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PROVIDING NEWS AND COMMENTARY ON THE
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
PEOPLE, POLITICS, EVENTS AND ABSURDITIES OF
OUR TIME. SERVED UP WITH ACERBIC WIT, YOU
SHOULD FIND IT QUITE SATISFYING.
Saturday Night Live's "Fauxbama" skit getting flak from
race-conscious killjoys
Last weekend, "Saturday Night Live" did a skit about a CNN
debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Problem
was, the only African-American male cast member they had
available couldn't reasonably portray Obama because he has a
very different body type and it just wouldn't have worked.
So, do you know what they did? Okay, you may want to be
sitting when you hear this so you won't fall down. Are you
ready? Here goes.
Fred Armisen, a non-African-American, played Obama.
Oh my god! This is outrageous and blatantly racist! A white
man in blackface. "Saturday Night Live" is now a gaudy
minstrel show. It's a return to Jim Crow. All the gains of the
civil rights movement wiped out in one fell swoop thanks to the
white supremacists at SNL. Where's Jesse Jackson? Al
Sharpton? Why no demonstrations? Why no boycotts?
Where's the justice? No justice, no peace!
Wait a minute. You mean you haven't actually heard about
this? Well, the Internet is absolutely abuzz with debate, we are
told, over this perceived outrage. Chicago Tribune columnist,
Maureen Ryan, has written a piece entitled "'SNL' can do better
than Armisen's Obama." The column begins: "Call me crazy,
but shouldn't 'Saturday Night Live's' fictional Sen. Barack
Obama be played by an African-American?"
I won't call her crazy, I'll just call her dumb. If we examine this
a bit more rationally we may be able to come to a different
conclusion than that the country has just lost 50 years of
progress. Follow me on this.
Barack Obama is half white and half black. Therefore, why isn't
it just as legitimate for a white man to portray him as a black
man? Is the black part the only part that matters?
If you want to get completely ridiculous about racial
proportionality and take it to the only purely logical
conclusion, it could be insisted that only a tall, lanky man of
mixed race should portray Obama in a comedy sketch.
But the country should be grown-up enough at this point not to
get in a lather over something so utterly trivial. So a white guy
portrayed a guy who's half white. So what? Get over it already.
Actually, most of us are over it because we never got our
drawers in a wad to begin with. The only ones who are upset,
thankfully, are minimal in number and are people like the
aforementioned Maureen Ryan, who ended her column thusly:
"Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that
African-Americans have made in this country. I guess 'SNL'
still has further to go on that front."
We also have ample proof of the columnist's moronic racial
nitpicking, which is something we could all do without.
race-conscious killjoys
Last weekend, "Saturday Night Live" did a skit about a CNN
debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Problem
was, the only African-American male cast member they had
available couldn't reasonably portray Obama because he has a
very different body type and it just wouldn't have worked.
So, do you know what they did? Okay, you may want to be
sitting when you hear this so you won't fall down. Are you
ready? Here goes.
Fred Armisen, a non-African-American, played Obama.
Oh my god! This is outrageous and blatantly racist! A white
man in blackface. "Saturday Night Live" is now a gaudy
minstrel show. It's a return to Jim Crow. All the gains of the
civil rights movement wiped out in one fell swoop thanks to the
white supremacists at SNL. Where's Jesse Jackson? Al
Sharpton? Why no demonstrations? Why no boycotts?
Where's the justice? No justice, no peace!
Wait a minute. You mean you haven't actually heard about
this? Well, the Internet is absolutely abuzz with debate, we are
told, over this perceived outrage. Chicago Tribune columnist,
Maureen Ryan, has written a piece entitled "'SNL' can do better
than Armisen's Obama." The column begins: "Call me crazy,
but shouldn't 'Saturday Night Live's' fictional Sen. Barack
Obama be played by an African-American?"
I won't call her crazy, I'll just call her dumb. If we examine this
a bit more rationally we may be able to come to a different
conclusion than that the country has just lost 50 years of
progress. Follow me on this.
Barack Obama is half white and half black. Therefore, why isn't
it just as legitimate for a white man to portray him as a black
man? Is the black part the only part that matters?
If you want to get completely ridiculous about racial
proportionality and take it to the only purely logical
conclusion, it could be insisted that only a tall, lanky man of
mixed race should portray Obama in a comedy sketch.
But the country should be grown-up enough at this point not to
get in a lather over something so utterly trivial. So a white guy
portrayed a guy who's half white. So what? Get over it already.
Actually, most of us are over it because we never got our
drawers in a wad to begin with. The only ones who are upset,
thankfully, are minimal in number and are people like the
aforementioned Maureen Ryan, who ended her column thusly:
"Obama's candidacy gives us solid proof of the progress that
African-Americans have made in this country. I guess 'SNL'
still has further to go on that front."
We also have ample proof of the columnist's moronic racial
nitpicking, which is something we could all do without.