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November 1, 2006

lost in translation

All quotes 100% guaranteed cut and paste from Billmon comments about the Wolf Blizter blackfacing. Usernames have been deleted to protect the innocent.

Tangentially speaking (with regard to the illustration Billmon provides), I urge bar patrons to see Al Jolson's movie The Jazz Singer - the first time I saw this, I found the scene in which Jolson puts on blackface shocking and thought-provoking.

Translation: Oh, man! There is about to be some serious fussin' and fightin' up in this here piece!

Blitzer: "Ah-Sir Cheney!"

Cheney: "Yes, Sir Blitzer?"

Blitzer: "Would you care for a little dash of sherry?"

Cheney: "Yes, thank you so much!"

Blitzer: "Over the lips and past the gums ..."

Cheney: "Look out, abdomen -- here she comes!"

Translation: You know, this reminds me of when I was a kid and I'd watch Abbott and Costello, Amos and Andy, and Honeymooner's re-runs every Sunday morning instead of going to church. Those were good times, good times.

RUBBISH!

Billmon's comments are not 'racist'!

The Neocons are trying to turn this planet into one huge 'plantation'. Is that a racist comment?

I don't know what the RW blogs 'glom' onto... I don't go there...

Translation: Did I just give them the what for or what?

Note to Sunrunner and Nannette. Now, my roots are AShanti - sunburnt to ebony. Grandfather sat in the sun too loong.

I saw the image. Got the message and had to be helped off the floor,my sides busting with hillarity. Not. racist. at. all.

Billmon nailed Massa - the media geneflects. Time they be liberated.

Translation: Isn't diversity beautiful? It's like a eating a chocolate koala bear that melts in your mouth only to crap rainbows in your brain.

Sunrunner, how many different names did you use in this thread to raise you one 'voice'?

Not very kosher...

Translation: Beavis: You know how you make a sock-puppet? You take a sock and put your hand up its butt!

Butthead: You said "butt!"

can you think of a more apt analogy for blitzer - who apparently thought that he was safe because of his relationship, only to be surprised when lynn cheney pulls the same screeching harpie routine she uses to beat on the rest of the media?

Translation: Chillax, compeneros. It's not easy being Billmon and updating an A-list blog every day. If you think it's so easy, why don't you do it?

As one of mixed race I give my voice whole-heartedly to Billmon. What he did was very funny, and Wolf Blitzer deserved it.

There are light years between Hamsher's use of blackface and kow-towing Blitzer. (Oooh, a mixed race metaphor! Go tell it on the mountain.)

Translation: Isn't diversity beautiful? It's like a eating a chocolate koala bear that melts in your mouth only to crap rainbows in your brain.

in any case malcolm x was not beyond using the stereotype of the house & the field negro - in a inherently refined rhetorical gesture

i think you will find that there are those great man such as we dubois, marcus garvey - who were not naive in trangressing such stereotypes

billmon is a lot of things - some of which - we differ greatly - but he is not & could not be called a racist, to any degree & any such attempt to label him so is of such stultifying stupidity - it would be wiser counsel to honour yr silence

Translation: I reject your insinuation there, Ned. I will have you know that I marched with King in Selma, Ned. You can be an Al Sharpton Democrat if you want, but I'm proud of my civil rights record. The only K's in my biography stand for a King and two Kennedys. Hero K's.

i would have thought the context apallingly clear

i would also have thought that billmons trajectorie is open to one & all & his efforts to thwart the cheney bush junta are a matter of public record

the point being web dubois attacked the very pieties that mask white skin privilege, & malcolm made it perfectly clear that the real question was one of - social & economic relations

Translation: Why can't you people ever keep your minds focused for more than a minute on the bigger picture? Sheesh.

the image I would have used to portray blitzer would have been of Mr Hanky

Translation: Can't we all just get along?

Funny you should mention this "slavery" problem. Some people are of the opinion that:

• slavery is a bad thing
• people who claim that slavery is enjoyable are advocating more slavery
• political unfreedom is a pathway to real slavery (ask 2 million prisoners)
• we are losing our freedoms, such as habeas corpus and nine of the ten rights specified in the Bill of rights.

Whcih brings us full circle: slavery is bad and should be fought, loudly.

So fuck the people who pretend to love it, especially when they know that they themselves are on the edge of the abyss. I think that was the actual message. Is there something in this reading of Billmon's words and image you want your fellow citizens to disagree with?

I sympathize with the discomfort, but Billmon's reply seems about right. Yet, you have not replied to it. Would you agree that it is better to fight than to accept the already true loss of our freedoms? Have you noticed we're pre-Magna Carta these days? Or do you care about actual, existing slavery? I do, and I dislike it.

Translation: Oh god, mommy and Daddy can you please, please stop fighting? How do we expect to get this wagon train across the desert flats if we can't stop fighting amongst ourselves? How can we ever hope to be a family again?

get over yourself. every race has had its own members be slaves of others. black does not equal slave.

this is a tempest in a teacup, the target is the despicable blitzer not anyone else.

would you have had the same reaction if the photoshop had been that of a smarmy Arab? didn't think so.

Translation: You know, for almost an entire century the Irish subsisted entirely on a diet consisting largely of potatoes. You can look it up.

Also:

Translation: "Me, me, me," it's always about your problems and your feelings. What about the Arabs? Would you be all in an uproar if, for example, someone photoshopped a burka on a white woman? Thought not.

what a lot of fucking shit.

Translation: Oh, wow, sorry; that was just me. I had a bean pie for lunch.

was the epochal play by eugene o'neill,'the hairy ape' racist because there is no doubt transgression at play here

equally the souther sharecroppers of james agee are they too not a little stereotyped

are the americans described in dreiser, dos passos or sinclair inexistant fpr they too crossed boundaries

i have my quarrel with billmon & we have spoken of white skin privilege in relation to the war in iraq - but he is clearly even in his own terms not a racist

to paraphrase billmon - to be able to live with black cadavers filling the screen of your televisions during katrina & in nearly every city of those united states, to live with the stupefiant number of prisoners - nearly three million - who are generation after generation of black youth forever closed behind bars

no no - the racism of a people is a sensous & practical act it is the recognition & acceptance of your own privilege

let us be frank here if those united states did not rely so much on corrupt & venaal jurisprudence & an even more lethal system of incarceration - ther would have been a race war or a class war a long time ago

Translation: When I was a much younger man, I had occasion to spend a summer season cleaning hotels in the Polish mountain resort of Zakopane. It was the off-season and the Poles had in large measure retreated to their traditional summer haunts. It was there that I met a lovely young Peruvian girl of Indian extraction, a mere slip of womanhood who labored at the resort just as I did. Like a tender brown stalk stretching and bursting to moist maturity in the alien heat of the greenhouse, she had somehow found herself transplanted from the Andes to a harsh northern clime magically rendered temporarily more temperate and nurturing, this as if only for her.

We grew close, she and I, but as she was but a young mountain girl prone to flights of fancy, I found the strength to restrain my natural urges, thinking it best to preserve her from any heartbreak that an ill-advised affair might cause. I turned my full attention to her education, where I took great satisfaction in introducing her to a newer, broader world of arts and letters, to music and history, the words of great writers and thinkers. She, in turn, taught me of her people, of the great god VIRACOCHA who weeps eternally, and APU-PUNCHAU whose name can only be uttered silently. She taught me what it meant sit silent on a mountain peak, the moon and the indigenous fauna my only companions. We went on like this for several weeks, our give and take a veiled intimation of our shared desire, and on my last night she appeared at my door, grateful, naked and unashamed, eager and yet waiting for a sign that only I could give. I knew I would never see her again so I reached out to her, and I can say we shared pleasures that late summer evening unlike any other pleasure I have known, experienced things together that I only can recall at the risk of trembling.

Aymara. Not a day goes by that I don't think of her, that I don't weep at the hint of her name, so sweet and salty on the tip of my tongue.

I believe intent must come into making that determination. I do not believe Billmon's intent was to express ill will towards blacks. You may take it that way, but it and of itself that is meaningless, as there are countless examples in today's society of people being offended over countless things, real or not. We have lots of the professionally offended in the country these days, both on the Right and the Left. People choose to be offended; it is not a fixed standard.

Yes, I found Billmon's use of blackface to make a very clear point, a perfect description of Mr. Blitzer's role in the media, to be very telling and effective. From Billmon's honest portrayal of himself and his awareness of subliminal racist programming as a child, I don't consider his depiction a jab at anyone but Mr. Blitzer. Blackface minstels existed. There were horrible white men using the untold misery of helpless victims to make a buck. I don't think Billmon was promoting these horrible white men. You do believe that, and you believe that makes Billmon a racist. I don't think he was, and that it does not make him a racist. That gives us a difference of opinion. You are certainly entitled to that opinion, but please stop making pronouncements of racism as if it were a fixed standard of fact of which you are the sole arbiter.

Translation: C'mon! Cut a 'bro a deal. I think we can all agree that it really is the thought that counts.

So to make a longwinded comment shorter: the rascism (or sexism or classism or ageism) of a particular statement might depend on the listeners context instead of the speakers and thus make it bloody hard on the Internet.

Translation: I can't be bothered with this. I know it sounds harsh, but I have to say that ultimately this is your problem.

OK, you're getting onto me over the subjectivity of intent, and then in the VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH you speak of Billmon's "inner racist" as objective fact. You can't have it both ways. Just because Billmon is aware of his own psychological situation, you can't state as a fact (as you do) that this particular case is "his inner racist" leaking out. You can think that, and it's pretty clear you do think that, but you speak definitely of something you just admitted wasn't definitive. You think it's racist. Fine, that's great, we disagree. But lose the objective voice and stop playing Lord High Arbiter.

Translation: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Watch where you point that thing, fella. It might be loaded.

Also:

Translation: I'm just going to keep saying it until you get it through your head: You are. Not. The Boss. Of Me.

Back during the initial weeks of post-Katrina news coverage, you all might recall that alot of rightwingers were up in arms about the possibility of the black community getting together and disparaging the shit out of Shrub. The vibe I got from all their rhetoric was, "This wasn't Bush's fault so you darkies bettah hesh up your mouth and know your place." This vibe was then later confirmed when news got out that a handful of armed Gretna police said to a bunch of predominately black Katrina survivors, "They be no Superdomes heah!"

At this point, I knew what the jig was. Growing up in a city with a lot of blacks and latinos, I know exactly how they're going to react and how justified those reactions will probably be ... and I mentioned it in another part of the internet. I said, "Watch out, folks. When black people hear shit like 'They be no Superdomes here', it's only a matter of time and opportunity when they'll stand up and shout back in defiance 'And they be no house niggahs here!' without caring one whit who it may offend."

I got raked over the coals for being a racist, race-bating, and the whole roasted chicken that Billmon is getting bludgeoned with right now but, as time unfolded, I ended up being right because the moment - that opportunity - when the black community shouted "They be no house niggahs heah!" in defiance to the Bushistas was during Coretta Scott King's funeral. Granted, nobody speaking at her funeral actually said those exact words ... but I sure as hell heard them loud and clear. Repeatedly, too. So did the majority of Americans. And so did Bush and the rest of the racist rightwing Bigotsphere, evidenced by their squirming and howling -- they had the audacity to act with fradulent shock and awe, caterwauling about how improper and rude it was for the black community to "get all uppity" and use CSK's funeral as a soapbox.

And now, Billmon used blackface to blast the hell out of the white, bearded, persistantly vegetative, corporate slave fruitbat commonly known as Wolf Blitzer and getting simular rations of shit from both sides of the sandbox. Clearly, too many Americans have just as many problems wrapping their heads around nuance and irony as they do with truth and reality.

Translation: It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.

Also:

Translation: Why can't you people ever keep your minds focused for more than a minute on the bigger picture? Sheesh.

One thing which Billmon has acknowleged and which I think goes to the root of the problem is that he can "honestly" say that he has not been able to cross the divide and actually be friends with black people.

I really do not see how being friends with Black people proves anything.

I am informed of genocide against Armenians and I empathise to the deepest. But I have never met an Armenian and it would not change a thing even if had twenty Armenian friends.

Moreover, all peoples deserve respect, consideration & fairness regardless of race or group. Each individual must be recognized as such regardless of attribute.

So long as one treats each Black person (or Hispanic or Chinese or ...) as an individual and respects him/her and is fair, thats good enuff.

Translation: You know, just because I wouldn't want my daughter to marry one, doesn't mean that I won't give that Harold Ford a fair hearing. That's the least that boy deserves, is what I'm saying here.

Posted by ebogjonson in race and other identities, on November 1, 2006 4:33 PM

Comments

Posted by: kactus at November 1, 2006 8:10 PM

Posted by: sunrunner at November 2, 2006 5:02 AM

Posted by: sly civilian at November 2, 2006 3:03 PM

Posted by: Elayne Riggs at November 2, 2006 7:27 PM

Posted by: belledame222 at November 5, 2006 12:27 PM

Posted by: belledame222 at November 5, 2006 12:30 PM

Posted by: sellam at November 13, 2006 11:38 AM

Posted by: ebog at November 13, 2006 3:01 PM

Posted by: belledame222 at November 14, 2006 7:33 PM

Posted by: Keegan Mclaughlin at December 1, 2006 7:50 PM

Posted by: fred fartemore at January 21, 2007 1:55 PM