Monday, October 27, 2008

The Rickles Loophole

When Don Rickles was accused of being racist he would make the point that he makes fun of everybody. I'm all for comedy being offensive. But still it's one thing to make fun of a white couple for looking boring and another to make fun of a black couple for looking like criminals.

And for many people, comparing a black man to a monkey crosses all sorts of lines. But what if you're comparing both a black man and a white man to monkeys? And a woman to a pitbull-monkey?

TheSock Obama is relying on a strange type of equality. Eah whatever.




The real hypocrisy on the page is the warning: Beware of cheap imitators. Then the product images still sport that classy timestamp. They're professionals.

6 comments:

Casey said...

Gross. In what inglorious pits are you wallowing to stumble upon the worst mankind has to offer each day?

fenhopper said...

The scariest thing is that this was an ad in my gmail window.

Casey said...

wow. That surprises me, though I suppose it shouldn't -- as if Google can be expected... to... have... any sense of decency or morality that transcends the dollar (?!).

Dr. Plough said...

For whatever reason, this event pops into my head:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Cosell#The_.22little_monkey.22_incident

Howard Cosell says "Look at that little monkey go". I guess it isn't all about intentions, right?

fenhopper said...

yeah i thought of that too. i also think back to the chick hearn incident. a player dunked the ball and hung onto the rim. hearn said something about giving him a banana.

he said he wasn't thinking about race but agreed that it didn't matter. he felt the need to apologize simply for having said something that hurt people.

Casey said...

One time after sinking a set-shot from about 17' in a high school game in Michigan, a radio announcer compared me to a tortoise:

"Hey, Pratt sinks one! -- remember the tortoise and the hare? Sometimes slow and steady wins even on the basketball court."

I was a little offended.