Following the departure of Trevor Noah, The Daily Show has been inviting guest hosts to take the lead on the comedic political news program, with all three so far being Black comedians. First they brought on Leslie Jones of Saturday Night Live and Ghostbusters fame, then the irreplaceable Wanda Sykes, and their latest host is none other than D.L. Hughley of The Hughleys, who has also been a correspondent on The Jay Leno Show.
Hughley had the unfortunate task of covering the killing of 29-year-old photographer and father Tyre Nichols by a number of police officers who mercilessly beat him for several minutes until he was unresponsive. This combined with a failure to get him medical attention in a timely manner resulted in the young Black man dying in the hospital of his injuries three days later.
Of course, if it’s race-related, Fox News’ Tucker Carlson also has to say something about it, and that thing is always racist and terrible. This time, Carlson used the opportunity over a dead man’s body to attack the 2020 George Floyd uprising that saw protests and riots across the U.S. in defiance of rampant police brutality that only gets worse year after year.
Carlson made the completely incorrect claim that there are no George Floyd statues, saying that this is evidence that the protests were never about the man who died after a white cop knelt on his neck for nine minutes straight. Hughley rightly pointed out that there have been multiple statues erected that depict and honor Floyd, but also made the observation that in spite of claiming that we talk too much about race in this country, Carlson never shuts up about it.
And he can’t seem to stop talking about one race in particular.
“This dude is so obsessed with Black people, I’m going to start calling him Sickle cell,” Hughley joked.
Sickle cell disease (SCD) describes any of a group of illnesses affecting the red blood cells — specifically an oxygen-carrying protein called hemoglobin. The abnormal hemoglobin causes the normally round cells to warp into a sickle shape and die early, causing symptoms such as chronic pain, infections, acute chest syndrome, and an increased risk of stroke.
The illness has been found to disproportionately impact Black individuals. Hence the joke.
Hughley went on to joke that the reason there aren’t that many statues of Floyd in the U.S. in spite of the impact his death had on the country is because “to get a statue in this country, you gotta do some pretty horrible s–t to Black people.”
“Like you can get one for slaughtering 300 Black prisoners during the Civil War,” he said, displaying a photo of a statue depicting Nathanial Bedford Forrest. “You can get one for conducting medical experiments on enslaved Black women without anesthesia.”
By now, everyone who isn’t Fox News poisoned knows not to take anything Tucker Carlson says seriously, although it is important to keep tabs on what lies he’s feeding millions of white American racists every night. If he’s not telling outright lies about statues, he’s freaking out over anthropomorphized peanut M&M’s because he thinks they’re “obese,” which is apparently only a problem if it’s a lady candy.
“It’s to the point with Fox that all late night has to do is put up unedited clips of their shows with no commentary,” said one YouTube commenter.
“The bow tie whisperer would never say these things on the streets,” wrote another.
