The Obama Ape image at this funky celebrity-as-ape site is almost as interesting as the thread of comments about it.
Racist or comic?
You decide.
(We vote racist. No matter how many other images there are of celebrities on the site, the history behind the image is immutable.)
Showing posts with label SemiObama and racist Obama images. Show all posts
Showing posts with label SemiObama and racist Obama images. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Obama Ape
Monday, August 11, 2008
Horrifying: The Disturbing Obama Knock-Knock Email
One of the occupational hazards of writing about Obama is the spam. Actually, I'm not sure it's spam if the email is targeted. In general, I'm the target and Obama is the subject. Or, is it the other way around? Sometimes, it's hard to tell.
Mostly, I get pro-Obama emails, alerting me to cool sites, which I'm always happy to receive. And, not surprisingly, I am often the recipient of anti-Obama missives, reminding me, I suppose, of the passionate Obama resistance movement, invisible but intense, out there in the remote reaches of cyberspace. Mostly, these are innocuous notes with links to crazy sites, some of which we've linked to here. Occasional critique comes across the transom, which, again, I'm happy to receive.
The jokes, however--at least the racist ones--don't make me happy. They make this small place inside my stomach feel like I've swallowed a shot put. It's one of the few times my strong advocacy of free speech goes smashmouth up against my notion of ethics, civil rights, and hate discourse. Early on, SemiObama did a post on some of the racist Obama images floating around on the Internet. We figured part of reading Obama semiotics involved taking on even the most incendiary images.
I got that same shot put feeling today, when an email appeared in my inbox. With a subject line that read "Horrifying Knock-Knock Joke," it proved to be an email I both wanted and didn't want to ignore.
Indeed, it was a knock-knock joke encoded in a PowerPoint format. The entire joke took up five slides, each of which contained the standard knock-knock formula that I'll replicate below with simple dialogue, except for the punchline, which is visual. It went like this:
KNOCK KNOCK
WHO'S THERE?
EYES
EYES WHO?
[click the right arrow on and it brings up this punch line]
First the good news: The caricature could have been much worse. Let's be honest about that. But, even better, it would appear that even the KKK predicts an Obama victory in November.
Now the bad news: It seems that despite the nearly universal acknowledgement of Obama's intellectual acumen (and even John McCain's admission of his eloquence), some still think group stereotypes trump individual transcendence. It's not surprising, sure, but it is annoying. Tiger Woods experienced it; Hank Aaron even worse. MLK, one of the most articulate American of the 20th century, worst of all.
Most reassuring is the joke's lameness, it's lack of teeth, despite the fact that it tries very hard to draw attention to Obama's teeth--a detail that continues to puzzle.
What I find interesting about this final slide is the coupling of the visual racial stereotype with the lexical one. The joke needs both to be "funny." Thankfully, the joke isn't funny. It's just racist. There is nothing singularly Obama-specific about it at all. The entire joke hinges totally and completely on race which is why it fails.
Effective propaganda is scary; lame propaganda just makes its practitioners look stupid. As far as SemiObama is concerned, it's pretty clear which this is.
Mos def.
---D.R.
Mostly, I get pro-Obama emails, alerting me to cool sites, which I'm always happy to receive. And, not surprisingly, I am often the recipient of anti-Obama missives, reminding me, I suppose, of the passionate Obama resistance movement, invisible but intense, out there in the remote reaches of cyberspace. Mostly, these are innocuous notes with links to crazy sites, some of which we've linked to here. Occasional critique comes across the transom, which, again, I'm happy to receive.
The jokes, however--at least the racist ones--don't make me happy. They make this small place inside my stomach feel like I've swallowed a shot put. It's one of the few times my strong advocacy of free speech goes smashmouth up against my notion of ethics, civil rights, and hate discourse. Early on, SemiObama did a post on some of the racist Obama images floating around on the Internet. We figured part of reading Obama semiotics involved taking on even the most incendiary images.
I got that same shot put feeling today, when an email appeared in my inbox. With a subject line that read "Horrifying Knock-Knock Joke," it proved to be an email I both wanted and didn't want to ignore.
Indeed, it was a knock-knock joke encoded in a PowerPoint format. The entire joke took up five slides, each of which contained the standard knock-knock formula that I'll replicate below with simple dialogue, except for the punchline, which is visual. It went like this:
KNOCK KNOCK
WHO'S THERE?
EYES
EYES WHO?
[click the right arrow on and it brings up this punch line]
First the good news: The caricature could have been much worse. Let's be honest about that. But, even better, it would appear that even the KKK predicts an Obama victory in November.
Now the bad news: It seems that despite the nearly universal acknowledgement of Obama's intellectual acumen (and even John McCain's admission of his eloquence), some still think group stereotypes trump individual transcendence. It's not surprising, sure, but it is annoying. Tiger Woods experienced it; Hank Aaron even worse. MLK, one of the most articulate American of the 20th century, worst of all.
Most reassuring is the joke's lameness, it's lack of teeth, despite the fact that it tries very hard to draw attention to Obama's teeth--a detail that continues to puzzle.
What I find interesting about this final slide is the coupling of the visual racial stereotype with the lexical one. The joke needs both to be "funny." Thankfully, the joke isn't funny. It's just racist. There is nothing singularly Obama-specific about it at all. The entire joke hinges totally and completely on race which is why it fails.
Effective propaganda is scary; lame propaganda just makes its practitioners look stupid. As far as SemiObama is concerned, it's pretty clear which this is.
Mos def.
---D.R.
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