Hillary Clinton blames NYC mayor for racially charged sketch
Leslie Odom Jr., from the Broadway musical “Hamilton,” Clinton and de Blasio perform during Saturday’s event. (David Handschuh/The Inner Circle via AP)
Hillary Clinton is sidestepping the controversy over a racially charged comedy sketch she participated in during a gala hosted by New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over the weekend.
“Well, look, it was Mayor de Blasio’s skit,” Clinton told Cosmopolitan magazine on Tuesday. “He has addressed it, and I will really defer to him because it is something that he’s already talked about.”
During her appearance at the 94th annual Inner Circle Show in Manhattan on Saturday, the Democratic frontrunner appeared onstage in a prewritten sketch, poking fun at her trouble swiping a MetroCard and needling de Blasio over his late endorsement of her candidacy.
“Sorry, Hillary, I was running on C.P. time,” de Blasio explained, appearing to reference “colored people time” — a term defined by Urban Dictionary as the stereotypical explanation given by African Americans “as a reason for being late to an event” or for “a traditionally black event not beginning on time.”
“Hamilton” star Leslie Odom Jr., who also appeared in the sketch, was quick to object.
“I don’t like jokes like that, Bill,” he said. “That’s not funny.”
Clinton turned to Odom to clarify what de Blasio meant. “Cautious politician time,” she said. “I’ve been there.”
The mayor’s office released a statement after the event saying the joke was aimed at him.
“In an evening of satire, the only person this was meant to mock was the mayor himself, period,” the statement read. “Certainly no one intended to offend anyone.”
And de Blasio himself defended the joke in an interview with CNN’s Erin Burnett Monday night. “It was clearly a staged show,“ the mayor said. "It was a scripted show. The whole idea was to do the counterintuitive and say, ‘cautious politician time.'”
"Every actor involved — including Hillary Clinton and Leslie Odom Jr. — thought it was a joke on a different convention,” de Blasio continued. “That was the whole idea. I think people are missing the point here.”
Whatever the intent, it was the second time in a week the Clinton campaign clashed with a black audience.
Former President Bill Clinton exchanged words with Black Lives Matter protesters in Philadelphia, where he defended his wife’s 1996 characterization of black juvenile offenders as “super predators" — a term she recently said he “shouldn’t have used.“
“I don’t know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out onto the street to murder other African-American children,” Bill Clinton said. “Maybe you thought they were good citizens; she didn’t. She didn’t.”
“You are defending the people who killed the lives you say matter,” he added.
