Fox News
- Actor Gilbert Gottfried said he misses "old time lynch mobs" in a promo aired on Fox News.
- Gottfried was a guest on Dan Bongino's new Fox Nation streaming show "Canceled."
- Thousands of Black people were tortured and killed in lynchings from 1877 to 1950.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
In trying to make a point about "cancel culture," actor and comedian Gilbert Gottfried evoked "old time lynch mobs" in a promo that aired on Fox News Monday morning.
Gottfried, who lost his role as the Aflac duck after making tasteless jokes about Japanese people following the nation's deadly 2011 earthquake, was being interviewed by Dan Bongino, a Fox News contributor and host of the new show "Canceled" on the Fox Nation streaming platform.
The promo chosen for Bongino's show airing on "Fox & Friends" involved Gottfried comparing how he was "canceled" to Black people being hunted down and killed by mobs in the post-Civil War South.
-Lis Power (@LisPower1) July 19, 2021
"When I hear about another person getting in trouble now, I always think 'Oh, thank God them and not me.' 'Cause I've been through it a few times," Gottfried said.
"The internet makes me feel sentimental about old time lynch mobs," Gottfried continued after a cut in the promo. "At least lynch mobs, they had to put their shoes on, go out, get their hands dirty, and deal with other people. Now you sit in your underwear on your couch, there with your phone … and you have a lynching there."
Unlike calls to get someone fired online, lynchings resulted in nearly 4,000 deaths between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative's comprehensive study and mapping of the killings, which primarily targeted Black Americans in the South after the abolition of slavery. Historians have struggled to get an accurate accounting of lynching murders because of a lack of historical records and the sheer prevalence of the practice through the Reconstruction era.
Bongino's show is one of several on the Fox Nation streaming platform focused on cancel culture, which has emerged as a top issue at the network amid a drive for subscriptions.
After the Gottfried clip aired, Bongino promised "your jaw is gonna drop" from people he interviewed being "canceled for the most innocuous things" before plugging his podcast and radio show during his appearance on "Fox & Friends."