Does MSNBC Host Equate the Term 'Obamacare' with Well-Known Racial Ephithet?

MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry, no stranger to controversial statements, took her viewers on a bit of a ride during her Sunday program, giving them what sounded an awful lot like a history lesson on a well-known racial epithet.

Image source: MSNBC via the Daily Caller

“I want to talk today about a controversial word," Harris-Perry began. "It’s a word that has been with us for years. And like it or not, it’s indelibly printed in the pages of American history. A word that was originally intended as a derogatory term, meant to shame and divide and demean.

"The word was conceived of by a group of wealthy white men who needed a way to put themselves above and apart from a black man, to render him inferior and unequal and diminish his accomplishments.

“President Obama has been labelled with this word by his opponents, and at first he rose above it, hoping that if he could just make a cause for what he’d achieved, his opponents would fail in making their label stick.

Then Harris-Perry claimed the president "embraced the word and made it his own, sending his opposition a message they weren’t expecting: ‘If that’s what you want me to be, I’ll be that.’

“Y’all know the word that I’m talking about: Obamacare!"

"That’s right!" she continued. "I said it and I’m not ashamed, and neither is President Obama!”

Harris-Perry lauded what she said have been Obama's accomplishments since in office, noting that none of them will overshadow the "legacy" of Obamacare.

“I mean, what do you call the president who rescues the U.S. auto industry?” she asked. “Obamacare! What do you call the president who finally eliminates Osama bin Laden? Obamacare! What do you call the president who ends 'Don’t ask, Don’t tell'? Say it with me: Obamacare!”

After noting how Obama pulled the U.S. "out of the greatest recession since the Great Depression," Harris-Perry insisted the only accolade that could loom larger than the success of Obamacare would be if the president brought about "world peace" before leaving office.

"Now following the relaunch of a new and improved and fully operational HealthCare.gov website, the president is not only owning it but doubling down and putting a bright spotlight on the 'Obama' in 'Obamacare.'"

Here's the MSNBC clip:

(H/T: Weasel Zippers)

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