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Notes -
Well… Reece Shearsmith had a recurring blackface part on the BBC's League of Gentlemen comedy series in the 2000s and still got a cushy guest turn on Good Omens in pre-Gaiman-cancellation days when it was still Tumblr's favorite hyper-cozy comfort food without anyone raising much of an eyebrow. Likewise Matt Lucas of Little Britain (2003-2008) getting a recurring role on Doctor Who in 2016 in the season with the first black lesbian companion and the Doctor triumphantly punching a racist. Granted these are both British actors and I'm struggling to think of an American actor who got away with something similar in that time frame, but the relevant online fandoms were well-stocked with woke Americans so I'm not sure it should make that much of a difference.
I personally find it hard to imagine that many teenage American fans of Doctor Who or Good Omens would have even heard of either Little Britain or The League of Gentlemen, never mind watched any of the episodes featuring blackface.
So? Surely most Ed Sheeran fans wouldn't have stumbled onto the fairly obscure Happy Merchant performance by chance, either. The only way it was ever going to lead to his cancellation was a social media brouhaha brought on by someone stumbling upon it and signal-boosting it, and that could happen just as easily for a problematic skeleton in a character actor's closet. It's noteworthy that it didn't.
In both cases, the fact that it didn't happen seems to be down to it just not being all that likely that a sufficiently vindictive SJW is going become aware of the obscure scandal-in-waiting and push it on social media until it gets sufficient momentum to make a real difference to the public perception of the celebrity. Hence I don't think the target of the racial caricature was the issue.
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