Monday, October 29, 2018

Fake Blackface Outrage

At The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson points out that Megyn Kelly got fired by NBC “for questioning whether a blackface Halloween costume is necessarily racist,” but Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon actually performed in blackface and apparently no one cared. 

Fallon, he reminds, sought to impersonate Chris Rock on “Saturday Night Live,” while Kimmel played hoop star Karl Malone on “The Man Show.” Thing is, Davidson argues, donning blackface to play a character or do an impersonation “is much different than doing it to mock or denigrate a race.” 

Maybe NBC is using Kelly’s comments “as an excuse to cancel her unpopular show.” But since no one’s calling for Fallon or Kimmel’s firing, it seems “the networks and many of the people who claim to be offended” aren’t really offended. “The next time they start howling about Halloween costumes,” Davidson suggests, “they should be ignored.”

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