Today Show Scandal: Hosts Apologize for Telling the Truth about the Fake Black Sign Language Interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s Memorial Service

By Nicholas Stix

At about 9 a.m. today, Today Show hosts Natalie Morales, Willie Geist, and Al Roker accidentally reported the news. They showed a clip of the sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service yesterday, and reported that many legitimate sign language interpreters had called, outraged, complaining that the man was a fraud who was just repeating the same, fake hand gestures, as if on endless loop. One of the hosts asked how the fraud could have gotten in, and was concerned that he had been standing just a few feet away from President Obama, implying that he could have been an assassin.

The host was suggesting that the man had gained entry to the proceedings through impersonation. That wasn’t my impression at all. I very much doubt that the man gained entry through false identification, or through not being checked. It is much more likely in a place like South Africa that he was given the job of sign language interpreter, and he was who he purported to be. The problem is that although he is paid to be a sign language interpreter, he knows no more about the job than I do, which is to say, nothing.

[The MSM’s current cover story is that the man somehow “crashed” the event.]

He was given the job, because he is black. South Africa is not a “rainbow nation,” it is a black nation, where the only qualification for any job, is that one be black.

At 9:30 a.m., the hosts revisited the story. Now they all apologized, saying it had been “a gag” that went wrong. Many people had called and “were offended,” and the hosts certainly “didn’t want to offend” anyone.

The item had not been a gag. If it was funny, it was because the fraud itself was funny. And the hosts most certainly did want to offend people. They wanted to offend every legitimate sign language interpreter on the face of the earth, and every viewer with a shred of honesty. The people they were apologizing to, and whom they did not want to “offend” were racist blacks and their non-black allies, who consider reporting on black fakers a sign of “disrespect” and “racism.”

In between those two items, the hosts also deliberately misrepresented a moment at the same ritual that had hit the newspapers and the ‘Net.

The John Doe calling himself “Barack Obama,” sitting in the front row, had taken a “selfie,” a photograph of himself, and his immediate neighbors to his left, Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and British PM David Cameron, using his smartphone. The shot showed Michelle Obama sitting to Barack’s left, outside of the selfie, scowling.