Sometimes it's not easy to convey thoughts in this manner-- there are occasions I feel that the filter that divides mind and page is murky and clogged-- and after re-reading my last post, two aspects of it jumped out at me in their need for clarity. One, I used the word racist quite a bit, mostly in reference to the joke, but all the same, I cringe seeing it bandied about so much. It somehow seems like a careless action to me, though I'm not precisely sure why. Probably because it's such a powerful word--in our culture, especially-- and it should be used with caution. I've seen too many instances where someone is unjustly labeled a racist and it doesn't sit well with me. So, if it seemed that by labeling what others regard as a harmless, silly joke, racist, I was being extreme in my assessment, I concur, though only partly. I think the joke, by it's very nature, can be classified as racist, but because the joke is weak, even by a bigot's standards, and lacks bite, perhaps I could have used a word that matched its strength. But I didn't because, frankly, I couldn't summon one that fit as well. I'll stick by the decision for now and won't edit the word out.
The other aspect of the post that jumped out at me was the tone. If I came off as being excessively grim, that wasn't my intention. And it wasn't my intention in the emails surrounding the joke. Although I didn't find much humor in it, except for the fact that it was so absurd, and didn't like certain people's reactions to it, I never lost sleep over it . It's not like I've never heard or told an off-color (no pun intended) joke before, but it's usually between close friends and the laughter that results is at the expense of the ignorance and stupidity of the joke itself. But if someone unfamiliar with us witnessed the telling and its aftermath, it would appear as if we were laughing at the subject of the joke. And I think Kronos' major mis-step was in sharing the joke with a large group of people.
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I keep hearing that plaintive moaning coming from my landlord's apartment every night and my curiosity over it's source is deepening by the day. My landlord is an old woman who, from what I'm told, is sickly. It pains me to think the moaning I hear is the result of her ailments. I don't think that's what it is, though, because the sound is always at the same pitch and meter. And that's what makes me wonder if what I'm hearing is her electric can opener or the squeaky hinges of her bathroom door. It's a mystery. Are the Hardy Boy's still alive? Because if they are, I have a case for them.
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Just because I know you're keeping a log of my activities, I'll give you a little taste of what I've been doing today.
- I woke up around nine and made an onion bagel. I spread butter on the bagel and added some garlic powder, the most crucial ingredient. To accompany that, I had some coffee with vanilla-chai cream and a glass of orange juice diluted with purified water.
-I checked my emails while I ate. Nothing worth mentioning.
- I got a sinking feeling in my stomach when I read an article about the impending Iran crisis. Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?
-I played a game of Sony basketball and ruined the other team. Life is good.
- I threw out the trash because apparently I'm the only one who lives here who has the strength to carry it out the door. I say this because often when someone empties the trash in the kitchen and replaces the bag, they leave the outgoing bag on the kitchen floor, ostensibly for me to throw out. It seems I was erroneous in the belief that throwing out the trash was a one person operation.
- I did some laundry this morning. My basement, where the washer and dryer are, is creepy, and sometimes I wonder if there is a demon lying in wait in one of the dark, cobwebby corners. They exist, you know. Demons, I mean. Everyone knows cobwebby corners exist.
- My obsessively driveway- bound neighbor, Steve, is outside my window once again, doing something or other to his car. If I had to guess, I would say he spends more than half his day, hanging out in his driveway. Maybe he has a demon in his basement and is afraid to go anywhere near it. If this is the case, then I encourage his outdoor activities and sympathize with his plight.
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2 comments:
I can only offer an honest, from the gut response.
The fact is, after staring at the joke for a minute and having to read it out loud to actually get it, I burst out loud laughing. That was the first time. Then I read your post.
Now, I am not so sure. Of course, with any joke, once you break it down, it loses its flavor. On top of that, the joke is cruel, as much humor is, and certainly cruelty isn't a virtue. It is particularly cruel because it takes aim not only at blacks, but at poor, uneducated blacks, or at least those who likely come from fairly rotten school systems. So much humor, in most cultures and not just here, is a way of "kicking a downed opponent" as it were. We laugh at the poor, the sick, the weak, the stupid, the vain, and the inept. This is in the nature of humor -- we can't simply laugh at strong, brave, white men brought low by arrogance or blindness all the time, and even then, it is only when they are revealed as weak when we might mock them. And since we can't make fun of people for any reasonable length of time for being smart or strong or powerful, then we're screwed in the joking around department.
On the other hand, the deliberate sheltering of certain parts of the population from mockery comes across as liberal paternalism. It brings about an inevitable false front: we can follow our all too human feelings towards all but groups x, y, and z. We can mock whites and the English, but not Catholics or blacks. We are left with the infamous case of Apu on the Simpsons -- the one minority who is safe to be made fun of as such in the mainstream. The result feels barren and the silence seems to mask antagonism, confusion, or intimidation rather than representing an only too rare instance of abiding compassion.
Beware of people who go around proclaiming their own compassion, by the way. Ya dig?
There is old, almost classic satire in the joke as well: it takes aim at pretense and the abuse of language. It may be unjustified or not, and we see most vices magnified in the poor and the marginal: drunkeness, bigotry, provincialism. It is not that the rich don't fall prey to normal human vices, but they tend to be less glaring, less obvious, and, of course, we are inundated with mockery of the rich. Of course, there are far fewer rich people and thus we have less contact with them. Those in the middle? Not so funny. Just middling.
However, all this points to the nature of being poor. It fucking sucks. Here, now and forever.
At my most optimistic, I think forward to a time when people will find jokes like that in history books and be startled. The Irish used to be portrayed as ignorant, poor, and brutish in cartoons at a time when many of them arriving in this country were, in fact, ignorant, poor, and brutish. The mistake was to see this in the light of genetic determinism and not, as we now would, as the result of social and historical forces.
I can't deny either my own cruelty or my own aversion to it and I can offer no insights other than my own reactions and I have tried to make them as transparent as possible.
Thank you for your analysis; it was very well put. I agree with virtually everything you wrote and that's why this issue has me thorny.
I tend to take a centrist view with a lot of things in life and sometimes I wish I could be gung ho one way or another, because this way makes me think too much.
I despise bigotry, no matter its source, but we've become far too PC for our own good. Mel Gibson makes a drunken comment about the Jews, and he has to apologize on his knees to every Jew on the planet. And on top of that he's expected to receive counseling and donate half his wages to the Jewish Organization of his choice. The fucker was drunk! Can't we let him slide just a teensie bit? No. Everybody has to apologize for everything. That's the mantra for the 21st century.
I've noticed that the roles of Blacks and Whites have shifted, not totally, but noticably, on tv and in the movies. Nowadays, it's often the white guy who is inept and who looks to the cooler, hipper Black guy for advice.
I forever find myself playing devil's advocate and though it can frustrating, I wouldn't have it any other way. What bothered me about the joke was people's reactions to it. Although it wasn't something I would have sent out in a mass email, it didn't offend me that a friend did. What put me off was the fact that he, and others who supported him, couldn't detect even a hint of racism in the joke. And what put me off even more was the efforts by some to censor anyone who didn't endorse the joke fully.
So you had people who didn't want their joke to be censored, attempting to censor the censors. Or something like that (that made me dizzy).
Anyway, I'm not sure I've made anything clearer or offered any new insights, but I again thank you for you reply. As for me, I love Archie Bunker as much as Dave Chappelle. And I like Tibetan food as well as American regional. I love everybody and everything. Maybe not, but it's sweet to think so.
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