‘Oh No, Baby, What is You Doing?’: Megyn Kelly Catches Hell for Asking What’s Wrong with Black Face on Halloween

By Caleb HoweOct 23rd, 2018, 11:35 am
 

On Tuesday, Megyn Kelly did a segment about the “crackdown” on Halloween costumes by political correctness, along with former First Daughter and NBC correspondent Jenna Bush Hager, producer and red carpet fashion staple Melissa Rivers, and MSNBC correspondent Jacob Soboroff. Partway through the discussion, Kelly pondered what exactly is so bad about white people wearing blackface. The studio audience did not react negatively in real time. But after the segment, Twitter sure did.

Beginning with a story from the UK, Kelly showed costumes like a cowboy or a Native American, that the student union at the University of Kent has deemed offensive and banned. “Isn’t the whole purpose of Halloween to dress up and pretend you are someone else?” Kelly asked, to audience applause.

After some crosstalk about it, she added “I just feel like it’s so absurd, I mean who comes up with these rules,” said Kelly, “and you know what they’re saying you can dress as… Letters of the alphabet.”

“I said Doug and I are going to go together. I can go as F and he can go as U,” said Kelly to big applause.

With the audience on board they moved on to more offensive costumes, and Soboroff mentioned racism. “If you’re going to dress like an idiot, act like an idiot, and actually dress and be racist then somebody should say something to somebody,” he said, “but you should still be able to dress like a moron.”

“But what is racist?” said Kelly. “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 on Halloween. When I was a kid that was okay as long as you were dressing up like a character.”

Both Jenna Bush Hager and Melissa Rivers gently pushed back, with Rivers saying that “normal people know” where the line is, and Hager saying that “there are limits to how far you want to go because you’re making people feel bad.”

Kelly, though, brought it back, bringing up a Real Housewives of New York controversy after a white star on the show wore a Diana Ross costume.

“People said that was racist and, I don’t know I felt like… who doesn’t love Diana Ross, she wants to look like Diana Ross for one day,” said Kelly. “I don’t know how that got racist on Halloween.”

Kelly did not bring up the incredibly racist history of white people wearing blackface in America, nor did anyone else.

Twitter had this to say:

Watch the clip above, courtesy of NBC.

[Featured image via screengrab]

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