Ellie Kemper: We are all Canceled

Twitter came for Ellie Kemper in May of 2021.  They called her the “Queen of the KKK” and accused her of being a white supremacist.  The story picked up traction in newspapers and real media (sorry, newspapers!) and Ellie Kemper (aka Kimmy Schmidt) found herself issuing an apology for being named the “Queen of Love and Beauty” nearly 20 years ago by the Veiled Prophet Organization of St. Louis.  The VPO was founded in 1878 by two civil war veterans so yes, there’s a lot of white supremacy going on in its founding, but there’s also a lot of classism, too. Ellie wasn’t celebrating white supremacy when she went to the ball in 1999, she was just going to a party.  Or was that the point of the party?

Twitter came for Ellie Kemper and she apologized, but in the end it may ultimately be Twitter that owes Ellie an apology (she’ll probably be pretty gracious about the whole thing if you do apologize, Twitter).