November 22nd, 2006
What is it with right-wingers and penguins?
Seriously - is there something in their drinking water, or what? Why did the nutjobs suddenly and simultaneously go whackadoo over penguins? Is this one of their dog-whistle codewords that only right-wingers get, like when Bush answered a question about abortion with a reference to Dred Scott in the first presidential debate? (”Yes, Brother BillyBob - it’s the penguins! You know . . . [nudge, wink] the penguins!” “Oh - right. Yeah, Brother Hezekiel! The penguins! Getting into our precious bodily fluids!”) Did somehow the word go out from James Dobson that they’re all going to boycott penguins this year? (”Well, that ‘War on Christmas’ thing last year made us all look like fools. Gotta change tactics. . . . I got it! . . . Boys, I see it before me . . . now, just hear me out . . . .”)
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Categories: Church & State, Culture, General, Holiday, Media, News & Current Events, Religion |
5 Comments
November 22nd, 2006
Wow.
Wow, wow, wow . . . . I’ve seen the YouTube videos of the comedy-club disaster and his Letterman-show “apology”. They’re both startling, in different ways. (If you haven’t seen them, go find them - it’s not hard.)
I’m interested in the responses to the incident, however. There’s been a lot of commentary on how inappropriate he was, and how lame his later apology was - both of which seem so obvious to me as not to qualify as any kind of contribution to understanding the situation. There’s also been a lot of derisive hooting at his “I’m not a racist - that’s what’s so crazy” remark on Letterman - which is certaintly deserved, but not, I think, for the simplistic reasons given in much of the commentary. While, at bottom, the incident and its aftermath tell us mostly something about Richards, they offer a useful opportunity to get a fuller sense of how racial animosity enters into cross-racial interactions, or more properly white reactions to other races. There’s a lot going on in both the Richards videos, and the commentary I’ve seen so far seems mostly to focus on simply labeling it (”racist”, “not racist”) or judging it (”justified”, “not justified”), which I think misses most of the real substance.
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Categories: Culture, General, News & Current Events |
31 Comments
