Megyn Kelly was forced to apologize after she questioned whether a white person dressing up as a black character or celebrity on Halloween was a racist gesture. Should she have? Andrew Klavan, host of ‘The Andrew Klavan Show,’ thinks the controversy is the stupidest thing ever, and he explained why on Wednesday’s episode of the show.
He said, “I want to talk about this thing with Megyn Kelly — if you haven’t heard about this, she went on her show and they were discussing Halloween costumes, and of course I’m not joking, the Left just wants to suck the joy out of everything we do. Everything is problematical; everything has to be reconsidered; everything has to be looked at in the light of their woke, brilliant righteousness.”
Klavan continued, “Megyn Kelly went on and she was talking about being in costume, talking about a white woman who had put on a costume of Diana Ross and made her skin look a little darker so she looked more like Diana Ross, and she said, ‘Gee, I think this would be okay.’ And the people on the show with her said they didn’t agree because of the old days when people would do minstrel shows, and they would do kind of cliched stereotyped versions of black people with the white lips and all this stuff. Megyn Kelly then got slammed, of course, by the Stalinists on Twitter and she had to apologize. I’m about to tell you why we should very, very much dress up in blackface, or whiteface, or any other damn thing we please.”
After playing a clip of Kelly’s apology, Klavan asked if it was okay for an African-American kid to dress-up as the white superhero Batman or a Caucasian kid dress up as the Black Panther, stating that he did not see a problem with a child dressing up as their hero.
“Look, of course there are costumes that wouldn’t be right if they express hatred, if they express disrespect,” he said. “I don’t want to see anybody dressing up as a Klansmen or a Nazi or anything like that, that’s not the point. But what if your hero is a ballplayer, and you’re a white kid and you want to dress up as a black ballplayer, if you want to wear his jersey and that’s not alright?”
“There are people on the Right agreeing with this, saying she said something stupid. I don’t think she said something stupid at all, I’m totally on her side,” he concluded.
Video and transcript below:
I want to talk about this thing with Megyn Kelly – if you haven’t heard about this, she went on her show and they were discussing Halloween costumes, and of course I’m not joking, the left just wants to suck the joy out of everything we do, everything is problematical, everything has to be reconsidered, everything has to be looked at in the light of their woke, brilliant righteousness. Megyn Kelly went on and she was talking about being in costume, talking about a white woman who had put on a costume of Diana Ross and made her skin look a little darker so she looked more like Diana Ross, and she said “gee, I think this would be OK.” And the people on the show with her said they didn’t agree because of the old days when people would do minstrel shows, and they would do kind of cliched stereotyped versions of black people with the white lips and all this stuff. Megyn Kelly then got slammed, of course, by the Stalinists on Twitter and she had to apologize. I’m about to tell you why we should very, very much dress up in blackface, or whiteface, or any other damn thing we please.But first I want you to hear this, Megyn Kelly had to go on and apologize for this, which she did with her eyes filled:
Megan Kelly: “I want to begin with two words, I’m sorry. You may have heard that yesterday we had a discussion here about political correctness and Halloween costumes, and that conversation turned to whether it is ever okay for a person of one race to dress up as another. A black person making their face lighter, or a white person making theirs darker…I defended the idea, saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume it seemed okay. Well I was wrong, and I am sorry. One of the great parts of sitting in this chair each day is getting to discuss different points of view. Sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen, and yesterday I learned. I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not okay for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise.”
So I’m a person of color, my color is white, and here’s what I want to say about this. This is crap. Are you telling me that a little black kid, if his hero is Batman, she can’t put on a Batman mask and be Batman? Are you telling me that a little white boy, if he wants to be Black Panther, he can’t dress up as Black Panther? There’s a movie about Jackie Robinson, the great baseball player, obviously first black guy in the major leagues, and there’s a scene in this movie – genuinely moving scene – where they’re traveling on a train, they look out the window and there’s a little boy playing baseball, doing what we all did, what I did certainly when I was a little boy, pretending to be his hero and his hero is Jackie Robinson. He’s a white boy pretending to be a black man, that’s a victory! We know it, when we see the movie we understand this is a victory. The good guys won, that’s the whole point, the good guys won this battle! Look, of course there are costumes that wouldn’t be right if they express hatred, if they express disrespect, I don’t want to see anybody dressing up as a Klansmen or a Nazi or anything like that, that’s not the point. But what if your hero is a ballplayer, and you’re a white kid and you want to dress up as a black ballplayer, if you want to wear his jersey and that’s not alright?
Older people, we’re on the exit ramp of life, it’s not the job of old people to transfer the pain of history to young people. You should learn history, you should know history so you don’t repeat it, but you don’t have to live in history. My father hated Germans, he hated German people. Well I could understand that, he fought in World War two of course he hated German people. The Holocaust was a raw nerve for him, I totally get that, it’s not my job to hate German people, those people are all dead, the people who did that stuff are dead, the new people are not responsible. We won – when I say “we” I mean the good guys – won this fight. We understand there were injustices in this country, those injustices are over, people felt ashamed. Why won’t they let the wound heal? Well it’s obvious why, because they think they get power from it. If this was still Amos and Andy, if this was still minstrel shows I’d say “okay yeah, so that’s disrespectful”, but how is it disrespectful when your hero is somebody of a different color? We should all be dressing up as one another. Why? Because we are one another, there’s no difference! We’re all Americans, we should be able to dress up as one another. To say “oh in the old days it used to be one thing, therefore it’s still that thing.” The American people are much, much smarter than their commentators, they’re perfectly able to see things that aren’t, so to speak, black and white. This is ridiculous. Why these people think that they should have some power, some say, over what people do with their kids, what their kids want to do if they’re not their parents, I have no idea.
There are people on the right agreeing with this, saying she said something stupid, I don’t think she said something stupid at all, I’m totally on her side.