Monkey Jokes and Funny Feelings
Stupid, vile, not funny. Also, his excuse is lame. If you’re going to be a racist throwback, at least be honest about it. More on funny feelings below. Monkey jokes first, via the Atlanta Journal Constitution:
Marietta bar owner Mike Norman says the T-shirts he’s peddling, featuring a look-a-like of cartoon chimp Curious George peeling a banana, with “Obama in ‘08″ underneath, are not meant to offend.
Norman acknowledged the imagery’s Jim Crow roots but said he sees nothing wrong with depicting a prominent African-American as a monkey,
“We’re not living in the (19)40’s,” he said. “Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears — he looks just like Curious George.”
About a dozen protestors rallied against the shirts Tuesday afternoon, condemning them as racist and asking Norman, longtime proprietor of Mulligan’s Bar and Grill on Roswell Street, to stop selling them.
Marietta native Pam Lindley, 47, joined the protest after reading about the controversy online.
“I don’t want people to think this is what Marietta is all about,” she added, motioning towards the tavern. “This is what some people think the South is still like. Marietta’s come a long way but I guess it’s still got a little ways to go.”
At the same time, anyone who’s ever called George Bush a chimp has no business squawking. So I guess I’d better shut up. And I guess by the same token, if this guy has peddled Chimpy Bush t-shirts, then he’s in the clear. (That’s sarcasm, for any obtuse dolts following links in).
Another version of the story included this graph:
Just down the street from Marietta’s famous Big Chicken, Mulligan’s has carved a provocative niche in an increasingly multicultural area, thanks to its owner’s ultra-conservative political views. If you live in Marietta, it’s impossible not to know what’s on Norman’s mind, as he posts his views on signs in front of Mulligan’s. Among his recent musings: “I wish Hillary had married OJ,” “No habla espanol — and never will” and the standard “I.N.S. Agents eat free.”
The “married OJ” remark is a little tasteless, but what’s wrong with expecting people to speak English in the United States, or supporting immigration enforcement officers?
Anyway, idiots like the one referenced above just serve to legitimize all the journalistic race-baiting. Here’s the latest. Washington Post:
Danielle Ross was alone in an empty room at the Obama campaign headquarters in Kokomo, Ind., a cellphone in one hand, a voter call list in the other. She was stretched out on the carpeted floor wearing laceless sky-blue Converses, stories from the trail on her mind. It was the day before Indiana’s primary, and she had just been chased by dogs while canvassing in a Kokomo suburb. But that was not the worst thing to occur since she postponed her sophomore year at Middle Tennessee State University, in part to hopscotch America stumping for Barack Obama.
Mailmen get chased by dogs, too. Getting to the point …
Here’s the worst: In Muncie, a factory town in the east-central part of Indiana, Ross and her cohorts were soliciting support for Obama at malls, on street corners and in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and they ran into “a horrible response,” as Ross put it, a level of anti-black sentiment that none of them had anticipated.
“The first person I encountered was like, ‘I’ll never vote for a black person,’ ” recalled Ross, who is white and just turned 20. “People just weren’t receptive.”
For all the hope and excitement Obama’s candidacy is generating, some of his field workers, phone-bank volunteers and campaign surrogates are encountering a raw racism and hostility that have gone largely unnoticed — and unreported — this election season. Doors have been slammed in their faces. They’ve been called racially derogatory names (including the white volunteers). And they’ve endured malicious rants and ugly stereotyping from people who can’t fathom that the senator from Illinois could become the first African American president.
I’m guessing a lot of political door-knockers, boiler-room telemarketers, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Fuller Brush salesmen get door slamming and malicious rants, too. The “hang that darky from a tree” and “half-breed” remarks referenced lower in the story are pretty vile, and I’m a little surprised they didn’t play those higher. Obviously racism exists in America. Much as it does in Britain, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, etc. It’s legitimate to point it out. The problem in all the reporting on race in this race has been the reliance on a lot of innuendo, assumptions, exaggeration and the lack of context.
This article doesn’t make the last error, as it goes on to note that Obama is drawing huge crowds, including massive numbers of white voters, leading in the popular vote and leading in the delegate count. I don’t know about you, but I can’t think of any nation off the top of my head that has experienced a phenomenon like it, a minority candidate assuming frontrunner status, wildly popular despite serious questions about his qualifications for office. It’s something our nation could be proud of, if the shortcomings of the candidate himself didn’t render the situation embarrassing. But here’s the Obama campaign:
Obama campaign officials say such incidents are isolated, that the experience of most volunteers and staffers has been overwhelmingly positive.
The campaign released this statement in response to questions about encounters with racism: “After campaigning for 15 months in nearly all 50 states, Barack Obama and our entire campaign have been nothing but impressed and encouraged by the core decency, kindness, and generosity of Americans from all walks of life. The last year has only reinforced Senator Obama’s view that this country is not as divided as our politics suggest.”
Despite that effort at context, the Post article makes some errors that plant it firmly in the same genre as other articles that are broadly ascribing racism by highlighting the most negative and ignorant quotes they can elicit, and making unsupported blanket assertions off them. Given the candidate’s association with racism, his own bigotry, his lack of experience, his lousy policy proposals and apparent willingeness to deal directly with terrorism-supporting nations, it almost seems racist to suggest, based on isolated anecdotes, that widespread racism is the reason why large numbers of voters don’t care to vote for him. This article gets around to some of those other concerns. But apparently if you harbor any of them, you’re not only a racist, but a vandal. The highlighted incident of vandalism is called “bigotry” though it doesn’t actually mention any expression of racism by the vandals, nor does it note that the Obama campaign is hardly unique in American politics for being targeted with vandalism. Ironically, the vandalism actually appears to have been an angry, unlawful reaction to Obama’s own expression of bigotry and his association with a racist:
The bigotry has gone beyond words. In Vincennes, the Obama campaign office was vandalized at 2 a.m. on the eve of the primary, according to police. A large plate-glass window was smashed, an American flag stolen. Other windows were spray-painted with references to Obama’s controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and other political messages: “Hamas votes BHO” and “We don’t cling to guns or religion. Goddamn Wright.”
The Post also brings up some remarks about the Muslim thing, but that’s hardly racist. Legitimate questions have been raised about whether Obama has been entirely truthful about his heritage, his past and his identity. They’ve largely been answered. But we are a nation under attack by extremist Islam, recent incidents having included attacks in Nairobi and Mombasa in Kenya, Obama’s ancestral homeland. Expecting people not to cock an eye at that association would be like expecting Americans in World War II to ignore a candidate’s close, current familial association with Japan or Germany, especially if his pastor was chummy with Nazis and had voiced hate for America. I can’t say I blame them.
Personally, I believe that Obama is a Christian, though I don’t particularly give damn about that. I believe Obama is a loyal American, after his own fashion. I don’t think Obama is some kind of Meccan candidate because half his family are Muslims. I think it has more to do with what he learned in America from Wright, Ayers, any number of other parlor liberals and chic radicals he’s been hanging out with. By “it,” I mean his desire to abandon our vital national security interests and our allies in the Middle East to terrorists. I guess I also don’t understand why we have to use Hillary Clinton’s middle name, but we’re not allowed to use Obama’s. Hussein. Hussein, Hussein, Hussein. There, I said it. I’ve known a few Husseins. Every last one of them was a Muslim. Except Saddam Hussein, who was a sociopath.
Sorry divergence. Back to the Post article. It gets confusing at this point:
Pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure racial attitudes, as some voters are unwilling to acknowledge the role that race plays in their thinking. But some are not. Susan Dzimian, a Clinton supporter who owns residential properties, said outside a polling location in Kokomo that race was a factor in how she viewed Obama. “I think if it was somebody other than him, I’d accept it,” she said of a black candidate. “If Colin Powell had run, I would be willing to accept him.”
Actually, what I’m getting from the quote is that race isn’t a factor. She’s willing to vote for a black man if the black man is also qualified for the job.
The previous evening, Dondra Ewing was driving the neighborhoods of Kokomo, looking to turn around voters like Dzimian. Ewing, 47, is a chain-smoking middle school guidance counselor, a black single mother of two and one of the most fiercely vigilant Obama volunteers in Kokomo, which was once a Ku Klux Klan stronghold. On July 4, 1923, Kokomo hosted the largest Klan gathering in history — an estimated 200,000 followers flocked to a local park. But these are not the 1920s, and Ewing believes she can persuade anybody to back Obama. Her mother, after all, was the first African American elected at-large to the school board in a community that is 10 percent black.
OK, 87 years ago they were raving racists. Much like other large sections of this country. The article notes that apparently they aren’t any more. So what’s it going to be, are they racists or not?
Aaron Roe, 23, was mowing lawns at a local cemetery recently, lamenting his $8-an-hour job with no benefits. He had earned a community college degree as an industrial electrician, but learned there was no electrical work to be found for someone with his experience, which is to say none. Politics wasn’t on his mind; frustration was. If he were to vote, it would not be for Obama, he said. “I just got a funny feeling about him,” Roe said, a feeling he couldn’t specify, except to say race wasn’t a part of it. “Race ain’t nothing,” said Roe, who is white. “It’s how they’re going to help the country.”
Now funny feelings are racist. That’s too bad, because I’m pretty sure funny feelings are how a lot of Americans have always determined who they’re not going to vote for. Nowadays, we’re advanced enough that you can have funny feelings about a black man, a white woman, and an old white guy.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:55 pm on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
2 Responses to “Monkey Jokes and Funny Feelings”
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May 14th, 2008 at 9:51 am
Yeah, monkey jokes are a real problem in politics, aren’t they?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
The T-shirts are unfortunate, but as you say, the left has been comparing Bush to a chimpanzee for nearly eight years. Sauce for the goose and all that, except for the racial overtones.
There will always be people who vote according to race (and apparently, this year, more of them are black than white). But they’re not the majority of people. America has come a long way. We shouldn’t forget that when looking at how far we still have to go.
I’m not going to vote for Obama simply because of his policies (inasmuch as he’s explained what they are, that is). He’s a leftist, socialist, liberal, and I don’t trust his ability to know what to do in the crunch. End of story.