If you’re curious about the origin of this T-shirt, read this article from today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Thank you, Dre.)
If you’re curious about the origin of this T-shirt, read this article from today’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (Thank you, Dre.)
Why am I not surprised.
ReplyDeleteA few months ago cafepress.com was selling "Tap Dancing for Obama" t-shirts. The character was dressed like Uncle Sam and bojangling it up in black face. :rolleyes:
You wanna know the fucked-up thing? The accompanying poll question asked whether the t-shirt was racist or fine? It was virtually a dead-head 50.65% racist, 49.35% fine.
ReplyDeleteBut we're making progress though.
Sigh--is it really that hard to do the right thing? And just like the Tiger Woods/Fuzzy Zoeller moment, why is it the Black part of a person that's made fun of? Couldn't they have done an American Gothic spoof Barack and Michelle to make fun on Barack's Kansas roots?
ReplyDeleteJesus. Words fail me.
ReplyDeleteThis is fucked up but not surprising. What's weird is that comment where he mentions "noting physical similarities" between the two. It sounds like he just lifted the story from the caller on Bill O'Reilly's radio show. A bunch of unoriginal racists as usual.
ReplyDeleteThis is why liberal progressives aren't taken seriously. Last week, Obama's best friend was claiming that the America government, i.e., white supremacists, invented AIDS to kill blacks and we weren't supposed to think anything of it. And now, we're supposed to be up in arms about a picture that comports with liberal evolutionary theory?
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised the "Curious George" folk haven't sued the guy yet. No accounting for the stupidity of people, I guess.
ReplyDeleteSomeone down in Georgia told me this was on his local news affiliate:
ReplyDelete"The owner of the "Mulligan's Bar" in Marietta Georgia commissioned 50 t-shirts with an image of Barack Obama as "Curious George" to be sold at his bar to raise money for the MDA.
The MDA then released a statement to the owner saying they want nothing to do with his money and would appreciate it if the man never associated their charity with his views again."
thordaddy, I thought you had gone away to that great burning cross in the sky. Oh well, that 25% that support Bush really does exist.
ReplyDeletedeangelo,
ReplyDeleteWhy can't you just account for this cognitive dissonance within liberal progressives?
And since I don't believe that man (wouldn't that be black man?) was descended from ape, I don't find the shirt all that representative of those who believe as I do.
Don't even get me started. It just makes me sad.
ReplyDeleteKellybelle, I LOVE the idea of the American Gothic Barack and Michelle t-shirt. Print some and I'll buy one. He needs to play up his American roots. It seems that many people think he's not American. Again, don't get me started.
Thank you Kellybelle. Surely it has to be alright to make fun of him. That's what dissenters do right, make fun of someone they don't care for, but what these people don't understand is that making fun based on the very characteristic that has been used to oppress is a no go.
ReplyDeleteWould you consider this video: Hilary's Downfall going too far? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6Lstkiexhc
Can some body say West Virgina? Proof that hate is alive and well.
ReplyDeleteThis is the tip of the iceberg. Some of Obama's white (and black) supporters have been taken aback by the racism they've encountered.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/12/AR2008051203014.html?referrer=emailarticle
There's also stories about some WV-ians saying they flat-out won't vote for a black presidential candidate and others suddenly being unable to articulate why they won't vote for Obama other than to add "I'm not racist". It'll only get worse once the GOP machine starts up.
I hope the Curious George publishers sue the pants off them. And besides, Obama has very thick eyebrows.
ReplyDeleteGwen Ifill commented the media is talking about "race" in this election chatter, but not addressing "racism" in their commentary or analysis.
How one respond depends on how one wants to spend their time. As George Lakoff says:
If you keep their language and their framing and just argue against it, you lose because you are reinforcing their fram.
As a descendent of the Confederates including Robert E. Lee told me over the weekend (and she's gone the opposite directipn of her ancestors), we reconcile the old stories with "the new story." Turning pages isn't easy, but it's gonna happen.
Per the previous mention:
ReplyDelete"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt did not nor would we ever authorize or approve this use of the Curious George character, which we find offensive and utterly out of keeping with the values Curious George represents," said Richard Blake, the company's spokesman. "We are monitoring the situation and weighing all of our options."
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1131ap_obama_shirt_protest.html
Yet, no one can explain to the rest of us why we should be so offended at the implied truth of liberal evolutionary theory?
ReplyDeleteAnd the fact that Jeremiah Wright was lauded by so many now crying racism, what are we to make of this selective hyper-sensitivity?
^ You dropped your bait in the wrong fishin' hole, Thordaddy. I thought you knew better.
ReplyDeleteand on the back of the t-shirt it says: banal humor for banal people.
ReplyDeleteIf you haven't already seen it, you should check out the video clip in which the seller of the tee-shirts was interviwed.
ReplyDelete...fock the seller of the tee shirts. Folk of that ilk will always be here and there's nothing that we can do about changing them. They can hate all they want because it's about navigating thru those assholes, all the way to the bank. Shite, let em all cut there noses off to spite their faces.
ReplyDelete(sigh) sad sad humanity sometimes
ReplyDeleteMr. Mills,
ReplyDeleteDon't you just cringe watching these white self-righteous liberals feigning outrage over such trivial transgressions of the liberal orthodoxy?
I mean, can you articulate why those of us not stuck in the 60's black radical mentality should be so outraged at this t-shirt?
Isn't your beef with evolutionary theory and the ideas it espouses?