Today’s installment of “What Were They Thinking?” stars Russell Simmons, who debuted his new YouTube channel with a comedic video sketch titled “The Harriet Tubman Sex Tape.”
Shockingly, the video, which depicts the civil rights icon having wild sex with her slave master as a means to blackmail him, ran into a storm of controversy. Simmons on Thursday, citing complaints from his “buddies from the NAACP” and numerous other sources, apologized and removed the video from his channel.
The video, which can still be found on the Internet, depicts the famed slave-turned-abolitionist Tubman and a fellow slave scheming to blackmail their “massa” into aiding her plans to create an underground railroad to bring slaves to freedom. Tubman lures the slave master into having sex with her while the other slave tapes the goings on from inside a closet. Afterward, Tubman reveals to the slave master she now has “leverage” over the slave owner to get what she wants.
“In the whole history of Def Comedy Jam, I’ve never taken down a controversial comedian,” Simmons said in a statement posted on the website GlobalGrind.com. “When my buddies from the NAACP called and asked me to take down the Harriet Tubman video from the All Def Digital YouTube channel and apologize, I agreed.”
He added, “I’m a very liberal person with thick skin. My first impression of the Harriet Tubman piece was that it was about what one of the actors said in the video, that 162 years later, there’s still tremendous injustice. And with Harriet Tubman outwitting the slave master? I thought it was politically correct. Silly me. I can now understand why so many people are upset.”
