a victim of real cancel culture. She sent out these tweets when she was 17 as a high schooler and never really basically what we’re saying is black girls don’t get a chance to grow up,” Fowler said, adding,” … black girls aren’t given a chance to grow up because you are blamed for a tweet you made when you were 17 years old.”
“Richard, I gotta slow you down. This is not just about people of color, though, right?” Faulkner pushed back. “This is not just about as you say, quoting someone else, ‘black girls don’t get a chance to grow up.’ Did you see the list of people that we told you about that have been canceled? I mean, this is part of our culture now.”
Fowler brought the topic back around to race a few moments later, comparing McCammond to Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, noting that even after a blackface scandal he was still holding elected office.
“That’s a double standard. It is not about party, though,” he said. “My point here is this. There are comments made by folks. We can go over numerous examples, Marjorie Taylor Greene, for example, somebody who is still sitting in Congress after her ridiculous comments, and Alexi is not at Teen Vogue. Black girls can’t grow up is the point I’m making.”
“I think Joy Reid does a good job at what she does, in primetime as a pundit on MSNBC,” Faulkner said, noting that Reid allegedly made the offensive posts as an adult and still kept her job. “So when you say that this is all about race, that is one black girl who got to grow up,” she argued.
Fowler made one last connection to race, arguing that Teen Vogue — and beauty magazines in general — had “a history of excluding women of color from the conversations around beauty.”
“Let’s have a larger conversation of cancel culture and how it affects people of color and we can’t just look at it in a vacuum and say cancel culture overall is a problem,” he concluded.
“I want a larger conversation of cancel culture and how it affects Americans in general,” Faulkner replied.