On Melissa Harris-Perry's MSNBC show on Sunday, the gaffe-prone host ran a brief segment about Labor Day and the minimum wage that amounted to little more than a maudlin and exploitative appeal to emotion in ignorance of or opposition to the facts. 

New Jersey resident Maria Fernandes died in her car last week while napping between shifts at Dunkin’ Donuts. While she was asleep, she died from breathing gasoline fumes and carbon monoxide. Fernandes was a low-wage worker who worked as many as four different jobs, according to co-workers. The Huffington Post ran a story last week blaming her death on the injustice to women of low American wages. Harris-Perry ratcheted up the melodrama about a hundred notches for her own segment:

"Maria Fernandes tried to take a nap between multiple jobs that she worked just to make ends meet. She died in that car. In a parking lot. In Elizabeth, New Jersey. Just minutes from the Statue of Liberty. In 2014. In America."

The ridiculously overblown sentimentality surely made Perry feel a lump of emotion and righteousness, but it does not constitute any kind of reasoned position. It should not be a shock to anyone that a person who has a low-wage job earns a low wage. Nor is it tragic that a person who is a hard worker might work hard to get ahead. It is also true that millions of Americans work low-wage jobs every day without dying in their cars. A tragic accident is not the same thing as a searing indictment, no matter how mawkish your telling of the details may get.

Maria Fernandes was a hard-working American who was not content to sit at home and wait for someone else to take care of her. She was trying to get ahead and died tragically from an accident that resulted from improper planning and poor safety practices. Her death is being exploited by special interest groups to advance their agenda. And it is being used for the basest of self-interested grand-standing. By a woman. In America. In 2014. On MSNBC.