Please Lord, Help Jillian Michaels’ Black Child

And while you are at it, help all the children.

Jillian Michaels embarrasses herself while Abby Phillip maintains professionalism

To paraphrase Charles Dickens, it was the worst of times, it was the stupidest of times.

To start, I want to say that I like and respect CNN anchor Abby Phillip. I was still employed by CNN as she was climbing her way to the top of the CNN ladder. Being at the tippy top of CNN's talent ladder means you have a show that's on five nights a week and your name is in the title. It's especially impressive that her show -- NewsNight with Abby Phillip -- has survived both the DEI cutbacks that have swept the country and CNN's efforts to court MAGA viewers.

That last part is what brings us here, today. Cable news no longer relies on quality reporting to court relevance. Now they court their audience through controversy and clickbait-able content. Then the audience (and the haters) share the bitesized clips online--even later on this very Substack. Those clips really go far and wide when one person gets owned by another person or if a person unquestionably shows their ass.

I have written about CNN favorite Scott Jennings. Scott’s job on CNN is to speak evil and then look in the camera and wink and nod at his daddy Trump. But I have equal smoke for Shark Tank’s Kevin O’Leary. Kevin O’Leary is what would happen if Daddy Warbucks never met Annie. Kevin regularly shows up on CNN to get his ass handed to him by commentators who look depressed having to pretend to take him seriously.

O’Leary is so high on his own supply that he, a Canadian, recently expressed dismay that leading New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani would not meet with him while O’Leary was on a trip in New York City. I’m guessing that Mamdani is probably too busy meeting with people WHO CAN ACTUALLY VOTE FOR HIM.

And just as I was hoping that Kevin O’Leary was the bottom of CNN’s MAGA bucket, Jillian Michaels -- fitness "expert" and MAGA influencer -- entered the CNN studio. The MAGA part is especially noteworthy, since Michaels is openly gay and openly the mother of a Black child that she adopted. Gay and Black, two great tastes that don’t taste great when you coat them in MAGA. Michaels is also featured in a new Netflix documentary series about her role on the NBC reality competition weight loss television show (those words should really NOT go together) The Biggest Loser. Apparently, Jillian is not happy about how the documentary portrays her. She even has threatened to sue Netflix and the doc’s producers. Much has been written about the harm that The Biggest Loser did to contestants and to the fitness industry in general. More words have been written about Jillian’s unhelpful and unhealthy fitness advice and how she talks about people’s bodies in general. In 2020, she participated in one of that era’s favorite pastimes for assholes: talking about pop star Lizzo’s body.

"Why are we celebrating [Lizzo's] body? Why does it matter? That's what I'm saying. Like why aren't we celebrating her music? Because it isn't going to be awesome if she gets diabetes." —Jillian Michaels

First of all, it isn’t awesome when ANYBODY gets diabetes. And second of all, YOU AREN’T LIZZO’S PERSONAL TRAINER OR DOCTOR SO WHY ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT LIZZO??? AND WE’VE ALWAYS CELEBRATED LIZZO’S MUSIC!!!

Quotes like that from Jillian make me wonder if she is even an expert when it comes to the thing in which she is supposed to have expertise in! One area where Michaels is absolutely, 100% NOT an expert is African American history. For reasons only a TV executive and an algorithm could love, Michaels was booked on last Thursday evening’s episode of NewsNight with Abby Phillip. It was one of those classic overstuffed CNN panels (five people plus Abby Phillip). These panels are designed to make sure, without a doubt, that somebody argues with somebody. It was ostensibly a discussion about Trump’s latest edict to reform the museums of the Smithsonian in his own morally repugnant image. This is from the letter that the Trump administration sent Lonnie G. Bunch III, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

"This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President's directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions."
—Allegedly Donald Trump but Probably Stephen Miller

Well, fuck me. There is no reason why ANY museum, anywhere in the world–neigh, the known universe–should align their exhibits with the beliefs of any politician… unless, of course, that politician is a dictator who doesn’t plan on leaving office. If that is the case then fine, change the museum exhibits to match Trump’s vision.

“Here we learn that President Trump astrally projected himself back through time to give Harriet Tubman the idea to free the slaves. She didn’t want to do it at first, because she actually enjoyed slavery quite a lot, but Trump convinced her when he told her that she would eventually be put on a postage stamp.”
—Donald Trump’s Crypto Emporium and Museum of Blacks For White People

Well, last Thursday night on Abby Phillip’s show, Michaels wanted to make sure that her dear leader, Donald Trump, knew she aligned with his alignment. When the subject of Trump's curatorial efforts was raised, like a highly trained athlete, Michaels summoned all of her strength and beat her own personal record of nonsense bullshit.

“[Trump’s] not whitewashing slavery. He’s not. You cannot tie imperialism and racism and slavery just to one race, which is pretty much what every single [museum] exhibit does. You realize that slavery is thousands of years old?”
—Jillian Michaels

Okay, Jill. Can I call you “Jill”? I actually don’t care if you say I can or not. Lookee here, Jill. The museum you are ignorantly referring to is the National Museum of African American History and Culture. It isn’t the History of Slavery on Planet Earth Museum. In a museum about the history of African Americans–it gives me no great pleasure to tell you that–the finger of blame for America’s enslavement of Africans is going to be regularly, if not always, pointed at white people. Dem’s the breaks.

She continued, because the panel was mostly stunned. Scott Jennings’ posture read like he knew there was a new challenger to his throne of nonsense bullshit.

“Do you realize that only… less than two percent of white Americans owned slaves.”
—Jillian Michaels

Jills, I don’t give a shit if only one white guy owned all the slaves. Every white person in America benefited from all that free work. (It saved this country trillions of dollars.) Slavery is a performance-enhancing drug for an economy. Once slavery was "over," the country did everything possible to keep Black people as close to the conditions of enslavement as possible. Off the top of my head there’s sharecropping, wage theft, poll taxes, the 13th Amendment, the school-to-prison pipeline, redlining, gerrymandering, “No nigger, you can’t have and bank loan,” and LULUS.

Screw your “but.”

But Michaels still wasn’t done.

“Every single [exhibit in the National African American Museum of History and Culture] is like, ‘Oh no, no, no. This is all because white people bad.’
And that’s just not the truth.” —Jillian Michaels

White people bad??? That’s what an adult said. Michaels might… MIGHT be a fitness expert to some, but nobody is going to accuse her of being an elocution expert. To say Michaels is out of her depth would imply there is a depth that Michaels would be competent at swimming in the subject of African American history. When in reality this is, “Jillian put on your floaties. Get on top of the inner tube, and try not to drown.”

Jilly, if you (or your president) had ever been to the museum and really looked at the exhibits, you would see that the whole museum is about how enslaved Africans (like Harriet Tubman) or African Americans living under Jim Crow (like Motown founder Berry Gordy) or post-Civil Rights Era African Americans (like Oprah Winfrey or LeBron James) achieved great success in their fields (pun intended, Harriet) despite the weight that American racism puts around all of our necks (pun even more intended). There’s actually an argument that the museum isn’t depressing enough. Maybe there should be a super-depressing white version of the NMAAHC and a whole-truth-good-and-bad-but-with-a-dance-party-at-the-top Black version of the NMAAHC.

Honestly, though, my big issue here is that CNN booked Jillian at all. They should have told her to sit this segment out. Mainstream media and online algorithms are prioritizing clicks over expertise. The most tragic part is that they only allow stupid people to opine about issues that require the highest levels of expertise. Anybody with a YouTube channel, a few social media followers, a failing career in showbiz, and/or a podcast can get on TV and get booked to talk about why evolution isn’t real or why tariffs on foreign countries will make us all billionaires. They are allowed to do this on major platforms whether they have a degree in that area of study or any related real word experience or not. But it doesn’t seem to work in the other direction. CNN would never think to let me come on the air and opine about my new all ice cream diet that promotes weight loss and higher intelligence. But because Jillian Michaels has a large platform, and she has pivoted into being a right wing pundit with her all-woman MAGA talkshow called Her Take, CNN allows her to come on and suck the smarts out of the room in the name of “All Opinions Matter!”

I was actually booked on CNN the day before Jillian’s racist word salad. I was booked to talk about the same things: Trump and his attack on the arts. But I didn’t say anything stupid or argue with anyone, so you didn’t hear about it. (They also didn’t promote my stand-up tour or my Substack like they agreed to do. So much for CNN’s support of the arts.) After I was on, I felt sort of cold and dry, like, “Why did I do that? Is it worth it?” I’m increasingly thinking that no, it is not.

For me things are getting extremely simple. Our president is toxic and dangerous. He has caused much of our discourse to be toxic and dangerous. Toxic and dangerous discourse gets in the way of us solving our biggest problem: How can we save America from the clutches of our fascist president, his cronies, and his billionaire enablers? Once again, as I type this, Washington D.C. is under martial law and people are randomly and illegally being snatched off the streets by I.C.E. Texas Republicans have officially gerrymandered the state’s congressional districts, ensuring that Black and Brown folks' votes count even less than they already do in that state.

And CNN booked fitness influencer Jillian Michaels to talk about African American history when we maybe shouldn’t even trust her to talk about push-ups.

Michaels’ words fed the algorithm just like CNN wanted. Abby Phillip even addressed Michael’s viral comments in a follow-up episode. Michaels, herself, discussed her her take at a women’s-only business conference a few days after her appearance. Once again, words are not Michaels’ friends. In an NFL game, Michael's hard-to-follow response would initiate the concussion protocol.

“We constantly talk about white supremacy, but we look the other way with black degeneracy, it begets white hostility that then validates and begets white degeneracy. And it’s this impossible cycle.” —Jillian Michaels, fumfering

What in the who-raised-you are you talking about?

This is a big deal to me. The gains that Black folks have made in this country are in danger of being ripped away. We all know that even if at some point in the future that Trump and MAGA no longer have their day in the sun, it's way easier to tear things down than it is to build them. But don’t just take my word for it. Here is a video from Nikole Hannah-Jones, the author of the 1619 Project. Like an intelligent CNN panelist arguing with Scott Jennings, you can tell that Hannah-Jones is absolutely disgusted to have to take Jillian Michaels seriously.

I also really and truly feel genuinely sad for the Black child that Michaels adopted. I know how often my wife and I talk about race and racism in my house with our kids. I know how I tailor those conversations to each child based on their age, personality, and even skin tone. If Michaels’ recent statements are an indicator of the types of race and racism conversations happening at her house, then her child is in serious trouble. I hope sooner than later that the kid runs into a Black person who can pull her coat and correct the bullshit her mom is feeding her. Ironically, if Michaels had gone on CNN and said she was treating her kid the way she treated the contestants on The Biggest Loser, Michaels would be accused of child abuse. But I think letting your Black child grow up without that Black child learning about all the realities of African American history is a different kind of abuse of your child, but abuse all the same.

Who’s with me?

Yup! My Stand-Up Comedy Tour is Still on Sale

September 20, Carmel, CA
October 3, Los Angeles
November 7, Tulsa, OK
November 8, Oklahoma City, OK
November 20-22, Louisville, KY

Watch Abby Phillip Address The Jillian Michaels debacle

As I was finishing this piece, Abby Phillip took to her own show and deconstructed what went down from her perspective. I think what we are seeing is many in the Black media intelligentsia decide that this particular moment was too far. We have to draw line in the sand and fill that line with cement so people (hopefully) won’t be so comfortable to cross it again.

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You have to be a nerd if you like Rush.

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And While We Are On The Subject of Lizzo

I dare Jillian Michaels to ever create this much joy.