14 DAY TRIAL // Univision’s Rodner Figueroa was fired last week after going on the TV show El Gordo y La Flaca and saying that Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States, looked “like she’s part of the cast of the Planet of the Apes, the film.”
He apologized and tried to play down the controversy by saying he wasn’t talking about Mrs. Obama but a male makeup artist who’d recently transformed himself into Michelle through makeup, but by then the damage had been done.
According to Raven Symone, invited on The View the other day, he wasn’t being racist when he compared Michelle Obama to an ape, he was just trying to be funny. Plus, it’s not like he doesn’t have a point, she continued: “some people do look like animals!”
As you can see in the video below, former child star Raven followed that up by saying that she knew she looked like a bird and wouldn’t be offended if people told this to her face, thus suggesting that no one should feign offense when someone called Michelle out for resembling an ape.
She was the only one to stand by this argument, because all the other ladies at the table disagreed: Figueroa’s comment was racist and Univision was right in letting him go.
Check out the segment.