Not Racist, Just Not Very Funny

Some folks are up in arms about a picture of the Whitehouse with watermelons growing in the yard and the caption “No Easter egg hunt this year”.

Being familiar with the mechanics of humor, I know you need two things for something to be funny: truth and exaggeration. But as Frank once pointed out, if you don’t have truth, a popularly accepted stereotype – true or not – will generally work just as well.

Ok, so there’s a stereotype that black people like watermelon, and since the President is black, he’d plant watermelons on the White House lawn. Ha ha ha.

Oddly enough, the California mayor who sent this to a black business woman said that he was unaware of this stereotype, so I’m not sure why he thought this was even a tiny bit funny.

The big problem, though, is that the stereotype this mocks isn’t a character flaw. Lots of people like watermelon. *I* like watermelon. Plus the fact that blackness is such a superficial aspect of Obama. It’s like mocking his ridiculous, sticky-out chimp-ears. It’s too easy of a target. It’s not even remotely clever.

However, the picture itself has a delightful visual incongruity about it, watermelons have other characteristics besides being stereotypically liked by blacks, and Obama has characteristics other than skin color. So let’s try a different caption:

Obama’s Victory Garden.

Still got the racial stereotype, but at least it drags in a political angle by referencing the obsessive comparisons of Obama to FDR.

Green on the outside, Red on the inside.

Obama is a “watermelon” – using his environmentalism to cover his communism. No racial stereotypes involved at all. Purely political.

Thanks to America’s failed public school system, the White House was forced to lower the standards for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Here it’s just carping on public policy, and those are just giant eggs lined up in rows. Only Al Sharpton would imply racism now!

So don’t be mad at Grose for being a racist, be mad at him for forwarding a sad, weak-ass joke that he didn’t even get.

Enough with the lecture, let’s just have fun with it.


* OBAMA’S GROWING POD PEOPLE!

* From the book “101 Jokes That Colorblind People Won’t Get”

* Obama’s response to Barney Frank’s complaint that his administration “didn’t have enough fruits”.

* White House receives Alternative Energy grant for “harnessing the power of the sun”.

* “Alien: Resurrection” Director’s Cut DVD includes this shocking alternate ending.

* Because fried chicken doesn’t have seeds. [Yeah, I know, but it’s still better than the original]

* Meanwhile, behind the White House, the Incredible Hulk’s litter box training showed great promise.

* Yet another protest demanding increased taxes and regulation to stop global warming.

* Obama vows to never again buy ‘marijuana’ seeds off the internet.

* The real reason Obama won’t sign a bill to stop illegal immigration.


Caption along in the comments if you’d like.

Zo on the Fairness Doctrine

Zo, Steven Crowder, and Mary Katharine Ham (as she done any more videos lately) should just get their own show. Ooh! And I could write sketch comedy for it. That would be awesome!

Actual Assault Weapons

There’s talk about bring back the so called assault weapons ban (though not all Democrats in Congress are for that since they like being reelected). It would be pretty cool that if the Democrats lost out on passing it, then they’d have to give us real assault weapons — like fully automatic rifles. That would be awesome. I want a gun so cool that it will give bad guys heart attacks just looking at it.

Anyway, if the “assault weapon” ban comes back to Congress, the Republicans first job should be informing the public about what’s it exactly about and labeling anyone who tries to make people think it’s about machine guns a lying douche bag. What the Republicans should do is propose changing the bill’s name to something more accurate like “Dickless Wonders Scared of Loud Noises Bill”. Also, publicly quiz Democrats (and their friends in the media) about firearms to show they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. Then beat the crap out of them. And it’s not like they can stop us because we have guns.

You Keep Using That Word

In the comments to this post featuring a video of Katie Couric calling the Vice President of the United States “the white guy”, Hapkido said “Couric’s comment was racist, plain & simple. I wouldn’t accuse her of deliberatley being racist, however.”

“I’d like you better if you were also a hermaphrodite.”

Which gave me pause.

How can a comment be racist if the speaker isn’t?

Maybe racist is the wrong word. Time to check the dictionary… which says it means “racially discriminatory”.

That’s a head-scratcher. Discrimination implies some sort of adverse action. Katie didn’t act, she just talked. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible for ANY words (or cartoons) to be racist by themselves, apart from other evidence of speaker intent to do harm.

It’s time to resurrect two long-neglected words to help us understand this situation:

Prejudice and bias.

The first is an irrational opinion against something, the second is an irrational opinion in favor.

In this case, I don’t think Katie was prejudiced. She sounded CHEERFUL about the presence of “the white guy”. She wasn’t like “curse Joe Biden for destroying the multiculturalism of this moment with his foul caucasity!”

No, she was HAPPY.

So I conclude that she is not racist, but merely has a bias toward seeing groups of politicians with varying skin colors and sex organs.

Now this implies that she would conversely have a prejudice against seeing groups of similarly colored & sexed politicians. Does this mean that if she ever saw a meeting of the Congressional Black Caucus, she would end both her life and career in a Columbine-like explosion of bullets and wrath?

Logic says “yes”.

But that’s not a reason to confuse prejudice with racism.

In the Mail

I’ve received friend of IMAO Mike Z. Williamson’s new novel Contact with Chaos in the mail. It comes out in April but I get a copy now because I’m special. It looks to be a bit different than Mike’s other novels (what do you call that genre? Military science fiction?). I’ve only gotten a chance to read the prologue so far and it seems that it’s about first contact with sentient alien life. Since a corporation is what discovers the aliens, their first thought is that they have a new group of customers. I’m sure the story will end up being a cautionary tale about capitalism, but, given today’s economy, I think we’ve already learned our lesson about capitalism (we won’t be trying that again!). So maybe Mike has finally given up on his libertarianism; who needs freedom now that we have Obama?

Also, SarahK has gotten her Kindle 2. The screen is pretty unique; it’s indistinguishable from there just being an image printed on the front of it. And the Kindle is quite thin (thinner than a pencil) but nice and durable feeling. My only complaint is the screen contrast (it’s kinda like black against gray), but I’ve found it very readable. The text to voice is also quite good, being a mixture of robotic and surprisingly human (it pronounce most words with a very normal sounding inflection). It’s actually quite listenable. The thing that amazes me most is the 3G internet access with no monthly fee. I wonder how much they adds to the price (and thus how much cheaper a Kindle would be without wireless access; if Amazon really wants to dominate with their new format, you’d think they’d want to release a cheaper version). Anyway, IMAO is quite readable on it since WordPress makes the center column load first so you see almost nothing but text when it comes up on the Kindle. Still, I’m thinking of adding a mobile version of IMAO. How many people would use that if I added it?

Anyway, the Kindle is pretty neato. I don’t read much, but now I want one and can’t help but think of all the books I would read on it. What they need is a version that could do comic books, though.