HOW ABOUT A LITTLE CONTROVERSY WITH THAT COFFEE, ED?
What does everyone make of Chris Muir’s Day by Day cartoon this morning?
Hillary in black face?
Considering how we conservatives trashed Jane (”you ignorant slut”) Hamsher for photoshopping Lieberman in black face, shouldn’t we police our own and give Mr. Muir a few well chosen jabs for his insensitivity?
As I point out in my blog post, there is more than political correctness at stake here. The Minstrel Show - which is where black face comes from - did more than any other American institution to spread the black stereotypes we’re so familiar with today.
So…am I off base? Am I a politically correct closet case?
Let me have it…
UPDATE
Allow me to slightly alter the focus here. My beef with Muir is that black face - in any context at any time - is a negative cultural construct; a clear reminder of times that most of us should be ashamed of. Regardless of the excellent arguments being made both here and on my blog, we should always keep in mind the impact that these images have on people.
This is not political correctness per se, although there will be some racialists who would use Mr. Muir’s depiction to advance their own political agenda. Being sensitive to the real feelings of others is always the right thing to do regardless of intent or context.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:57 am
I think that Chris is pointing out the attitude of much of the left. His dialogue in the second panel is dead on.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:05 am
Spreading black stereotypes: Isn’t that what Mrs. Bill Clinton is doing?
…
April 26th, 2007 at 6:34 am
Yes, your a PC Closet Case, but that’s ok; it takes all kinds.
Lieberman was not pandering to the black community, or insulting them by not treating them as equals. When he was done up in Blackface. Lieberman was not attempting to be “black”.
Sen. Clinton is doing exactly that in order to try and get votes. Her actions are far more offensive than anything Don Imus got fired for.
April 26th, 2007 at 6:35 am
[…] Heading Right […]
April 26th, 2007 at 7:18 am
[…] Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House criticized Chris Muir on his own blog and on Heading Right this morning: Considering how we conservatives trashed Jane (”you ignorant slut”) Hamsher for […]
April 26th, 2007 at 7:25 am
“Being sensitive to the real feelings of others is always the right thing to do regardless of intent or context.”
Hmmm, that sounds exactly like what Dean Betty Trachtenberg (who said that students could not use theatrical weapons on stage plays at Yale) said:
“I think people should start thinking about other people rather than trying to feel sorry for themselves and thinking that the administration is trying to thwart their creativity,” Trachtenberg said. “They’re not using their own intelligence….We have to think of the people who might be affected by seeing real-life weapons.”
April 26th, 2007 at 8:43 am
No line was crossed. It captured perfectly the essence of what Hillary’s approach is all about: perpetuating stereotypes that at core and to some degree, based on her actions, she holds herself.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:46 am
Muir’s use of blackface in this cartoon is completely appropriate. Hillary Clinton should be the one ashamed of her actions, as the pandering is bad enough, but the false black accent and hackneyed use of black cultural iconography are extremely insulting.
Indeed, she may as well be wearing blackface.
April 26th, 2007 at 8:53 am
“This is not political correctness per se, although there will be some racialists who would use Mr. Muir’s depiction to advance their own political agenda. Being sensitive to the real feelings of others is always the right thing to do regardless of intent or context.”
In this type of scenario, there will -always- be people whose feelings get hurt. Actually, it has gone so far as to enable people to be hurt whether something hurtful was said or not. People are, in fact, closely monitoring every written and spoken word by anyone of stature just for the express purpose of finding something, anything, to trip them up.
What Chris Muir did by blackfacing Hillary Clinton was a masterful use of parody to illustrate just how abusive her pandering to potential African American constituents has become. My hat’s off to him.
Now matter how much of a stretch you ‘moral equivalent’ naysayers try for, it just won’t wash this time. It’s time we stop throwing our own under the bus every time the truth tweaks some Liberal’s nose!
April 26th, 2007 at 9:50 am
[…] Moran isn’t fond of it either: Considering how we conservatives trashed Jane (”you ignorant slut”) Hamsher for […]
April 26th, 2007 at 10:18 am
”…a clear reminder of times that most of us should be ashamed of.”??! Why should I be ashamed of anything done by other people prior to my arrival on the planet? I’m not responsible for their actions. I feel no shame or guilt for any atrocity not committed by me and me alone, and don’t intend to be harangued into it by PC loons. That said, Hillary is a craven panderer and blackface is a fitting image for her.
April 26th, 2007 at 10:59 am
We must be clear on form versus substance. Although we have condemned other uses of blackface, must be condemn Muir’s without regard to the underlying facts? I say no. As several have pointed out already, Hillary IS pandering, in a particularly insulting manner. In this instance, the image is fitting.
April 26th, 2007 at 11:31 am
Muir was absolutely wrong to depict Hillary in blackface, regardless of her political stances. It was also wrong for Lieberman to be depicted in blackface. This whole thing smacks too much of “it’s OK if our side does it” which is essentially what some in here are saying.
April 26th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Just like to say well said CayuteKitt and uncle jefe.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Big difference. Doctoring a photo of someone who did nothing wrong to mock them, vs an original cartoon of a woman who panders to black and Southern audiences by using lilting fake dialect and drawl. Plus the cartoon is really funny.
April 26th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
No, Goatwhacker, folks here are not saying “it’s OK if our side does it”. What you’re missing is the difference in portraying someone as trying to pander to blacks, versus portraying someone who IS pandering to blacks.
Is not the faux accent and use of black iconography by Hillary the same as putting on black face in this case?
I submit that it is, when you look and listen.
She’s like a scene out of ‘Blazing Saddles’…
‘Oh, de Camptown ladies sing dis song, Doo Dar, Doo Dar…’
April 26th, 2007 at 4:57 pm
I see what you’re saying Jefe, but you are drawing a fine line that many people will not appreciate. The criticism by conservatives of the caricatures of Lieberman and Steele, not to mention the offensive cartoons of Condi Rice, was not so much that they were inaccurate but that they were inappropriate. Now people are trying to justify the Muir cartoon by saying it is accurate and that somehow justifies it also being inappropriate.
Liberals would respond that they felt the Lieberman and Steele characterizations were also accurate. That still would not justify the use of offensive images. Of course with liberals there is the added aspect of their supposedly being more PC, then turning around and using racist images themselves.
I know I am sounding like the PC police which is not my intent - I hate all the PC BS (and love Blazing Saddles) but I also hate hypocrisy which I think is what’s happening here.
April 26th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
The Lieberman and Steele images each were both inappropriate and inaccurate. In Lieberman’s case, Hamsher was trying to say that Joe was the GOP’s negro, and with Steele, the implication was that Steele was not black, or negro, enough. Both those are just a little different than pointing out that at least some of the time when Hillary is speaking to black audiences *she* tries to portray *herself* as being just that little bit o’ black. It is Hillary who actually dons the blackface, and Muir simply illustrates it.
April 27th, 2007 at 3:50 am
[…] Blend). On the right, the strip has outraged some (Captain’s Quarters, Right Wing Nut House, Heading Right, The Queen of All Evil, Blue Crab Boulevard), made apologists of others (Jon Swift, Composite […]
April 27th, 2007 at 5:07 am
[…] (and, one would assume “kike” and “spic.”) He quotes from my piece at Heading Right to illustrate his […]
April 29th, 2007 at 10:41 am
“Being sensitive to the real feelings of others is always the right thing to do regardless of intent or context.”
really ?
but it’s okay to call a cancer survivor currently undergoing chemo an “ignorant slut” ?!?!?
fer shure . . .
you’re the gang that giggled at Rush mocking Michael J. Fox’s Parkinsons, told the Tillman family that being “more christian” would assuage their grief, and deduced that a child rape victim “enjoyed it”
unbelievable