Keith Olbermann is supposed to be “one of the good ones.”
You know the type: They have “Black Lives Matter” in their social media profiles, they drag Trump and other right-wing dickheads at every given opportunity and they might even show up at a protest to bark on the police or hand out water bottles.
“I would never!” they scream in horror at the TV every time Get Out is on.
But no matter how well-intentioned they purport themselves to be, inevitably the Keith Olbermanns of the world will do or say some fuckshit that not only has you looking at them sideways but calls into question just about every righteous act that preceded said fuckshit—which brings us to Election Day.
On Tuesday morning, the man we’re all about to forcibly punt out of the White House called into Fox & Friends to do what he does best: bitch and moan. Olbermann, of course, wasn’t feeling it and found a rather peculiar way to voice his disdain for Trump’s theatrics.
“Yes @realDonaldTrump has always been, will always be, and on the day of his bid for re-election, still is: a whiny little Kunta Kinte,” Olberman wrote in a since-deleted tweet.
I’m sorry, what?!
Remember what I said about inevitably spewing some fuckshit? By a show of hands, can we all agree that this qualifies?
For those out of the loop, what makes this analogy so goofy and offensive is that Kunta Kinte, immortalized in Alex Haley’s 1977 miniseries Roots, was a victim of chattel slavery who stood up to his oppressors and paid dearly for it. Whereas Trump is an aspiring despot who doesn’t stand up for shit but white supremacy and his hideous pompadour.
Suffice to say, Black Twitter was pretty pissed.
But before we leap to conclusions and classify Olbermann as a racist (they hate that, don’t they?), maybe he was trying to call Trump something else and simply...mistyped. I mean, that happens, right?
Well, after hours of confusion, Olbermann set the record straight and admitted that yes, he intentionally called Trump a “whiny little Kunta Kinte.” Because of course he did.
“Just logged back in: I apologize for my previous subtweet of this,” he tweeted. “I was using an old 70's-80's technique for calling somebody a cunt without writing/saying cunt, just using a sound-alike to call Trump a cunt. Deleting previous, largely because this one clarifies the cunt part.”
Gee, thanks for the clarification.
I would follow suit and call you a “sucking miscreant,” but I’d much rather call you a fucking idiot instead. But then again, these types of non-apologies are par for the course with the Keith Olbermanns of the world. So congratulations on pivoting from racism to misogyny.
See you at the next Black Lives Matter protest!
And for those wondering, you already know Levar Burton had to get in on this, too.