We're less than a week from Halloween, so you know what that means: It's time for the Cultural Appropriation Police to scour every Halloween party for culturally insensitive costumes and micro-aggressions. After all, what would a holiday gathering be without the constant politicization of every single action of every single person in attendance.
We've even gotten a nice preview of the outrage this year, with all the tantrums that NBC News' Megyn Kelly caused with an, admittedly tone-deaf but overall harmless opinion on "Megyn Kelly Today," during what should have been a civil conversation between four adults. Here's the clip:
Megyn Kelly Apologizes For Blackface Comments: ‘I Was Wrong, And I Am Sorry’ | Megyn Kelly TODAYyoutu.be
Melissa Rivers was the virtue-signaling in this segment. If only Megyn Kelly had towed the line and beat her chest with outrage.
Even Al Roker got steamed up about it:
The fact is, while she apologized to the staff, she owes a bigger apology to folks of color around the country. This is a history, going right back to the 1830s minstrel shows to demean and denigrate a race. It wasn't right.
I want to begin with two words, I'm sorry. The country feels so divided and I have no wish to add to that pain and offense. I believe this is a time for more understanding, more love, more sensitivity and honor. Thank you for listening and for helping me listen too.
Apologies do no good anymore. We're in the throes of cultural lawlessness, where executions are on-demand and context or common sense don't matter. Guess what happens next? She's probably going to lose her job, that's what all the signs seem to indicate.
NBC News Chairman Andy Lack released a statement following Kelly's comments:
There is no other way to put this, but I condemn those remarks. There is no place on our air or in this workplace for them. Very unfortunate.
What's unfortunate is that America has devolved into a country of over-sensitive babies who take offence at the slightest thing. Yes, Megyn Kelly ought to know that blackface is awful, that it is no longer acceptable, and that most people agree that any costume that purposely ridicules an entire race, as blackface has historically done, probably isn't kosher. But notice here what Kelly is getting in trouble, and possibly fired for: Words. It's not like she showed up to the set in blackface. She just asked why that particular example is racist.
The criteria for wrongdoing are narrowing to barely nothing. It's ridiculous how similar it is to the thoughtcrimes that Orwell wrote about in 1984.
Here's a passage, in which the main character, Winston Smith, is training himself to avoid thoughtcrimes:
The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions—'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water'—and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them.
Here's another:
If you made unexpected movements they yelled at you from the telescreen.
Swap "telescreen" with "Twitter" and you've got the reality of our current situation. And I don't want to ruin 1984 for you, but let me just say that it's not the kind of world we want to end up in.