Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Twitter rant about hosts on Fox News not using her name properly. According to AOC, Fox hosts like to call her “Cortez” because it sounds more Hispanic:
My last name is Ocasio-Cortez. Full stop. That’s my name.
No, you can’t say “Cortez.” I’ve never used that in my life. “Cortez” is referring to someone else.
Even if they‘re trying to be rude + wrong, my dad’s last name was Ocasio anyway.
(His name was hyphenated too, though.)
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
In that top tweet, she offers a “Pro Tip” to three Fox News hosts: Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson, and Sean Hannity. But it turns out at least two of those hosts haven’t called her “Cortez” at any time in the last month. Tom Elliot, the founder of Grabien Media, checked the transcript of every Laura Ingraham show. He found one of her guests called AOC “Cortez” on one occasion, but Ingraham herself never did:
You may be unsurprised to learn that this is untrue. I checked every mention of "Cortez" on the Ingraham Angle in March and didn't find @IngrahamAngle referring to @AOC as "Cortez" once. On 3/14, Rabbi Aryeh Spero said "Cortez and her quartet," but Laura never did. https://t.co/MRhGnYxQFH
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 21, 2019
Next, he checked every episode of Hannity:
Unless @aoc has something to back up this claim, it would seem she owes apologies to Hannity and Ingraham. Randomly accusing people of prejudice is indecent, esp when it will inevitably be used for more boycott fodder.
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 21, 2019
Maybe these hosts have used “Cortez” at some other time but not recently. From Grabien:
Grabien News reviewed transcripts from every episode of “The Ingraham Angle” and “Hannity” in the month of March. If this were really a habit, surely it would have happened at least once in the last three weeks. Yet it hasn’t. Neither Hannity nor Ingraham referred to Rep. Ocasio-Cortez as simply “Cortez” a single time. Her name was mentioned 188 times during this time period.
The whole thing apparently began with her reaction to a story at Yahoo which was itself prompted by a tweet from someone at Media Matters. Fox guest Joe diGenova mocked the way AOC pronounces her name and suggested he could do the same with his name. Skip to the end of this clip to see what the fuss was about:
Ingraham guest Joe Digenova says @AOC "does the Latino thing" when she talks. pic.twitter.com/sa1LLExkBA
— Jason Campbell (@JasonSCampbell) March 20, 2019
Notice it was diGenova who made these comments about AOC doing “the Latina thing,” not Ingraham herself. But here’s how AOC reacted on Twitter:
If by ‘the Latina thing,’ she means I actually do the work instead of just talk about it, then yeah, I’m doing ‘the Latina thing.’
Unless of course she‘s talking about being multilingual, which we know isn’t a ‘Latina thing.’
It’s a ‘21st century’ thing.https://t.co/v41dAyjshP
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
Maybe AOC didn’t watch the clip she was commenting about? Or maybe she’s thinking this is a case where being morally right is more important than being factually right? In any case, she is attributing this to the wrong person. And she’s apparently also wrong about Fox News hosts butchering her name. An apology is probably in order or at least a deletion of these tweets. But I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting if I were you.
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