Megyn Kelly Is Mad At HBO Max For Temporarily Removing “Gone With The Wind”
I know we’re used to seeing Megyn Kelly trade in bad faith arguments and body-slamming strawmen, but I dare say, she’s finally using her energy to fight for something real. According to CNN, HBO Max has decided to temporarily remove Gone With The Wind from its streaming service. And based on the level of Megyn’s outrage, I must conclude that HBO also plans on rounding up every single copy of the film, from every other service and also from all the world’s libraries, sending jackbooted men into people’s homes to collect their personal copies on DVD, VHS, laser-disc and hard drive, and hypnotizing every memaw and antebellum aesthete (first they came for Blake Lively, and I said nothing) to erase all memory of the film. And frankly, that’s not the America I want to live in. Yes, GWTW is trash, but what HBO is proposing is taking things too far.
Well, this is embarrassing. I just read that CNN article a little closer. Turns out GWTW isn’t being thrown into a pyre. It “will return with a discussion of its historical context and a denouncement of those very depictions,’ and will be presented ‘as it was originally created.’” Can somebody please lend Megyn $9.99 so she can buy the fucker on Amazon Prime? Here’s what White Santa’s mistress had to say.
Are we going to pull all of the movies in which women are treated as sex objects too? Guess how many films we’ll have left?Where does this end?? https://t.co/Bh8mqpv0l3
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 10, 2020
Ok @hbomax – let’s do this – every episode of “Friends” needs to go right now. If not, you hate women (& LGBTQ ppl,
who also don’t fare well on “Friends”). Obviously Game of Thrones has to go right now. Anything by John Hughes … Woody Allen… could go on & on… & on…& on… https://t.co/dVXWssnFKF— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 10, 2020
Wait a minute, did I miss The One Where Ross Goes to a Halloween Party and he showed up as Mammy in blackface and a fat suit? Or was that Monica? Either way, I thought Megyn was A-OK with that sort of thing. Let’s see what other logical fallacies Megyn has up her sleeve.
Totally. Forgot those guys. Let’s keep it going until all we have left is The Queen and Captain America. https://t.co/KNibMQXhEv
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 10, 2020
Look, I wasn’t going to say anything before because this has nothing to do with HBO, Gone With The Wind or The Queen, but this is the intro to her Wikipedia:
Megyn Kelly is an American journalist and attorney who was a news anchor at Fox News from 2004 to 2017, and a talk show host and correspondent with NBC News from 2017 to 2018. She currently posts to her Instagram page and YouTube channel.
See I figured if Megyn can pop off on HBO like this with arguments that are completely devoid of nuance, context, or reason, I can use this time to remind everyone that Megyn named her children Yates, Yardley, and Thatcher. Your turn, Megyn!
For the record, you can loathe bad cops, racism, sexism, bias against the LGBTQ community, and not censor historical movies, books, music and art that don’t portray those groups perfectly. Ppl understand art reflects life… as we evolve, so do our cultural touchstones.
— Megyn Kelly (@megynkelly) June 10, 2020
Not even Fox News wants to hire back a “journalist and attorney” who pretends not to know the definition of censorship. GWTW was so ubiquitous in my childhood (seemed like it was on every damn time I turned on the TV), I really thought Scarlett O’Hara was doing something important. And I thought Mammy, Prissy, Pork, and Big Sam (yikes abound) were just colorful sidekicks, eagerly helping that glamorous lady go about her important business. And of course, in GWTW, that’s just what they were. According to CNN, HBO made the decision to add context when they bring it back, following an L.A. Times op-ed addressed to them by 12 Years A Slave author John Ridley. It reads, in part:
“It is a film that glorifies the antebellum south. It is a film that, when it is not ignoring the horrors of slavery, pauses only to perpetuate some of the most painful stereotypes of people of color,” Ridley wrote. “The movie had the very best talents in Hollywood at that time working together to sentimentalize a history that never was.”
“Let me be real clear: I don’t believe in censorship,” Ridley wrote. “I would just ask, after a respectful amount of time has passed, that the film be re-introduced to the HBO Max platform along with other films that give a more broad-based and complete picture of what slavery and the Confederacy truly were.”
I was a latchkey kid so I stumbled across GWTW at all hours of the night and day, talking about not birthin’ no babies on the schoolyard because I thought that shit was funny. But Yates, Yardley, and Thatcher won’t have to worry about that. But not because HBO took GWTW down for a minute, but because unlike my mom who worked full time and took community college classes at night, Megyn doesn’t have a job.
Pic: Wenn.com