Conservative commentator Mary Katharine Ham was seriously confused Tuesday by CNN host Brooke Baldwin's characterization of a controversial Google memo.
Ham, a CNN and Federalist contributor, was quick to voice her disagreement, The Right Scoop reports.
The memo, which got its author fired Tuesday, argued that Google's left-leaning culture led to failures to properly analyze fundamental causes of the gender gap in the tech sector, and to an absence of "viewpoint diversity," especially a lack of conservative perspective.
This may be why Ham was so surprised when Baldwin characterized the memo as saying, "I don't really like women anywhere near a computer." She looked confused when Baldwin made the claim to Vox senior correspondent Liz Plank, and made the same face when Baldwin used the characterization with her.
"Again, I go back to paraphrasing, this is a guy who is basically saying, I don't like women around computers," Baldwin said.
"See, I totally disagree," Ham responded. "I just totally disagree with the characterization that that's what he's saying. He wasn't saying that."
"If it were what you were saying, I would be more on board with Liz's point of view," she said. "We're saying, look, this is a valuable conversation to have. And I agree. One of the things that this person was bringing to the table is perhaps part of diversity is ideological diversity as well."
That the memo's author was fired seemed like obvious irony to Ham.
"He was saying one of the problems with Google is that we are perhaps in this ideologically insular bubble that is so insular that people like me feel silenced and don't want to bring our opinions to the forefront," she said. "And then wait a second, in response to that, his dissenting opinion, it was leaked to punish him, and then he was fired for it having been leaked."
CNN has consistently misrepresented the contents of the Google memo, referring to it as "anti-diversity" and advancing an overly generalized account of an argument that its author does not make.