One of the cutest things on the whole of the internet last week was the BBC interview with Professor Robert E. Kelly, whose expertise on South Korean politics was interrupted by his two children, including his daughter, who enters a room with confidence most of us can only dream of.
If you’re the one person who still hasn’t seen the video, watch it above to see Kelly’s toddler son roll his way onscreen before their mother, and Kelly’s wife, Kim Jeong-ah, slides in after them like a child-rearing Risky Business-era Tom Cruise.
While Kelly did see some backlash for the way he pushed his daughter away and didn’t look at his children (and it is hard to believe that with the rampant “mom-shaming” that’s present both online and IRL, the internet’s reaction wouldn’t look very different if the parents’ roles were reversed here), most parents I’ve talked to found it totally relatable, and pretty much everyone found it hilarious.
So are you ready for round two? Because the family gave a press conference—does that feel like overkill?—that was once again dominated by their daughter. Look, that girl high-arms her way through life and (as Mashable points out), she doesn’t have time for this sitting-still, stuffy-coat, listening-to-dad-talk nonsense.
The family also talked to the BBC again, despite the fact that Kelly said he was sure they and pretty much every news outlet on the planet had permanently written him off.
Professor Robert Kelly speaks to us again – now we can officially meet his wife & children 😉 https://t.co/SmwRdyPOd7 #BBCDad pic.twitter.com/smCE8iW431
— BBC News (World) (@BBCWorld) March 14, 2017
First of all, pretty much everyone who works from home had the same guess as to why he didn’t stand up to get his kids out of the room.
Real story of bungled BBC interview is that, like everyone else who has Skyped an interview, he wasn’t wearing pants. Couldn’t stand up.
— T. Becket Adams (@BecketAdams) March 10, 2017
Kelly swears we’re wrong, but I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.
The interviewer there takes the time to ask one really important question. (Yes, more important than pants/no pants, even.) In the widespread, super-viral coverage and reactions to the original video, it was shocking how many people referred to Kim Jeong-ah as the children’s nanny. Some used phrases like “mother or caretaker,” but a huge number just assumed she was outside help, being paid to watch the Kellys’ children.
The interviewer asked how that made them feel, and Kelly made it known that “Yeah, we were pretty uncomfortable with it.”
That so many people can see a Korean woman (who, by the way, along with Kelly and their family lives in Korea) caring for children she shares with a white man, and have an automatic, kneejerk assumption that she is their nanny, without even realize they’re making that assumption, is a textbook example of unconscious racism, and absolutely worth noting.
Kim Jeong-ah voiced her request, however:
I hope people just enjoy it, not argue over this thing.
So no arguing here. Let’s just get back to living our best Yellow Seater Girl lives.
(featured image via screengrab)
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