Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly on Wednesday had insisted it was a “verifiable fact” that Jesus Christ was white. She also — in a quick monologue to whatever children might be watching the news at 10 PM — said that “Santa just is white.”
So the kids wouldn’t worry?
The internet pounced — and rightly so.
Kelly was mysteriously absent from her show the next day. But Friday night, she addressed the issue.
WATCH:Â Jon Stewart On Fox’s Race-Based Freakout: ˜You Do Know Jesus Wasn’t Born In Bethlehem, PA?’
It turns out, America is the race-baiter, not Megyn Kelly, Megyn Kelly insisted.
“Many questioning whether I understand that Santa is a mythical figure, others suggesting that I am a racist who is outraged at the idea of a black Santa,” Kelly told her audience — which probably doubled in size for her performance Friday.
Kelly insisted her comments were not “motivated by any racial fear, or loathing.”
But were they motivated by ratings? Or by “a political campaign designed to stoke white peoples’ fears of black men,” as Gawker yesterday mentioned?
In “Megyn Kelly Is a Race Hustler,” Gawker’s J.K. Trotter yesterday writes that “Kelly is, in her employer’s parlance, a race hustler,” and reminds America of this:
Throughout the first half of the Obama administration, Kelly was all over the utterly false story that a rogue group of black supremacists called the New Black Panther Party were trying to scare off white people from voting. In the first two weeks of coverage, Kelly anchored 45 different segments about the New Black Panthers… When it turned out the charges against the Panthers were baseless, Kelly spent less than two minutes addressing the news.
Friday night, Kelly defended her honor by playing the victim and accusing America of bad faith — and race-baiting.
“Well, this would be funny if it were not so telling about our society, in particular the knee-jerk instinct by so many to race-bait and to assume the worst in people. Especially people employed by the very powerful Fox News channel.”
But Kelly decided she was going to frame the debate her way. She addressed her comment from Wednesday that it was a “fact” that Jesus was white — by spending all of five seconds on that part of her outrageous comments.
“As I’ve learned in the past few days,” she decried, the fact that Jesus wasn’t white “is far from settled.”
Actually, it really is settled. But just like climate change, even if perhaps one percent of the world’s population disagrees, a settled fact is “far from settled” at Fox News.
And, Kelly added, she was only kidding around, so, there.
“I offered a tongue-in-cheek message for any kids watching,” Kelly claimed. “Humor is a part of what we try to bring to this show, but sometimes that is lost on the humorless.”
Perhaps all of Fox News is really just a joke?
“Fox News,” Kelly said, “and yours truly are big targets for many people.”
Curiously, she has no idea why.
Hat tip: David Edwards at The Raw Story