JUST NBC THE RACISM!
Shot:
Amidst all the Sturm und Drang surrounding [the 1980 episode of Saturday Night Live hosted by Malcolm McDowell], Eddie Murphy’s network television debut slipped by without the slightest notice. It was just as well, because Eddie himself was humiliated by it.
He appeared in a sketch called “In Search of the Negro Republican,” which happened to be the one genuinely witty moment on the McDowell show. Written by David Sheffield, it was a parody of the old Mutual of Omaha nature series, Wild Kingdom. Charles Rocket played Marlin Perkins, Joe Piscopo his intrepid assistant, Jim Fowler. Fowler, in hopes of flushing out that rarest of political beasts, the Negro Republican, impersonated a waiter at a cocktail party, casually asking the black guests questions that would reveal their political sympathies. When he discovered a black Republican, a stuffy gentleman in a three-piece suit, he tagged him so that his migration patterns could be followed.
The humiliation for Eddie came not from the substance of the sketch, but from the part he played in it: He was an extra, sitting on a couch, seen only for the briefest moment on-camera, lost in the cocktail-party crowd. He didn’t have a line. The Negro Republican in the three-piece suit was played by an actor hired especially for that one show.
—From the 1986 book Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live by Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad.
Chaser: At Red State, today: MSNBC’s Tiffany Cross Rails Against Minority Candidates for Not Being Democrats.
During a Saturday morning broadcast with former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, Cross slammed minority Republican candidates for supposedly not being “voices of color,” whatever the hell that means.
“Despite the fact the GOP’s racist rhetoric has not slowed at all, they have begun hyping up, get this, their ‘diverse’ candidates,” she said while forming air quotes with her hands. “According to numbers provided by the National Republican Congressional Committee, 80 Republican incumbents or candidates on the ballot next month are women, 33 are Latino, 28 are black, 13 are Asian and three are native Americans.”
“But faces of color do not always equate to voices of color,” Cross added. “As our own NBC’s Scott Wong points out in his good reporting, the leadership will almost be entirely composed of white men. Really, this sounds more like the political equivalent of ‘some of my best friends are black.’”
“I will kick it up with you, Michael,” Cross continued. “Because, you and I have had this conversation so many times on camera and off camera, you are my only Republican friend, I think, my friend.
Maybe it’s time to widen your circle of friends to explore some more diverse and inclusive viewpoints, Tiffany. Especially after Steele called MAGA Republicans “lice, fleas, and blood-sucking ticks” on MSNBC this past Tuesday.