Julie Siegel's new piece not only exposes the misadventures of a right wing guy named Jason Mattera, it also lets you know that Mattera repeated the Washington Post's misquote of rapper Fat Joe at our July 12 Campus Progress National Student Conference. No doubt right-wingers like Mattera will want to keep on pushing out the misquote reported in the Post, so we want to get the facts on the record. Fat Joe was asked at a conference panel discussion about the representation of women in hip-hop. According to The Post, Fat Joe replied, "Y'all are going to throw me out, but I think they're bitches and hos." What Fat Joe actually said, though, was this: "I think some girls are bitches, some girls are hos. I feel like there's some intelligent women, some beautiful mothers and sisters and whatever the case may be. Just like there are some ignorant guys, and there's some great guys; there's great fathers and there's some not so great mothers…. So we talk about everything…. " You can watch the video here. (FYI, at the beginning he's talking about Oprah.)
Jason Mattera, the guy who won't let our 18-year-old college reporter Julie Siegel cover his student conference, even though we grant him and his interns access to our student conference, has decided to call Fat Joe "a wannabe thug and binge eater." The truth is (1) I watched Fat Joe calmly eat a grilled chicken salad for lunch in our speakers room, there was no binge, and it's rude to make fun of someone's weight; and (2) Fat Joe came to the conference for the same reason he has been heavily involved in voter registration work, including with our friends Voto Latino, and other activism: Because, like the 1000 students who attended our conference, he cares about the future of our country, and he wants to work for positive change.
In Fat Joe's honor, and Paul Begala's, maybe it's time for another Campus Progress misquote contest. Meanwhile, we'll keep telling the truth, we'll keep opening our events to any media, regardless of ideology, and we'll keep offering a diverse group of speakers at our events.