‘Well, I was wrong’

Megyn Kelly apologizes after blackface backlash

After igniting controversy on Tuesday with her defense of blackface for a Halloween costume, Megyn Kelly offered an apology on NBC’s Megyn Kelly Today Wednesday morning. “I want to begin with two words: I’m sorry,” Kelly told her audience. “You may have heard that yesterday we had a discussion here about political correctness and Halloween costumes. And that conversation turned to whether it is ever OK for a person of one race to dress up as another: a black person making their face lighter or a white person making their face darker to make a costume complete. I defended the idea, saying as long as it was respectful and part of a Halloween costume, it seemed OK. Well, I was wrong. And I’m sorry.

“One of the great parts of getting to sit in this chair is getting to discuss points of view. Sometimes I talk and sometimes I listen. And yesterday, I learned,” Kelly continued. “I learned that given the history of blackface being used in awful ways by racists in this country, it is not OK for that to be part of any costume, Halloween or otherwise.”

Indeed, Kelly received intense criticism for her comments Tuesday, as she vented during a panel discussion about “political correctness gone amok.” When the subject of racist costumes came up, Kelly asked, “But what is racist?” and added when she was growing up, blackface was OK “as long as you were dressing up as, like, a character.”

She also defended Real Housewives of New York star Luann de Lesseps, who got backlash for darkening her skin for a Diana Ross costume. “Who doesn’t love Diana Ross? She wants to look like Diana Ross for one day? I don’t know how that got racist on Halloween,” Kelly complained. “It’s not like she’s walking around in general.”