We Have A Winner!
In the “Political Criticism of Obama is Inherently Racist” competition! It took a while, which is encouraging. With the exception of the reaction to the NY Post’s drunken-bloated-dead-chimp-as-economic-stimulus cartoon … political mockery that was actually aimed at the drunken, bloated Congressional leadership that authored the porkulus … it almost seemed like we had have entered a blissfully post-racial period where Obama could be slammed on his merits. A welcome development after all the racism accusations of the 2008 campaign.
Now Washington Post culture critic Philip Kennicott fronts up with a windy piece that leaps through hoops to explain how satirically portraying Obama as a white psychopathic socialist is racist. Because Heath Ledger’s Joker is “urban.”
This painstakingly overwrought piece is either a stab at highly subtle satire itself (a commentary tactic the Post formally abandoned the other day when it shut down “Mouthpiece Theatre” in the wake of the “Mad Bitch” flap) or it is the basest kind of faux-intellectual race-baiting. It’s every bit as ridiuclous as the two arguments it borrows heavily from: that pre-election nonsense by the AP that maintained the “palling around with terrorists” line was racist, as opposed to anti-terrorist, and the Kansas City Star op-ed that claimed calling him a “socialist” was also racist.
(Urban? He’d have a better argument if he dispensed with the elaborate, convoluted blah blah blah and just went with the fact that “The Dark Knight” is totally “noir.” Some culture critic. You know, maybe I should write to the Post, demand that they fire this dolt and hire me. Want your culture criticized? Bring it here. I’ll have it in smoking ruins before breakfast. By the way, separate matter, I’d like it noted that Kennicott’s use of the word “darker” to mean “more sinister” is racist.)
Don’t despair, if you count yourself among those of us who yearn for a post-racial America. Yes, it’s true that the president of the United States, a biracial man who is currently the highest ranking person in the world, is not above leaping to conclusions based on racial prejudice, as we saw in the Gates affair. Setting that aside, the hopeful sign for America’s advancement in race relations is that there seem to be remarkably few morons willing to engage in the illogical gymnastics necessary to arrive at the kind of racist determinations cited above, and they don’t seem to get much traction. During this first half year of Obama adminstration, people who do not agree with Obama have been largely free to criticize and mock him without being branded racists. And that is how, in America, it should be.
Here’s Kennicott’s blog, by the way, where he says he tries not to deal with politics. Good idea. Might want to stick with ”movies, opera, music, architecture and cartoon ducks” in future. If that’s what he wants to call culture criticism … sounds more like tinkering around the edges if you ask me.
Welcome, Volokh conspiracists, Insta thru-clickers, etal. Always good to see you. Want some culture? It’s Friday. How about a Thoughtful, Meditative, Nazi-Killing Viking-Headbanging Movie Night. You know, they don’t make Cold War flicks the way they used to, but maybe they’ll start again.
Topics: media, moronocy, racism
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 1:10 pm Comments (1) on Thursday, August 6, 2009
One Response to “We Have A Winner!”
Leave a Reply
Trackback URLYou must be logged in to post a comment.
August 6th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
[...] an argument, it seems to me. Thanks to Jules Crittenden for the [...]