The following is the email response we received from Tucson Unified School District school board member Michael Hicks regarding his appearance with Al Madrigal on last night's The Daily Show, which covered the recent controversy surrounding the ban on Mexican American Studies in Tucson:
With all due respect, the Daily Show is a money making satirical show. It is not a news show. They do not present the complete remarks of their guests. They slice and dice footage to serve their need to entertain.
I went on this show to talk about the Mexican American Studies (MAS) classes. I was mislead by the "reporter" and was told that they were interested in a real interview. It was nothing of the sort.
It is unfortunate that the Daily Show opted to amuse rather than inform.
And for the record, you can see where they spliced my comments in several areas during this segment. I can assure you that my statements were taken out of context Many of my answers were altered to suit their agenda.
What I find more troubling is that there are those who will believe that what they saw on the Daily Show is accurate and complete news.
These individuals will then most likely base their judgments on inaccurate information designed specifically to support the view of Daily Show producers.
Real children were being exploited, and the producers of the Daily Show chose to ignore that.
[…] The website Latino Rebels has an emailed response from Michael Hicks regarding his extremely embarrassing appearance on last night’s episode of The Daily Show. A note for Mr. Hicks: if you didn’t want to have your idiotic, ill-informed comments amplified to a national audience, don’t do an interview with The Daily Show.… […]
[…] followed up with a clarification to the email we received from Ms. Rene, reminding her that we did get a comment from Hicks, but that we would welcome additional comment from Dr. Pedicone or any other members of TUSD's […]
[…] she said.The station also published a statement it said it got from Hicks (Latino Rebels also said it got the statement, which indicates at least some sort of coordinated response):With all due […]
[…] After the Rebels got Hicks to email us a statement to us around 12:15 EST, Hicks has begun to use this statement as his official response to the appearance. We did follow up twice with Hicks for follow up questions, but he has not responded. The same goes for TUSD leadership, whose spokesperson issued a brief statement to us yesterday afternoon around 2:30 EST. We have left a phone message and an follow up email to Cara Rene, TUSD's Director of Communications and Media Relations, but as of this posting, we have received no reply. […]