Monday, June 15, 2009
That's so funny that I forgot to be racist
NY Daily News:Commenting on a report posted to Facebook about a gorilla escape at a zoo in Columbia, S.C., Friday, longtime GOP activist Rusty DePass wrote, "I'm sure it's just one of Michelle [Obama's] ancestors - probably harmless."
Busted by South Carolina political blogger Will Folks on his FITNEWS blog, DePass told WIS-TV in Columbia, "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."
Then he added, "The comment was hers, not mine," claiming Michelle Obama made a recent remark about humans descending from apes. The Daily News could find no such comment.
I love Rusty's "clearly in jest" justification, as if people were outraged because they thought he was being
serious, not that he was "joking" in a way that presupposes a racist sense of "humor".
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Last week a customer was speaking with one of my sales consultants, complaining about Obama. This customer is a wealthy businessman who works in the New Orleans area. He went on to tell the sales consultant (who happened to be white*) that he wishes he "could line all of them [black people] up and shoot 'em".
Makes you want to not laugh so hard until you throw up.
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* Most of the consultants where I work happen to be black
Labels: "Race"
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9 Comments:
* Most of the consultants where I work happen to be black
Happens to be why he said it to one of the white folks there, figuring the white folk would agree, working around all "them" like that. Another reason for gun control.
I was out at a local bar and the horrible owner who is almost never there was going off about how Obama was responsible was to blame for pirates and the swine flu. Racism is pretty simple to understand. If you are uncomfortable with Group X and Problem Y also makes you unsettled the simplest course of action is to blame Group X for Problem Y and be done with it. Doing a thimble full of work to understand X or Y is too much if you are a racist. Nothing says 'person of low character' to me more than racism and it takes some character to actually do the work to understand the world around you.
This fucknut doesn't understand evolutionary biology or the electoral college so he just cracks jokes about the black folks in the White House. Good luck with that in national politics, GOP!
Everyone is a little bit racist. Ethnic jokes may be uncouth but you laugh because they are based in truth.
This joke is base and crude but it is the second comment that disturbs me far more. I have heard much more crude belittling and demeaning things being thrown at the GOP by so called "enlightened" pseudo-intellectual left of center liberals than the kind of low humor being complained about here.
Rascism isnt exclusively white.
I would much rather see a move from the actions and ideas of comment 2 to comment 1. I think unlike the writer that we have come along way and that we will continue to move along. Social revolution does not does not happen overnight. All anyone can do in this kind of revolution is to change themselves and hopefully those close to them.
The other night, Menckles and I were sitting in an Uptown neighborhood bar where we met a young off duty NOPD officer. At one point he had this to say. I'm not paraphrasing much. I made an effort to remember it as accurately as possible given the amount of beer I'd had.
"I was in school for a while. I wanted to be a history major because I like all that stuff. I mean, I can pretty much look at people and tell you what they are, you know? You know I'm all Irish. And I can tell your wife is like Irish and.. uh.. (Menckles chimes in that she is also German)... yeah German, you know you got the blond hair and blue eyes and all. And you... I'm actually kinda surprised she's married to you cause you look kinda like... Spanish Jew or something."
I agree with everyone's outrage over these offensive comments. But I must respectfully disagree with JoeJoe's desricption of the bar owner's statement as racist. As stupid as the comment was, standing alone, it's not necessarily racist. Blaming someone for something over which they have no control is not racist. How many times was George W. Bush blamed for Katrina... not the govt's response (which was his fault) mind you, but the actual storm? Gore still does it on his traveling road show, claiming global warming (now cooling, right?) causes more, stronger hurricanes, Bush caused global warming, ergo Bush caused Katrina. Is Gore a racist? I know his daddy hated minorities, but not Al, Jr. Bush was also blamed for causing or contributing to: rise of Autism, steroid use in baseball, 9/11, teen pregnancy, mad cow disease.... I could go on here. Finding causal connections where there are none isn't just the mistake of racists. Any fool blinded by ideology and deaf to facts can fall prey to the same mistake. --Medium Jim
(is annon. a parody? Hilarious, if so)
Medium Jim - The bar owner didn't blame Obama exclusively for the swine flu. He had plenty of blame to go around for the "dirty fucking Mexicans". It wasn't exclusively racism in his blathering, there was also hatred of liberals, but there was still plenty o' racism in his comments.
And even old drunk bigots know it's not exactly acceptable to lay out the heavy racism towards President Obama in random public situation in Chicago, even if you own the bar.
joe,
It also doesn't necessarily have to be any of that. For example, my own totally not racist and violently liberal father vituperatively insists that both Mexico and Obama are to blame for swine flu.
The argument goes that Mexico's teeming poverty, poor sanitation, and general inability to treat its citizens like humans generates an optimal breeding ground for disease. And then Obama's tendency toward political correctness and his unwavering support for American exploiters of cheap Mexican labor make him complicit in Mexico's crimes against its own people AND but also find him endangering the health of Americans by not "sealing the border" against the flow of disease-carrying cheap labor units.
I argue with him about this because 1) I don't think either of us knows enough about epidemiology to conclude that the flu originated in Mexico or that "sealing the border" would do anything to prevent its spread. 2) I don't think swine flu is a big deal in the first place or at least not a big enough deal to elicit the kind of cable news freak-out we have been witness to.
Dad concludes that I am a "lame thinker" which may be true but I see as beside the point.
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