Shame Day: Megyn Kelly

If you’ve been sheltered from much of the world’s madness, you’ve probably been fortunate enough to avoid a Megyn Kelly, FOX News’ latest production in their attempt to create the perfect Aryan newscaster.

Seriously, it’s like a “Where Are They Now?” slideshow of the Hitlerjurgend…

For the most part, Kelly has been comparatively benign. Don’t get me wrong, she’s every much a part of the entertainment-news vomit-cycle as anyone else, but Kelly’s always been more or less decent about keeping an even keel (as much as you can at FOX) and she’s certainly hasn’t demonstrated the straight-up malice of pundits like Beck or Coulter.

At least, she didn’t used to…

Last Wednesday, Kelly responded to an article in Slate arguing that Santa “Should Not Be A White Man Anymore”. On the panel discussion of the story (because, y’know, the Syrian refugee crisis is just getting too much coverage) Kelly repeatedly insisted “Santa is white.”

Now we could probably stop here and question exactly why it’s so essential that Saint Nick be Caucasian, or why anyone- anyone– would get worked up about the mere suggestion that he be anything else, but honestly, it’s difficult for me to care all that much.

Saint Nicholas, if most stories are to be believed, was an ancient Christian bishop in what is today Turkey, so chances are that he would’ve been of mostly Greek ancestry (and therefore white), though there’s no real hard evidence one way or another. To respond to the issue brought up in the actual article, would I feel “insecurity” and “shame” if I were a nonwhite kid consistently seeing an almost exclusively white Santa?

Well no, but then again, I don’t tether my sense of self-worth to some mascot for Coca-Cola and ugly sweaters because I am a sane person.

At least, I was before seeing this sweater…

Now had Kelly limited her comments to Santa, I’m not entirely sure I’d even have bothered with targeting her for this post- but she went on to say this:

“Jesus is a white man too.”

Yeah, here we’re going to have some problems.

If you want to debate the pros and cons of trying to change the traditional image of a mythical figure- great. A balanced panel discussion on that subject would probably be both interesting and thought provoking. But if you want to, on national television, repeat on of the most pernicious lies in history, then you’d better believe it’ll bring down a downpour of indignant rage.

Let’s get things straight here- Jesus was not white. It’s generally agreed that he would have looked something like this:

Sunburned, calloused, dusty, sweaty- your average Middle Eastern laborer. And I want to make clear that I actually don’t take issue with “white Jesus” anymore than I do with “black Jesus”…

…Or Asian Jesus.

The purpose of this art is to strip away the very racist and nationalist labels that some people, either out of malice or stupidity, try to attach to Jesus. The Renaissance painters were educated men who knew full-well that the people of 30ish AD did not wear the same clothes you’d find on the streets of Florence or Milan, but they depicted it nonetheless as a way of making a point.

That point was that you were gonna get your butt kicked no matter how curly your hat is…

Where the issue lies is when art starts getting mistaken for history, and we devolve from “Here’s Jesus painted as a white man” to “Here’s Jesus, a white man.” The whole ****ing point of this art gets totally inverted, and rather than eliminating ignorant bigotry, it’s only increased.

Now Megyn Kelly has spoken since her “Santa and Jesus are white” comments, but rather than stating (in regards to Jesus, at least) that she was wholly and utterly wrong, she simply said “…[Jesus’s race] is far from settled.”

No, Miss Kelly it is settled.

All historical evidence, including genealogical records, cite Jesus as a Middle Easterner. I can only imagine that your comment about the race of Jesus being “far from settled” is to duck any further criticism from anyone who might argue that Jesus was white or black or anything else.

Cowardice would explain Kelly’s newly found ignorance on the subject, and that would seem to be evidenced by her closing statements that “Race is still an incredibly volatile issue in this country, and Fox News, and yours truly, are big targets for many people.”

See, this really takes a unique kind of self-delusion. This “journalist” tells a huge falsehood on national television and then tries to claim that she’s a victim of this country’s troubled history with race. Had she just said “Look, I wasn’t thinking when I said that” or “I honestly never knew otherwise”, it’d be easy to forgive her. But instead of manning up and admitting that she had said some of the dumbest stuff she possibly could say, she opted instead to hide behind some false sense of martyrdom. Apparently it’s not enough to just lie to the audience- you have to insult their intelligence too.

Megyn Kelly, shame on you. Now for the good of historical accuracy and race relations in this country alike: