The sense of offense is finely calibrated. It can detect an insult in a nanosecond and score it as a vile disparagement or a brilliant riposte, as contemptible or courageous, as harmful or enlightening, as doleful or droll, as wretched or risible, all according to the recipient’s sense of identity, community, and ideology. Such is the curious case of Sarah Jeong, Continue reading
Offense of the Month, October 2018
Trump and his coven aside (it would be hard, nay, probably impossible, for anyone else to compete), the October 2018 offense-of-the-month designee, hands down, is Megyn Kelly, partly for her actual offensiveness—that is, her racial insensitivity—but mostly for her obtusely loopy dopey stupidity or, as the British might better put it, for being several sandwiches short of a picnic. Not sure I can be any plainer.
Everyone who has looked at a paper, or been online, or watched the news, now knows (but may well forget a month or so from now), that on Tuesday, October 23, Kelly let loose on her NBC show, “Megyn Kelly Today,” about blackface Halloween costumes. She was commenting on a report she may have misread about the “costume police” at the University of Kent in Great Britain. Kelly seemed to think that certain costumes were about to be banned. News accounts are sketchy, and it may be that the student union there was considering a recommendation that students avoid wearing, rather than on outright ban on, “fancy dress” that caricatures cowboys, Nazis, and Harvey Weinstein, among others.
Kelly wondered “what is racist?” Speaking of children today and her own childhood, Kelly, 47, said: “You do get in trouble if you are a white person who puts on blackface for Halloween, or a black person who puts on whiteface for Halloween. Back when I was a kid, that was OK just as long as you were dressing as a character.” read-more..