Brian Kilmeade Apologizes for Racist “Pure Species” Comment
Peter Drivasm, Huffington Post, July 20, 2009
Brian Kilmeade apologized Monday for controversial comments he made on the July 8 episode of “Fox and Friends.”
The controversy arose when Kilmeade and his co-hosts were discussing a Swedish and Finnish study which found that married people were less susceptible to Alzheimer’s disease than unmarried ones. Kilmeade downplayed the study’s significance in America, saying “we [Americans] keep marrying other species and other ethnicities . . . Swedes have pure genes . . . in America we marry everybody . . .”
The comment prompted an outcry for an apology, including a petition from UNITY: Journalists of Color, Inc., which said that Kilmeade’s statement was based on “the basest of white supremacist ideologies”.
Kilmeade apologized this morning, saying “I made comments that were offensive to many people. That was not my intention, and looking back at those comments I realize they were inappropriate. For that I sincerely apologize. America [is a] huge melting pot, and that is what makes us such a great country. . . .”