We honestly thought that mistaking one black person for another was a relic of a bygone era, ushered out the door at last by the gentle sounds of Samuel L. Jackson tearing apart an entertainment reporter who accidentally mistook him for Laurence Fishburne in a 2014 interview. Sam Jackson has single-handedly changed what “act out your anger” means in Hollywood, so it’s hard to understand how Fox News could make the monumental mistake they made today.
On a day of mourning in America, as we honor the passing of R&B icon Aretha Franklin, widely considered to be the greatest female pop vocalist ever in the history of the world, Fox News was busy mistaking her for Patti LaBelle in one of their newscasts. In a sort of In Memoriam segment on the network, they showed a static graphic of Franklin out front, with a thumbnail of LaBelle in the corner:
That’s more than just your standard racist “black people all look the same” garbage. That’s Fox News:
- Thinking all black people look the same
- Thinking all female R&B singers sound the same
- Having NO CLUE that Aretha and Patti had a feud with one another until literally this morning, when one of them died.
- Not caring enough to spend literally 10 more seconds on Google
This is just shameful.
Fox has apologized, of course, after having been caught acting like your Uncle Dan:
We sincerely apologize to Aretha Franklin’s family and friends. Our intention was to honor the icon using a secondary image of her performing with Patti LaBelle in the full screen graphic, but the image of Ms. Franklin was obscured in that process, which we deeply regret.”
That was the official statement from Jessica Santostefano, the Vice President of the Media Desk at Fox News.
The two, of course, were not “performing together” — they were at the same event, and not on the stage at the same time, as you can see in this video of the performance the still is from, which took place at the White House.
Even after being caught, Fox continued to lie about their racism.
Featured image via screen capture
