Born and raised in Rapid City, South Dakota, Tomi Lahren is one of the newest faces of political journalism. She is young, beautiful, and overwhelmingly ignorant on more issues than I thought was humanly possible.
If you’ve ever had the displeasure of scrolling through your Facebook newsfeed and discovering a clip from her show “Tomi,” you were probably either left flustered that someone could be so bigoted, or with your cursor hovering over the unfriend button of the person who shared it. It’s also common to not even be able to finish the video because listening to her nasal voice scream racist and sexist jargon for over 15 seconds is headache-inducing.
While it was hard to narrow it down, I have managed to compile a list of the top five times Tomi’s commentary had me consider deleting my own account.
1. The time she tweeted that Black Lives Matter is the “new KKK”
If you’re saying “is this a joke?” right now, you’re not alone. Tomi has a history of being completely uneducated on the subject of Black Lives Matter. In one of her segments where she discusses the movement, she makes a point to say they have an “agenda of making black lives matter more.” Wait, what? Has anyone ever heard of the hashtag #BLMM? Neither have I, since BLM advocates for equality, not for who matters more. Maybe Tomi should stop mindlessly reciting her teleprompter and look up what BLM stands for—just a thought!
2. When she claimed Beyoncé’s Super Bowl performance was for attention
Excuse me? Have you ever heard of 20-time grammy winner, R&B icon, queen of the music industry Beyoncé Knowles? She could literally post a video of herself brushing her teeth with zero audio, in low-definition, and it would still get 600 billion views. Beyoncé doesn’t need to do anything for attention; instead she used her presence at this year’s Super Bowl as a platform to bring light to the issues of black oppression—a way to share the voice of millions who are suffering from oppression with a wide audience.
In Tomi’s mind though, Beyoncé needed something to keep her relevant because people don’t care about her. Seriously, where does this girl come up with these things? Ironically enough, Tomi’s reports are infamous for her aggressive, in-your-face style.
3. The time she said “frack, baby, frack” in promotion of fracking
I don’t know if Tomi has ever taken environmental science in her life—or has, you know, common sense—but I do know she said the following words: “Frack, baby, frack.” Tomi supports fracking and thinks climate change is a myth. She goes on to diss anything that’s in favor of eco-conscious guidelines, saying that the regulations implemented by “President Obama and the EPA do nothing to foster innovation.”
My question is—has Tomi considered doing any research regarding these issues? If she does a quick Google search, she can learn how fracking causes earthquakes, contaminates water sources, is responsible for droughts, displaces low-income families, exploits immigrant workers, and so on. But Tomi doesn’t have time to fact check, she’s probably too busy buying packs of plastic water bottles to replace her shower water with, because needing to be mindful about the environment is a myth, am I right?
4. When Trump’s “grab her by the p*ssy” didn’t affect her at all
While it’s not surprising that a conservative reporter would be a Trump supporter, I am genuinely surprised that a successful, driven woman could justify what he said on that tape. Yet again, I am left baffled at another one of Tomi’s reactions. “This recording does not surprise me at all,” she begins. “Be honest, most of you aren’t shocked either. It’s Donald Trump: businessman, reality star—not the Pope!”
Tomi is actually so bad at reporting that she manages to have her words showcase the entire point that people are trying to make—there exists a serious societal flaw that allows men of power to get away with demeaning women through misogynist banter. Tomi actually says most of us “aren’t shocked” in regards to his sexist speech. She single-handedly shows the disregard of “locker room talk”—an issue that feminists have been trying to bring to light for years. Good job Tomi! Maybe we should thank her?
5. When she claims white people aren’t racist because our ancestors fought in the Civil War
In response to Jesse Williams’ BET award speech, where he uses the opportunity to speak about the ongoing issue of institutional racism, Tomi (as usual) spins his words to angle her story for her conservative audience. For some reason, Tomi makes a speech regarding Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shooting victim, about the civil war. She says, “Do you know how many of our ancestors fought in civil war to free your ancestors?” I hate to break it to you, Tomi, but the main reason white people were fighting for the North in the Civil War was to hold the union together—not just to abolish slavery. Also, the majority of soldiers were white because, well I don’t know, the black people that wanted to fight were sort of busy being enslaved. Specifically, they were being enslaved by the other half of our white ancestors, suffering and dying day after day.
This doesn’t mean present-day white people should take on complete responsibility for their ancestor’s racist actions, but it also doesn’t mean they should continuously dredge up what happened in the past to justify what’s going on now. Either way, Jesse Williams wasn’t talking about America’s racist past, he was talking about racism in the present-day. As a side note, if anyone has a copy of “U.S. History For Dummies,” I’m sure Tomi would appreciate it.
On a more serious note, it’s truly a shame to see a passionate, young woman with extreme potential being suckered into spewing hate speech instead of using her platform for good journalism. There is nothing journalistic about yelling bias material at the masses via a computer or television screen.
No matter what your political stance is, I think we can all agree on one thing: nobody likes being yelled at incessantly, or listening to someone defend their own stance without once considering the opposing argument. And maybe if you do enjoy that, seeing a therapist might help.