Ire over anchor’s question to Spelling Bee winner
WASHINGTON: A CNN anchor is being attacked by netizens for allegedly making a “racist” remark against Indian-American national spelling champion Ananya Vinay, assuming that the 12-year-old is “used to using” Sanskrit due to her heritage.
California resident Vinay was being interviewed by CNN anchors Alisyn Camerota and Chris Cuomo following her win last week at the prestigious Scripps National Spelling Bee.
The sixth-grader had correctly spelled the word ‘marocain’ and became the 13th consecutive winner from the Indian-American community at the annual spelling bee championship.
Towards the end of the interview, Camerota asked Vinay to spell ‘covfefe’, the word recently used by President Donald Trump in one of his tweets that took the social media by storm with people guessing what the US leader could have meant by that word. Like a true spelling bee participant, Vinay asked the definition of ‘covfefe’ and its language of origin, to which the anchors responded “gibberish.”
Vinay, sincerely tried to guess the spelling of the word, asked if there were any alternate pronunciation for it. She finally spelled it ‘cofefe’.
Camerota then told Vinay the correct spelling was ‘covfefe’ and added, “It’s a nonsense word. So, we are not sure that its root is actually in Sanskrit, which is what you are probably, uh, used to using, so, I don’t know. Anyway.”
Netizens were quick to criticise Camerota for assuming that Vinay would know Sanskrit, some calling her comment racist and others expressing disbelief.