Follow LA Observed on Twitter here
No, Michael Richards did not attend a celebrity roast for Whoopi Goldberg in blackface. Nor did he pour a bottle of Aunt Jemima syrup over Whoopi's head. That was satire from the guys at Dateline Hollywood, but CBS-owned WJZ-TV in Baltimore failed to get the joke. Michael Schneider at Franklin Avenue picks up the story:
Given the uproar over Richards' use of the n-word at the Laugh Factory, it would have been mighty insane for him to do those things, yes? But somehow no one at WJZ saw the absurdity of that. At least at first. The story ran on the station's 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. newscasts, before being corrected at 11.A former colleague of mine (see how incestuous this is, by the way?), former Variety scribe Nick Madigan, now a media reporter for the Baltimore Sun, caught WJZ's goof.
The main example of media incest is that Ben Fritz of Dateline Hollywood works with Schneider at Variety. My other favorite satirical headline of the week is from The Onion: Kansas Bans Practice of Evolution.