{"id":4379,"date":"2018-10-29T00:47:47","date_gmt":"2018-10-29T07:47:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/?p=4379"},"modified":"2018-10-29T00:47:47","modified_gmt":"2018-10-29T07:47:47","slug":"blackface-yay-or-nay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/blog\/2018\/10\/29\/blackface-yay-or-nay\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackface – Yay or Nay?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The big story last week was about Megyn Kelly <\/strong>and blackface \u2013 two things I never thought would go together.  Megyn Kelly and a lobotomy, yes.  Megyn Kelly and peroxide poisoning, yes.  Megyn Kelly and a Botox mishap, yes.  But blackface?  If you don\u2019t know, Meg tackled the issue of using blackface for Halloween by saying it was OK to dress up as a specific person of a different ethnicity.  And that leads us, inevitably, to Designing Women<\/em><\/strong>.  Now, I know my audience \u2013 you all saw this coming a mile away.  In the famous episode, the ladies were in a talent show lip-synching to The Supremes<\/em><\/strong>.  There were many problems with this scenario.  First off, there were only three Supremes<\/em>, while there were four DW<\/em>.  Second, they performed \u201cAin\u2019t No Mountain High Enough\u201d, which was a hit for Diane <\/strong>after she left The Supremes <\/em>(although here\u2019s a fun fact \u2013 The Supremes <\/em>and Temptations <\/em>recorded a cover of the Tammi Terrell<\/strong>\/Marvin Gaye <\/strong>version of this song in 1968).  Third, and the issue germane to this situation, The Supremes <\/em>were black women, while the ladies on DW<\/em> were white.  Suzanne had her beautician whip up skin bronzing makeup.  Julia balked, saying it was insulting to black women.  Come showtime, the three girls are onstage au naturel <\/em>when Suzanne walks out with tinted skin \u2013 looking stunning, I might add.<\/p>\n

And that brings us to the question \u2013 if you are dressing up as someone famous of a different color, how far do you go?  And before you answer, I\u2019m not talking about minstrel makeup with exaggerated lips; I\u2019m talking natural coloring.  In theatre, this is commonplace.  When an opera singer plays Aida<\/em><\/strong>, she must look Ethiopian.  When someone sings or acts Othello<\/em><\/strong>, he must look like a Moor (although the Met <\/em>recently stopped doing this).  When Whoopi Goldberg <\/strong>hosted the 1999 Academy Awards<\/em><\/strong>, she came out as Queen Elizabeth I <\/strong>\u2013 complete with the Virgin Queen<\/em>\u2019s heavily powdered white face.  For all those reasons \u2013 and believe me, I am no fan \u2013 I think Megyn got a raw deal when NBC <\/em>fired her.  Methinks they were just looking for an excuse to dump her.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The big story last week was about Megyn Kelly and blackface \u2013 two things I never thought would go together.  Megyn Kelly and a lobotomy, yes.  Megyn Kelly and peroxide poisoning, yes.  Megyn Kelly and a Botox mishap, yes.  But blackface?  If you don\u2019t know, Meg tackled the issue of using blackface for Halloween by saying it<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-breaking"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4379"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4388,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4379\/revisions\/4388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billymasters.com\/custom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}