Megyn Kelly蘑菇视频 White Christmas
“Race is still an incredibly volatile issue in this country, and Fox News, and yours truly, are big targets for many people.”
– Fox News host, Megyn Kelly
听
Megyn Kelly has a point. She and Fox News are targets but only because they engage in perpetual finger-pointing after creating controversy out of thin air. They’ve elevated poppycock to an art form that serves nothing more than to attract viewers — then enrage them.
“Santa Claus Should Not Be a White Man Anymore,” was an online piece written by a black writer for Slate.com on Dec. 10.
Aisha Harris had not intended the column below that headline to be taken literally. It was a way of saying that she’d been confused as a small black child because she’d seen both black and white jolly round men. And she humorously advanced the notion that instead of kids having to endure similar anxieties, a penguin could be a fair substitute. Harris claims it’s high time St. Nick undergoes a makeover.
Enter Megyn Kelly. She either never bothered to read the full text of the column, or she’s just flat-out looking for a controversy that can accompany that Fox News (and only Fox News) holiday ratings-getter — “The War on Christmas.”
She appeared with a panel to discuss the supposed/proposed rebranding of Santa, with that old Fox News standby, “Yet another person claiming it’s racist to have a white Santa.”
I’ve read the entire column, and Aisha Harris wrote nothing of the sort. Mildly letting people know that there are times when mass-culture doesn’t always suit everybody is certainly not claiming the people it does suit racist.
I’ve always questioned why, when somebody uses the phrase “all-American good looks,” they might be referring to a blond, blue-eyed male, when, the last time I looked, there are as many, if not more, female, black, Hispanic and Asian all-Americans. Yet, I’ve never called the people I’ve heard use that phrase “racists.”
But Kelly wasn’t finished. She took her mini-history lesson even further. “Santa just is white,” she claimed with the kind of certainty one might have if they held DNA, genealogical and carbon-testing results in their hand.
There was more. For reasons I can’t discuss here, Santa’s racial origin is as undeterminable as his whereabouts. Kelly, though, added more kindling to the fire.
“Jesus is a white man, too. He’s a historical figure, and that’s a verifiable fact, as is Santa,” she proclaimed.
Kelly got what she wanted, but not how she wanted it. Attention.
It only took hours for pundits everywhere to hold forth with their individual “She said what’s?”
Late-night talk shows had field days; competing cable stations flew into shout fests, and comedians — hungry for fresh material — feasted on Kelly’s self-righteous fascination with a (mostly) humorous examination of the true racial background of that Santa fellow.
The writer of the original column, after being called a racist herself, even wrote another column, to answer Kelly’s argument titled “What Fox News Doesn’t Understand About Santa Claus,” in which she blasted Kelly for thinking that “whiteness” is the default color in American culture.
Within days, Kelly had had enough. She’d obviously had time to think over her response to the growing catcalls she’d been getting for ignoring the concerns of people unlike herself. But instead of showing some kind of understanding, she took the Fox News way out. She decided to chide all of those people who didn’t know she was making all of those statements in jest. That despite uttering them with a scowl on her face, and even though none of her fellow panelists even cracked a smile, she was just joshing all along.
She did admit that perhaps she’d overstated the part about Jesus being white, because, “As I’ve learned in the past two days, that is far from settled.”
But what isn’t settled is Kelly’s ability to sound quite serious while she’s just kidding around.
“Humor is what we try to bring to this show, but that’s lost on the humorless,” she said.
Well, hardy-har-har-har.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.