Friday was a historic day for America. It was the day the Supreme Court, in a landmark 5-4 ruling, legalized gay marriage for all Americans—including the 13 states where same-sex marriages had been banned.There were mostly positive reactions to the SCOTUS ruling, as well as some strongly worded dissents from Supreme Court justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. One of the biggest foot-in-mouth moments came—of course—from CNN during its coverage of London’s gay pride parade on Saturday. And the outrageous screw-up served as perfect comedy fodder for satirist John Oliver on his excellent HBO program Last Week Tonight.
“The award for greatest moment in global Pride celebrations actually had nothing to do with gay marriage, and everything to do with the idiocy of CNN,” said Oliver.
Indeed, during the network’s live coverage of Saturday’s gay pride parade in London, an intrepid CNN reporter claimed that she’d spotted an ISIS flag among the rainbows. So CNN, as is its wont, blasted the headline “ISIS FLAG SPOTTED AT GAY PRIDE PARADE” for a rollicking seven-minute segment, even going so far as to pat itself on the back for the “scoop.”
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“I seem to be the only person that’s spotted this, and nobody seems to be raising any questions or pointing it out,” said CNN reporter Lucy Pawle.
Well, it turns out that wasn’t an ISIS flag at all—far from it.
“I’ll tell you why they weren’t raising any questions,” said Oliver. “That’s not the ISIS flag. That’s a flag with dildos and butt plugs all over it. And yet, for more than seven spectacular minutes, CNN had it onscreen—even calling one of their ‘terrorism experts’ to try and figure out why ISIS might be marching with the gay community through London, which did seem surprising.”
What’s more, Oliver took the mistake-prone news network to task for failing to acknowledge or issue an on-air apology for the tremendously stupid blunder.
“It’s a full day later now, and they still haven’t addressed this mistake on-air,” said Oliver. “Probably because it would be too embarrassing to have a professional journalist say, ‘I’m sorry. Despite working at CNN, it seems I don’t know what a dildo looks like.’”
