The right-wing British looney-news, The London Daily Mail, has done it again.
It's another click-bait article of finger-pointing and nose-picking. Usually Piers Morgan is the one to cry wolf, but since he's been roundly shouted down for his latest preposterous yapping, he wasn't available to tiptoe through American history and get in a tizzy over something across the pond.
You notice the #metoo movement has collapsed? The attention span for ANYTHING is pretty short. Today's hysteria is over BLACKFACE.
Carrying on about a legitimately disturbing example of BLACKFACE is one thing. Discovering the Governor of Virginia wearing obviously racist BLACKFACE in a college yearbook in the 1980's is disturbing. The 1980's? Minstrel shit in the 1980's?
But to try and feather the "tar" of Billy Crystal imitating Sammy Davis Jr. is something else. There was nothing racist about that, anymore than there was anything racist about Sammy Davis Jr. doing impressions of Cary Grant and Frankie Laine on stage. What Billy was doing was a tribute, and he did it while Sammy was alive and very capable of speaking out if he was offended.
BLACKFACE is generally considered to be a minstrel-level deliberate insult. There's no other intent than to demean, degrade, and get a lot of cheers from bigots.
Fallon? What next, the #metoo ladies are going to go after him for dressing in drag as a blonde idiot Valley Girl? Isn't he DEMEANING WOMEN? Isn't it cruel and vicious for a MAN to mimic the mannerisms of a high school twit who is female? Why didn't he mimic a male high school twit instead? He obviously HATES WOMEN and his goal is to see blonde idiot Valley Girls beaten up in school. Right?
When did the PC movement go absolutely deaf and blind? Er, hearing impaired and visually limited?
Ted Danson's BLACKFACE incident, at an event honoring Whoopi Goldberg, didn't offend Whoopi Goldberg. While Ted's level of taste and humor could be questioned, his intent was to confront those objecting to him, a white man, having a relationship with a black woman.
Jimmy Kimmel (the Daily Fail doesn't know how to spell his name) is just one of many who openly worship black athletes. I have no idea what the particular photo was referencing, but it would be ludicrous to suggest the man did it with the intent to please bigots.
The Daily Fail's slant seems to be that Kimmel, Fallon, and just about anyone else, had better shut up and not complain about actual BLACKFACE, because they're guilty, guilty, guilty.
Meanwhile, there are legitimate concerns about REDFACE too (the Washington Redskins) and Asians aren't too thrilled with some of the YELLOWFACE comedy of Peter Sellers ("Murder By Death" a good example) and Indians and Pakistanis aren't thrilled with the BROWNFACE humor of Sellers in "The Party." It comes down to intent, and whether that intent is to promote hatred and persecution, or whether there's an element of healthy kidding, or even celebration (as with Warner Oland and Sidney Toler versions of Charlie Chan).
There's also a good question over whether any ethnic humor is all that funny. The London Daily Fail, if they looked, could find many examples of people making fun of the British. Mike Myers' and his grotesque teeth in the Austin Powers movies, for one example.
There are also plenty of other problems in the world besides feigning great concern over one particular minority over all others. The London Daily Fail might look at what the Simon Weisenthal Center sent its members the other day.
It was a two page letter outlining the latest examples of anti-Semitism around the world. Not just in America. And what country was second (behind France) in being reported on?
"In the UK anti-Semitic attacks are at record levels according to a report by Community Security Trust released this year, with 2017 witnessing a 34% rise in violent assaults against Jewish people. Meanwhile the country's Labour Party is rife with anti-Semitism..."
We're supposed to view BLACKFACE as particularly heinous, but not REDFACE. We're supposed to get upset about some Judy Garland movie from 70 years ago, but not the owner of the Washington Redskins refusing to change the team's name. We're supposed to also ignore how racism is played for fun. For example, the baiting of Mexicans against Puerto Ricans, and vice versa, in major boxing matches. It's called a "rivalry," but it's gotten ugly many many times.
The Weinsenthal Center noted: "Seventy-five years after the Holocaust, hundreds of thousands of Europe's Jews are standing at the edge of a dangerous precipice."
The Weinsenthal Center also took a look at obscure little Norway, which supposedly has a wonderfully run government, all kinds of benefits for its citizens, and a load of peace and harmony: "In Norway a new report found that one-third of Jewish high school students in Oslo are harssed verbally or physically at least twice a month."
If only all that was going on were a few idiots wearing "Groucho glasses" with a big nose, and going "OY OY OY." Not so.
Yet the London Daily Fail didn't pick up on the press release from the Weisenthal Center. Nor did they acknowledge that slavery in America was abolished well over seventy-five years ago, and was only allowed in part of the country, and even then, it was so intolerable, millions of white people died in battle over it.
BLACKFACE in the 80's, in such crude photos as appeared in the Governor of Virginia's yearbook, IS a shock. It's a damn shock. But pointing at Billy Crystal imitating Sammy Davis Jr. is a damn schlock.
What's important IS calling attention to matters that are serious, and NOT trivializing them with inane witch hunts. We saw this when legitimate problems, such as Harvey Weinstein's abuses as a producer, spilled into Senator Al Franken being hounded from the senate by Senator Kristin Gillibrand, over a few fanny pats and a gag photo.
Anyone point out WHITEFACE? Such as the Wayan Brothers doing a movie and impersonating white women? Want to go back and point a finger at Eddie Murphy impersonating white people, and an old Jew, in "Coming to America?" In that one, people laughed WITH Eddie Murphy. Nobody was too concerned about it. Nobody was saying, "Hey, Eddie Murphy be a racist, just like Malcolm X who said all those vicious things about Jews..." No. It was a tour-de-FARCE that Eddie could do an impersonating, and nothing more.
Hey, London Daily Fail. NOTHING MORE, OK? Save your bandwidth and your fingerpointing for real issues.
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