Intentional Racist

Can I just say that I think little Asian kids are the cutest li’l beezers in the world?

Seriously, can I say that?  It’s not racist, is it?

I ask because it sorta sounds like something that my late Aunt A would say, and boy howdy, was Aunt A a racist.

Aunt A hated black people. Hated them. A lot. She tossed the n-word around like it was a football – especially after she had a couple of gin and tonics in her – and she is the only human being I’ve ever heard use the word “darkie” unironically. Every year Aunt A would come to our house for Christmas Eve; we kids would take bets on how long it would be before she started ranting about how the n-words were ruining East Orange, NJ. Her record was nine minutes.

$375 or best offer on E-Bay. Wow.

The odd part of this was that Aunt A adored black kids. Or at least her quaint ol’ racist concept of them*. One of the ways that Aunt A displayed this love was by having the largest collection of “pickaninny” figurines north of the Mason-Dixon line. Pickaninny figurines portray little black kids with bones in their hair and big wide smiles, re-enacting scenes from “Little Black Sambo” and eatin’ watermelons and stuff. They’re really quite horrid. I understand that black people collect them now, which astonishes me. If I had Aunt A’s figures I’d hit them with a hammer**.

Now If I were a totally excellent blog writer I’d figure out some tidy way to tie this all into the Washington Redskins controversy while touching lightly on the Confederate flag foolishness. I don’t know if I can do this, but I will note for the record that my Aunt A would have had no problem with the name “Redskins,” any more than she’d have opposed the name “Darkies.” Personally, I’d walk a long way to avoid being on the same side of history as my aunt.

In her favor though, I do believe that Aunt A would have unapologetically opposed the flying of the Confederate flag anywhere for any purpose whatsoever. But that was because she hated southern people almost as much as she hated blacks, so I’m not sure that counts.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that Accidental Racist is a terrible, awful song that tries to explain away behavior that many fellow citizens find hateful and demeaning. Personally, I wouldn’t sport a Confederate flag any more than I’d wear a shirt saying, “127,000 Japanese-Americans were Interred in WWII and All I Got Was this Lousy Tee Shirt.”

Unless I was wearing it ironically, of course, but I’d leave that to George Takei. That dude has frickin’ earned it.

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* I’m not sure at what age black children became repellant to Aunt A, but it was probably at about the same time that they began to understand what she was saying.

**After checking their value on E-Bay. I’m not a fanatic.

Intelligent Americans, Please Refudiate!

I spent all day Saturday shoveling out the stalls of my wife’s three horses. This was extra challenging this week: it had rained quite a bit the past few days, which meant that the horses had spent more time in their stalls, and thus more poop had piled up (and I do mean “piled up”). Also my wife is recovering from bronchitis and I forced her pretty much at gunpoint to leave the entire task to me, a manly and heroic gesture which I came to deeply regret over the next seven smelly hours.

It's extremely important to limber up before saying something outrageously stupid (or you might pull a hammy!).

There’s nothing especially challenging about shifting horse excrement, and the task requires at most a small fraction of my amazing brain’s attention, letting me brood on diverse topics. On Saturday I mostly brooded on Sarah Palin. So what the hell is up with Sarah Palin? Is she a stupid, mean-spirited opportunistic dirtbag, or just plain stupid?

Like for instance, the other day Ms. Palin was railing against the planned Muslim mosque in downtown Manhattan. This in itself isn’t unusual: she and her Fox “News” buddies often bitch about the mosque. But this particular comment was aggressively ridiculous even for Palin: “There are 100 mosques in New York,” she snarled. “If the purpose of this mosque is, as we are led to believe, to create this tolerant environment, to ensure that something like 9/11 from repeating, why we have to ask didn’t any of these 100 mosques already accomplish this?”

Gosh. Interesting question. Now here’s one for you, Ms. Palin:

There are tens of thousands of Christian churches in the United States. If their purpose is, as we are led to believe, to promote understanding, and love for fellow men among their congregants, why we have to ask, are some Christians still such goddamned xenophobic bigots?

Now if this is just the stupid blathering of an ignorant, small-minded woman getting far more attention than she warrants, I can forgive her. Hell, I’ve probably made stupid statements myself. (I can’t think of any at the moment, but I’ll ask my wife.) However, if Palin is smarter than she looks and is simply using this controversy to promote her own agenda, then I kinda hope she drowns in a sea of fermenting horse wee.

And what can you make of this little nugget? As I’m sure you’re aware, radio personality and general whackadoo “Dr. Laura” Schlessinger went postal on her radio show and started yelling “Niblets! Niblets! Niblets!” at her caller, an African American woman asking for advice about racist statements made by her white husband’s friends. (Note: Laura didn’t actually say “niblets.”) When word of this got out, a number of Dr. Laura’s sponsors very wisely dropped her show like a bucket of hot spittle. Poor persecuted Dr. Laura then announced her retirement, saying that she wanted her “First Amendment rights back.” This  is an idiotic statement in itself − Schlessinger totally has the right to say anything she wants, just as others have the right to refuse to use her sponsors’ products. But that’s not the point here.

"Niblets! Niblets! Niblets! If the Green Giant can say, 'Niblets,' why can't white people?"

What did conservative leader Sarah Palin have to say about this? She tweeted to Dr. Laura: “Don’t retire, reload!”

So this is Palin’s response to a racially-charged situation in which a prominent white radio jock insults an African American listener: “reload”? Excellent work, Sarah. I’m sure that’ll do wonders for relations between blacks and whites in this country. Hell, I suppose we should be grateful she didn’t say, “Don’t linger, lynch her!”

So why exactly haven’t other conservative pundits “refudiated” her? Maybe because so many of them are too busy mouthing the same kind of crapola. Thanks, Fox “News” for giving them such a prominent platform!

Anyway, this nonsense kept my brain totally occupied, and Saturday just flew by. I’m proud to say that while Palin and her cohorts are still full of shit, our barn isn’t. At least she’s good for that much.