“My name’s Chelsea Handler, and I am as white as they come,” the comedian says in her new documentary.
An audience stares blankly at Handler, which is what you would expect people to do when someone begins an on-stage monologue just to alleviate her white guilt.
“I want to know how to be a better white person to people of color,” she explains. Because that doesn’t sound condescending at all.
In Hello, Privilege. It’s Me, Chelsea, the comedian and liberal activist attempts to use her cachet to explain why she might not fully deserve her cachet, all the while defending her right to her cachet. It’s pretty confusing stuff, but that’s how it works when you’re a white liberal crushed under too many levels of wokeness.
The Netflix documentary, which came out this month, finds Handler schooling oblivious white people on their privilege.
“I wouldn’t say it’s totally nonexistent,” says a young woman, “but it’s not something that I see very commonly.”
“But,” Handler retorts, “would you see it if you’re white?” Checkmate, am I right?
Handler’s problem is not that she addresses “white privilege,” a degree of which certainly exists in America. It’s that she frames herself as a sort of emotional philanthropist for doing so, all the while insisting that she’s trying to pass the mic.
When she appeared on The View, Handler even admitted she was told that making a documentary about white privilege is an example of her privilege.
“Yes, that is correct,” she said. Why, then, is she still doing it? Handler says she wants “to give back.” One wonders, though, what exactly she’s giving.
To all of the critics of the documentary, Handler has a message: You just don’t want to recognize your privilege! “And a special thank you to all the angry white people who have reached out as well,” she tweeted on Friday. “It’s my privilege to make you mad at a documentary about white privilege.”
During an interview on CNN, she further politicized her message, finding the “pinnacle” of white privilege in President Trump, and, by extension, the Republican Party.
“He’s a perfect example of white privilege: Let’s keep other people down so we keep winning, so I can keep filling my own pockets,” she said. “He and the Republican Party, at this point, are all about no one succeeding except for them.”
White privilege is “a white person’s problem,” Handler says, but at the end of the day, she doesn’t think it’s really hers. It seems like she has a particular type of privileged white person in mind, and conveniently it’s not the type who shares her views or partisan affiliation.
