Chelsea Handler came under fire Sunday for saying there should be “laws” against people who find racism funny, seemingly forgetting her own past is filled with racist jokes.
2 Chinese guys were arrested in Berlin for making nazi salutes. Wouldn’t it be nice 2 have laws here for people who think racism is funny?
— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) August 7, 2017
In fact, if there were laws against racist jokes, Handler might be one of the first to face the music.
In 2010, during a Twitter feud with Nick Cannon, Handler told Cannon, “pls drink this before you tweet me again” with a photo of grape soda underneath.
Handler has also repeatedly made anti-Asian jokes, many centered around Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s adoption of Asian children.
On The Tonight Show With Jay Leno in 2007, Handler said of Jolie’s recently adopted son Pax, “[he] probably doesn’t even know he’s Asian yet. He certainly doesn’t know he’s going to be a horrible driver. Or that he’s going to be amazing at doing nails. He has no idea!”
Handler hit that topic again in 2014, when she joked if Jolie would want to adopt actress Lupita Nyong’o after the Oscars, and then again in 2016 when Jolie and Pitt split, writing on Twitter, “Angelina Jolie has filed for divorce from Brad Pitt… he wants the China; she wants Pax and Maddox.”
Being what many might call an equal-opportunity offender, Handler went after her own Jewish heritage when she dressed her sidekick, Chuy, in a Hitler costume after Germany won the World Cup. The Anti-Defamation League called the parody “tasteless, offensive and hurtful.”
“This Hitler parody in itself was tasteless,” said Abraham Foxman, ADL national director, “but Chelsea Handler’s references to it throughout the program and her connecting it with Germany’s World Cup victory took the joke way overboard.”
Handler once defended her history of racist jokes in 2014 by arguing that she can’t be racist because she dates black people.
“People are mad at me all the time. If I was worried about that then I would be spending a lot of time online. I’d rather be a little more productive,” she said. “I’m not racist. I date a lot of black people, so that would be a difficult thing to explain to them.”
So, Chelsea, it might not be the best idea for you to try and criminalize your own racial jokes.