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MSNBC’s Chris Hayes: Romney birth certificate joke like ‘hipster racism’

August 24, 2012 | 3:35 pm | Modified: August 24, 2012 at 4:46 pm
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MSNBC talking heads this afternoon continued to talk about Mitt Romney’s awkward joke about his birth certificate.

“Loud cheers!” MSNBC host Alex Wagner said, mocking the crowd after playing a clip of the joke. “‘Oh yes, you are an American, unlike our socialist Mao-Mao in chief.’”

MSNBC host Chris Hayes suggested that it was like some sort of “hipster racism.”

“I don’t even know what to do with that joke, it’s like a lasagna of metaphor. I don’t know what, it’s like so piled up, somebody, Adam Serwer at Mother Jones referred to at as ‘ironic post-birtherism,’ it’s like hipster racism basically,” Hayes surmised. “It’s like certainly weirdly nudging and winking at this thing that everyone knows is this kind of coded racial appeal.”

BuzzFeed’s Ben Smith speculated that the media would beat up Romney over the remark, adding that it was possible to “over-analyze” the joke, and wondered if it was just that Mitt Romney really thought it would be funny.

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