NBC was aghast that Megyn Kelly said it was once OK to color your skin during Halloween when she was a kid.
”But what is racist?” she said on her NBC morning show last week. “Because you do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface on Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid that was OK, as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”
Kelly was quickly drummed out of NBC and accused of being a racist.
Now, before we go on, we want to point out that Kelly didn’t actually appear in blackface, dressed up like, say, Aunt Jemima. She just said those words.
But now it turns out several NBC stars have dressed up in blackface, and in whiteface — including one who fiercely criticized Kelly.
NBC News anchor Lester Holt once dressed as British pop singer and YouTube sensation Susan Boyle for Halloween, complete with wig and a dress, but also wearing whiteface, Mediaite reported. Ironically, Holt did so for an appearance on the Today Show — the very same show from which Kelly was fired.
See a picture here, posted on Page Six of the New York Post.
Fox News’ Tucker Carlson discussed Holt on his show Tuesday.
“He has changed his appearance in a way that is now very controversial. He wore that costume for a Halloween episode of the ‘Today’ show, Megyn Kelly of course was just fired for suggesting that it wasn’t always bad to dress up as a member of an opposite race,” Carlson said.
At the 2016 Golden Globes, Jimmy Fallon, another NBC star, wore blackface during an impersonation of comedian Chris Rock. He also did the same during a “Saturday Night Live” sketch in 2000.
And ABC late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel also donned blackface for a skit back in 2000, when he appeared in blackface to pretend he was NBA Hall of Famer Karl Malone on Comedy Central’s “The Man Show.”
And who can forget the time “30 Rock,” another NBC show, featured Tracy Morgan as a white woman and Jane Krakowski in blackface.
But Carlson rightly said the whole thing is silly, and noted that whiteface is not exactly blackface, which has a long history.
“Look, I just want to be clear, I don’t think there’s an equivalence between the two. There is a long history of one and not of the other. But I also wonder, I don’t think, there are like five people in America who would be deeply offended by what Lester Holt did. I’m not offended by it. Maybe though if you dress like that you should be slightly less self-righteous in the face of other people’s transgressions.”