There are times when the collective digital Caucasian conscience known as Fox News is so blatantly racist-adjacent that it crosses the line of conservative commentary and becomes laughably stupid. Sometimes they are so willfully wrong that it seems as if they are trolling us.
On Thursday, upon learning of the death of perhaps the greatest American songstress of all time, Fox News decided to share the news with their viewers by posting a background graphic of the great American songstress:
Patti LaBelle.
This can’t be life.
While I am aware that Fox News’ employees probably think we all look alike, anyone who knows anything about the relationship between Patti Labelle and Aretha Franklin knows that this egregious error is like using a photo of Malcolm X to commemorate the death of Martin Luther King, Jr.
But, as someone who is all-too-familiar with the way white mediocrity behaves, I have come up with a reasonable explanation for this based on years minutes of extensive shallow research.
White people can’t see.
For some reason, white people can see perfectly fine under normal circumstances but turn into Mr. Magoo when black people are around. I have long suspected this. I believe the Centers for Research on Advanced Caucasian Cornea Analysis (CRACCA) should look into why white eyesight often fails when in close proximity to blackness. It might sound like a kooky conspiracy theory, but I have unearthed anecdotal data that warrants further investigation.
They can look at the video of a Daniel Pantaleo’s arm around Eric Garner’s neck, and not only did they say Garner was resisting, but they even refuse to say it was a chokehold. Seventeen-year-old Trayvon looked like a thug to George Zimmerman. Mike Brown was an inch shorter than his killer, Darren Wilson, but Wilson said Mike was like “the Hulk.”
Their eyes turn cell phones and wallets into loaded guns. Apparently, black people at Starbucks look threatening to some Beckysapiens. They see danger when we just want to take a dip in the neighborhood pool or walk down the street. They don’t view Trump as a racist and they often admit that they don’t see color.
So don’t be so quick to judge Fox News. It might not be that they’re stupid (they definitely are). It might not be that they’re racist (regardless of what you think of Great Value white nationalist Tucker Carlson and Laura “Cruella de Vil” Ingraham).
Maybe they’re just blind.
To justice. To reality. To everything.
It seems like a simple conclusion and you know what they say: The simplest explanation is usually correct. There’s only one other possible explanation:
Malice.
Nah ... It couldn’t be that.