An elderly man said he was manhandled by security and booted from a Sarah Silverman show in New Jersey after protesting her infamous blackface skit while wearing blackface.
The man, who is African-American, detailed the ugly alleged encounter in an Instagram post blowing up online.
In the post, Michael B. Jackson, 71, accused the “racist Sarah Silverman” of having “goons” rough him and evict him because he wore “blackface paint at her show.” Accompanying pics show the demonstrator lying in bed at the hospital following the alleged incident.
The wild altercation reportedly occurred on February 4 while Jackson was sitting front row at the 52-year-old comic’s show at the Ocean Resort Casino in Atlantic City, TMZ reported. In an accompanying video, Jackson can be seen sporting black makeup and white paint on his lips as prepares for Silverman to take the stage.
He was reportedly protesting a 15-year-old episode of “The Sarah Silverman” show, in which the comic donned blackface for an inflammatory skit on race. Jackson had deemed the sketch collection of racist comments masquerading as comedy.
In the sketch, Silverman’s character wore dark face paint to see whether it is more difficult to be black or Jewish.
“I look like the beautiful Queen Latifah,” she said in the 2007 sketch before telling the congregation at an African-American church, “I’m black today.”
Reps for Silverman have not responded to The Post’s request for comment — but the two-time Emmy winner has long since disavowed her controversial bit, saying she regrets it.
“It was like, I’m playing a character, and I know this is wrong, so I can say it. I’m clearly liberal. That was such liberal-bubble stuff, where I actually thought it was dealing with racism by using racism,” she previously told GQ. “I don’t get joy in that anymore. It makes me feel yucky. All I can say is that I’m not that person anymore.”
Meanwhile, although Jackson said he intended for the demonstration to be peaceful, things allegedly got ugly after the comedienne’s opening act. Rory Albanese allegedly addressed his controversial cosplay 20 minutes into the show, per TMZ. Jackson claims that the opener insulted him and incited the crowd despite him claiming he didn’t want to be part of the bit and just wanted to sit in silence. However, other sources insisted that he had been warned for heckling the funnyman.
Things came to a head after Albanese allegedly called security, who confronted Jackson and told him to move to a balcony seat. In a video of the altercation, which the protestor filmed on his phone, security can be seen repeatedly asking the audience member to leave. The senior repeatedly refuses, declaring that he has “the right to be here” because he bought tickets.
At one point, security moves to grab Jackson, prompting him to yell “don’t touch me.”
The feed cuts out before the alleged physical ejection, however, Jackson claimed that security summoned police, who slapped him with a ticket for trespassing.
A casino rep has since confirmed that the protester has been given the ticket for refusing to leave until police escorted him out of the building.
In a follow-up post, Jackson claimed that security roughed him up so badly he wound up “in the hospital.
“I’m 71 years old and it took 6 of them,” boasted Jackson, who called his ejection “racially motivated” and said he feared for his safety at the time.
He summed up the incident like this: “Sarah Silverman feels it okay for her to wear back face, but no one else.”
Several eyewitnesses claim that Silverman addressed the incident after getting onstage, explaining that she’d never do a blackface sketch today. She also said that she would’ve apologized to Jackson had he still been in the audience when she began her performance.
In 2019, Silverman revealed she was fired from a movie over the resurfaced blackface bit.
“I recently was going to do a movie, a sweet part,” she said on “The Bill Simmons Podcast.” “Then, at 11 p.m. the night before, they fired me because they saw a picture of me in blackface from that episode.
“I didn’t fight it,” she continued. “They hired someone else who is wonderful but who has never stuck their neck out. It was so disheartening. It just made me real, real sad because I really kind of devoted my life to making it right.”