Can we all take a moment to savor the delicious irony of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau — the walking icon of tolerance, progressivism, and cultural sensitivity, the Dreamy Diversity Guy and favorite foreign leader of so many Democrats — telling Canadians today that he is unable to say whether he wore blackface (or probably more accurately, brownface) on more than three occasions?
Time magazine revealed a photo of Trudeau wearing brownface as an Aladdin character at an Arabian Nights” party in 2001, as well as blackface to imitate Harry Belafonte in high school, and then on a third occasion in the early 1990s.
Even Virginia governor Ralph Northam is thinking, “hey, I only did it twice. More than three is really excessive.”
Even the nonsense excuses deployed for Northam won’t work here. “It was a long time ago, in a different era, things were different then.” The party was 2001!
“It was a youthful indiscretion!” Trudeau was 29! And he was a teacher at this school!
“Everybody’s done something like this!” Er, no they haven’t. Lots of people make insensitive comments, tell jokes that could offend, but most people haven’t put on shoe polish or some other makeup to look like a member of another ethnic group.
In a society that wasn’t consumed by woke-scolds and “cancel culture,” we could argue that not every example of darkening the skin is the same as Al Jolson or Amos and Andy or other efforts to mock and deride an entire group of people. Nobody seems all that upset when Robert Downey Jr. played an over-the-top method actor who darkened his skin to play an African-American character in Tropic Thunder. But that would require people to recognize that, say, Megyn Kelly wasn’t being racist or malevolent when she described trying to look like Diana Ross on Halloween. And by golly, joining the outrage mob and claiming another scalp is just too much fun for people to resist.
Come on, Canada. Don’t vote against Justin Trudeau because of old party costumes. Vote against Trudeau because he’s corrupt and willing to pressure his justice minister to take it easy on a big company that supported him.