In today’s episode of The Fragile Whites Say the Darndest Things, Greg Kelly, a host on Newsmax—which is basically Fox News’ illegitimate love child that it only claims during tax season—posted then later deleted a pair of racist tweets about how the existence of white people in the military and government made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The network said those tweets are now under “review,” which I put in quotations because Newsmax investigating the racism of one of its hosts is like Tyler Perry personally conducting an investigation into the wig quality in his movies.
From HuffPost:
Kelly wrote that knowing the secretary of defense (William Cohen) was white when he was a U.S. Marine pilot “made a big difference with ‘morale.’” In another tweet, he said knowing that then-President Bill Clinton was “a Caucasian male” made “it all worthwhile.”
Kelly followed up by writing that “being a MARINE had nothing to do with RACE.” He also noted that former New York Mayor David Dinkins (which he misspelled as Dinkens) officiated at his wedding in 2017. Dinkins, who died in 2020, was New York’s first Black mayor.
In a response posted by The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr (who also posted the original tweets), the network said Kelly’s messages were sarcastic attempts at anti-racism. “We at Newsmax never countenance the posting of racist views or views that appeal to racists,” Newsmax said in a statement. “We are currently reviewing the matter.”
So, apparently, Kelly was going for sarcasm in his tweets, which were actually meant to denounce a recent push for diversity and condemnation of racism in the military. Kelly was doing that thing wilfully obtuse white people do where they show off their abject lack of understanding regarding the importance of representation, which comes as a result of white people having always been overwhelmingly represented generally everywhere. Basically, Kelly was being racist while pretending to be racist, and after deleting all of that dumbass shit, he came back in true wypipo form with a “See, I have a Black friend” post he probably thought put his white nationalist nonsense in perspective.
“Now the TRUTH: being a MARINE had nothing to do with RACE,” Kelly wrote. “It didn’t matter. It wasn’t ‘a thing’—the EXPERIENCE brought us together, no matter what we were. The late Mayor David Dinkens, a WWII Marine, and hence, my brother. Below in 1991, and officiating my wedding in 2017.”
A few things:
First, I had to read that tweet three times to understand what he was trying to say. I mean, I understand that the people at Newsmax are probably missing Donald Trump’s Twitter feed, but mimicking the man’s use of sentence fragments and broken syntax is a bit much.
Secondly, it’s interesting that Kelly considered David Dinkins to be his “brother” but he couldn’t bother to spell his name correctly. It’s also interesting that, while decrying pushes for diversity, he’s name-dropping someone who is largely celebrated for being New York City’s first Black mayor.
Of course, the most caucasity-fied part of Kelly’s Twitter rant mirrors white people’s general response to discussions of racism: If they didn’t see it, it just didn’t happen.
It’s easy for Kelly to say race “didn’t matter” while being white in an environment where white nationalism is embedded in the culture. How the fuck would he know whether or not racism in the military was “a thing” while being of a demographic that wouldn’t be targeted by racism?
Wait, I forgot: It’s actually white people who are the real victims of racism in America.
More from HuffPost:
In another layer of his I-am-not-racist sandwich, Kelly reminisced about Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s hit “Ebony and Ivory” on Newsmax Friday. He praised the lyrics of “living in perfect harmony,” but griped: “Right now white people are at the bottom of the heap for all the terrible things they’ve done over the years.”
What the fuck does that even mean? Did Kelly just accidentally admit that white people have a history of doing “terrible things” while getting his Klan-drawers all in a bunch about them being held accountable for it? Or was he just being sarcastic?
Who can even tell the difference?