This past Saturday night, comedienne Wanda Sykes ripped into the lack of racial diversity at Fox News on The Wanda Sykes Show, which airs on Fox. "So I've been digging around here and I found some old footage of black reporters on Fox News - you know, back when they were allowed to be on that network," Sykes said. "Fascinating stuff - take a look at this one."
Sykes then played a spoof newsreel showing a black Fox News correspondent reporting on "the negro perspective" of the Hindenburg crash in 1937. "To put that in a Negro perspective, those flames are higher than the bonfires that the Klan lit after the Emancipation Proclamation."
Transcript of spoof reel and video below:
"I'm Frederick R. Cobbs, educated Negro, coming to you from New Jersey's Lakehurst Air Base as we watch the Hindenburg descend. It appears to be a routine landing. But wait, wait a minute. Oh, my God! Fire has burst out of the side of the Hindenburg! Jesus, those flames are more than 200 feet high. To put that in a Negro perspective, those flames are higher than the bonfires that the Klan lit after the Emancipation Proclamation."
"Unbelievable! Flaming wreckage as big as fireballs is falling near yards from me. To put this in Negro perspective, I haven't been this close to death since the age of 8 when I beat a 10-year-old white child in a spelling bee by correctly spelling the word "superiority."
"And now I see white folk falling out of the sky at a rate of what appears to be at least 10 miles an hour. To put that in a Negro perspective, they are falling faster than a house Negro running from the big house after discovering that the master's new baby has a tan. Thank god the inhumanity of segregation and Jim Crow means no persons of color were allowed on that ship. For the first time in 1937, it is a good day to be a Negro! This is Frederick R. Cobbs, educated Negro, signing off for Negro Newsreel. Let's go!"