Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked Fox News, claiming hosts on that network intentionally called her by the wrong name.
“By the way: Fox News likes to say my name (incorrectly) as ‘Cortez,'” she tweeted Wednesday, “which I can only imagine is bc that sounds more ‘stereotypically’ Hispanic [and] probably incites more ‘anxiety’ for them.”
By the way: Fox News likes to say my name (incorrectly) as “Cortez,” which I can only imagine is bc that sounds more ‘stereotypically’ Hispanic + probably incites more ‘anxiety’ for them.
Pro Tip:
My last name is not “Cortez,” just as theirs isn’t “Ingra” or “Carl” or “Hann.”— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
Ocasio-Cortez specifically mentioned Fox News hosts Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, referring to them as “Ingra,” “Carl” and “Hann” to drive her point home. (RELATED: Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez Join Forces To Threaten Dems Tempted To Vote With GOP)
There’s only one problem with her accusation: it appears to be false. Tom Elliott, founder of Grabien media-clipping service, noted that in a search from the beginning of March to the current date — 20 days worth of programming — Ingraham had never once referred to the freshman lawmaker as “Cortez.”
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
AOC Invents Discrimination Claim Against Fox News’ Hannity, Ingraham https://t.co/LcP2215PR4
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) March 21, 2019
The Daily Caller performed a similar search over the same time period and discovered that Carlson had never addressed Ocasio-Cortez by any name other than “Ocasio-Cortez” or “AOC” (which she also said was fine).
For the curious, in Latinx culture children take *both* their parents‘ names.
It’s not a “progressive, new thing.” It’s just how some names work. PR hyphenates, others mark differently. Your last name = the families that came together to make you.
AOC is also fine though 🙂
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
Yet another search revealed that the only possible offender was Hannity, who referred to Ocasio-Cortez by just the second half of her last name just twice in 20 days. He named her correctly, however, well over 100 times in that same timeframe, so it may be reasonable to assume that, had he actually been intending to call her by the wrong name, it probably would have happened more than 2 percent of the time.
Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation appeared to be a response to segment from Ingraham’s show Tuesday, during which the Fox News host and guest Joe di Genova accused the New York Rep. of effectively turning her accent on and off when it suited her — much in the same way that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been noted to revert to her Arkansas accent when campaigning in certain parts of the country.
WATCH:
In spite of the context, Ocasio-Cortez instead interpreted the segment as proof that Fox News hosts are “uncomfortable” around people from different cultural backgrounds.
“How dare they refuse to say their name in a wrong accent & not mangle their own family name so that I can feel more comfortable instead of look inside myself & examine why something as small as *a person’s name* makes me uncomfortable in the first place?? This is an outrage!” https://t.co/ArYd28WVcv
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019