INTEL REPORT--After the shock and awe of the headline wears off, feel free to continue reading the rest of this article.
You good? Alright, cool.
On Friday, NBC News announced that it was officially kicking its controversial host Megyn Kelly to the curb. The unceremonious divorce ends a year-long, lackluster fling with NBC that included poor ratings, a guest appearance by some imbecile named Alex Jones, and this ridiculous quote (completely bereft of cultural awareness) on blackface:
“But what is racist?”
Sidenote: Anything following this disclaimer is about to be some bullshit. You’ve been warned.
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.”
Which of course, comedian Patton Oswalt was quick to debunk.
“You and I are approximately the same age,” he tweeted. “Blackface was NOT okay when we were kids. Take it from a big-hearted boy who just wanted to show his love for Nipsey Russell on the worst Halloween of my life.”
Shoutout to white folks that check their own. And I’m happy to hear Oswalt survived whatever ass whooping he was on the receiving end of for doing that shit himself.
But back to Kelly.
If you think the former Fox News superstar would be out here broke or disgraced after getting the boot, you clearly have no understanding of how America works.
Because according to CNN, not only will she still be collecting the full $30 million from the remaining three-years of her contract, but she has every intention of returning to television sometime this year.
As she told TMZ, “You’ll definitely see me back on.”
Which means for those keeping track at home, she made a cool $69 million for a year and a half of work. And even though she spewed some racial insensitive shit, wasn’t exactly penalized for it.
But considering her lengthy history of uttering racist shit, I can’t say I’m even remotely surprised.
So stay tuned for Megyn’s inevitable return to television.
It must be nice to always fall upward.
(Posted first at theroot.com.)
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Tucker Carlson Sparks Debate Among Conservatives
Jane Coaston
INTEL REPORT--Last Wednesday, the conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson started a fire on the right after airing a prolonged monologue on his show that was, in essence, an indictment of American capitalism.
America’s “ruling class,” Carlson says, are the “mercenaries” behind the failures of the middle class — including sinking marriage rates — and “the ugliest parts of our financial system.” He went on: “Any economic system that weakens and destroys families is not worth having. A system like that is the enemy of a healthy society.”
He concluded with a demand for “a fair country. A decent country. A cohesive country. A country whose leaders don’t accelerate the forces of change purely for their own profit and amusement.”
The monologue was stunning in itself, an incredible moment in which a Fox News host stated that for generations, “Republicans have considered it their duty to make the world safe for banking, while simultaneously prosecuting ever more foreign wars.” More broadly, though, Carlson’s position and the ensuing controversy reveals an ongoing and nearly unsolvable tension in conservative politics about the meaning of populism, a political ideology that Trump campaigned on but Carlson argues he may not truly understand. (Read the rest.)
-cw
