MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough told the author of this essay in the Sunday New York Times to “Please don’t embarrass yourself by comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam or the events of the past week to Saigon in 1975”:
Please don’t embarrass yourself by comparing Afghanistan to Vietnam or the events of the past week to Saigon in 1975. Dear Lord. pic.twitter.com/MvSQojhzwF
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 22, 2021
“Dear Lord,” indeed. . .
This op-ed is written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who was in Saigon when the city fell in 1975 and he’s writing about the coming refugee crisis and why it’s a “moral urgency for the US to help as many Afghans as possible.”
Did Scarborough even read it or he just tweeted out the pic?
I have been deeply moved by what is happening to the people of Afghanistan. It reminds me so much of what happened to my family. What is common in both cases is the moral urgency for the US to help as many Afghans as possible. My latest for the NY Times.https://t.co/tuQXUp0YFi
— Viet Thanh Nguyen (@viet_t_nguyen) August 19, 2021
From the NYT:
I was 4 years old when Saigon fell, so I do not remember any of it. I count myself lucky, since many Vietnamese who survived the end of that war were greatly traumatized by it. The collapse of the American-backed Southern regime began in my Central Highlands hometown, Ban Me Thuot, in March 1975. In less than two months, all of South Vietnam capitulated to the North Vietnamese. Soldiers fled in chaotic retreat among civilians. My mother, brother and I were among them. We left behind my adopted sister. After walking nearly 200 kilometers to escape the advancing North Vietnamese army, the three of us made it to the seaside city of Nha Trang, where we managed to find a boat to take us to Saigon where my father was.
We were lucky; many others weren’t. My brother remembers dead Southern paratroopers hanging from trees. In Nha Trang, some people fell to their deaths in the sea, trying to clamber onto boats. In Da Nang, desperate soldiers crammed into the luggage compartments of a plane, while the ones left behind threw grenades and fired at the plane.
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Nguyen fired back at the MSNBC host, and rightfully so:
I’m not embarrassed @JoeNBC, because what I say is that the situations are different, except for the moral urgency in helping civilians and refugees. Either you misread or didn’t read in your haste to score a point. https://t.co/SdVvt7dZGs
— Viet Thanh Nguyen (@viet_t_nguyen) August 22, 2021
And:
You can be a Vietnamese American or refugee, published in the New York Times, and people still won't read what you wrote.
Arundhati Roy put it best @JoeNBC: “There's really no such thing as the 'voiceless'. There are only the deliberately silenced, or the preferably unheard.” https://t.co/YPYgzQRiBM
— Viet Thanh Nguyen (@viet_t_nguyen) August 22, 2021
Scarborough then claimed he was really directing his tweet at the NYT editors who wrote “Our Saigon” on the article:
My apologies. My words were not directed toward you or your moving, persuasive article. It was directed at the NYTimes editors who chose to stamp the words “Our Saigon” on the single image dominating the front of the Sunday Review. Your piece on page 4 is a must read. https://t.co/vNu0inIkQJ
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 23, 2021
I’ve been bothered this week by those who have tried to draw a neat analogy between the hell the Vietnamese people suffered for decades and the tragedy the Afghans are enduring now. You never did that, and I never thought you did.
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 23, 2021
I’ve spent most of my life inspired by the lives of Vietnamese refugees and grateful for what they’ve contributed to America. I am hopeful that we will allow our allies from Afghanistan to do the same here in the coming years. @viet_t_nguyen
— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) August 23, 2021
Sorry, but we’re not buying it.
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