Arizona Republicans Accidentally Used A Photo Of A Margaret Cho Sitcom To Illustrate Diversity

In a bizarre gaffe, the Arizona GOP's website featured — until very recently — a photo taken from the poster for Margaret Cho's 1994 sitcom, All-American Girl. The photo was not there to talk about diversity in the media, or about Cho. As VICE News discovered, Cho's sitcom family was featured by Arizona Republicans to represent Asian Americans — despite the fact that the protagonist, Margaret Kim, is not a real person. As Cho's character, she's also definitely not a Republican.

According to VICE News, the cast photo from All-American Girl appeared a page about diversity. The page — which has since been taken down — stated that the GOP would not “demand special rights for certain races, push policies that favor members of one group over another, or single out certain ethnic or social groups with the promise of special favors or political privileges.”

An archived version of the page, located by Jezebel, indicates that it once said the following: "Republicans believe strongly in equal rights and we strive to ensure we are creating a better future for our families and the next generations." However, it's difficult to regard this as sincere when nobody noticed that an old sitcom photo was used to represent a rapidly growing portion of the American population.

After the error was circulated, Torunn Sinclair, a spokeswoman for the Arizona GOP, told VICE News that the page had been taken down. “This was obviously a mistake, and we apologize," Sinclair said.

Cho, however, told VICE News that the Arizona Republican Party should know that there are consequences for misinformation. To get this message across as effectively as possible, Cho shared her own experience making a mistake that stemmed from not verifying all the facts:

I find this similar to when I was a kid someone told me that Simon Lebon’s name was "Mike Hunt" and so I went around school saying "I love Mike Hunt" and even wrote it on my locker. I didn’t bother to research and paid the price of a dodgeball to the face. They got some bad information and ran with it. They deserve a dodgeball to the face.

The Arizona GOP's mistake is even more uncomfortable given Cho's views about the party. During the election, Cho referred to the candidates on the Republican side as "a nightmare," and said that the Donald Trump and Ted Cruz "are guilty of the same kinds of sexism, homophobia, racism, xenophobia."