CNN Commentator Hillary Rosen called a Georgetown student a racist “bigot” and “anti-Semite,” for wearing a costume with images of bacon on it at this weekend’s game against Syracuse.
Rosen, seemed to think the student was taunting Syracuse for having Jewish students. However, the truth soon emerged that the young man was wearing the bacon suit because his last name is actually “Bakan,” and he’s been wearing the suit for several games.
As she watched the game on television, Rosen spied student Michael Bakan in the stands rooting for his home team at Georgetown. Disgusted because of her base assumption that the student was a racist, Rosen took to Twitter to say, “Look at the guy in the ‘bacon suit’. This is a Georgetown #Hoyas fans anti-Semitic smear to the Syracuse team.”
Rosen had no basis whatever to make this claim, yet she quickly followed that first tweet with a second tweet saying, “Hey bacon-man. #Syracuse for the win. Bigots lose. Bye#Hoyas #Cuse.”
It wasn’t long before fellow students discovered the CNN talking head’s ill-informed tweets, and alerted Georgetown junior Michael Bakan to Rosen’s baseless personal attacks.
Needless to say, Mr. Bakan was shocked that Rosen simply assumed, and then stated as fact, that he was some sort of anti-Semite who was taunting the students at Syracuse over their religious affiliation.
Bakan told the Daily Caller that he was only wearing the bacon-themed costume because his last name is pronounced the same way as the tasty breakfast food.
“At first I thought it was a joke,” Bakan said. “The real way [my last name] is pronounced is bacon, and that was the impetus behind the costume. I’ve worn it to three games now.”
Rosen was soon deluged with Georgetown students slamming her for making accusations based on her own narrative instead of the truth.
A Twitter user who claimed to know the Bakan wrote, “This is utterly ridiculous. This guy is my friend, and he wears the suit because his last name is Bacon. Don’t create your own narrative and delete this tweet.”
One Twitter user demanded to know, “How do you know this was an anti-Semitic gesture? You have a responsibility to be accurate/informed and not just throw out assumptions, do you not?”
Another wrote, “You should be extremely embarrassed by this. I hope there are repercussions for you implying someone is a racist.”
Yet another wrote simply, “Publish smear first, research second. #CNN.”
Rosen soon jumped to Twitter to apologize saying she was “new to this school” and that she “got some bad info.” The CNN talker then deleted her Tweets on the subject.
According to The Daily Mail, Mr. Bakan seemed to have the last laugh on Facebook by writing, “Not the best feeling when a CNN contributor attacks you on twitter, but hey – thanks mom & dad for a great last name.”
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.