Dear Readers,
I received the following message in my inbox today from NiaOnline about an offensive caricature of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama that was published in The Independent. As an aside, MCNY will be hosting a conversation about the way social and political commentary play a role in art. To see the message from NiaOnline keep reading.
You are receiving this special edition of the NiaOnline newsletter because we enountered something so outrageous and offensive we knew it couldn’t wait until our usual Wednesday posting. We know you’ll agree.
Boy, when the pundits said this presidential campaign is getting nasty with regard to the topics of race and gender, they weren’t kidding. Yesterday blogger Eisa Nefertari Ulen sent this little tidbit our way. It’s a horribly racist caricature of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama that was published in The Independent, a newspaper that claims to have the highest distribution of any local newspaper in Long Island, NY’s East End (which includes The Hamptons).
The mock column, “Why I Should Be Our Next President,” is written under the byline of a candidate named “Yo Mama Bin Barack” with Sen. Obama’s smiling face next to it. Portrayed as a racially-confused buffoon who is trying to be Black, Yo Mama Bin Barack says things such as, “Ultimately, if [Hillary Clinton] gets too close, one of my New York advisors has advised me to, ‘Bitch slap that ho.’ White women, I am told, like that,” and “We be, you know, sick of whitey supressin’ and congestin’ so, you know, we won’t denigrate or sophisticate but emulate and populate, you know, the system is, like, broken, y’all!” This, for the edification of the East End’s elite populace (as well as the online masses, since a version of the parody was posted in the paper’s online edition).
NiaOnline contacted the The Independent on Jan. 23 to express our outrage and ask for an explanation. The editor-in-chief and co-publisher of the newspaper, Rick Murphy, sent us a letter of apology this morning and said that no one had put him up to it. The Independent also took down the online version and posted an apology.
Click here to see a copy of the column that we made before it was taken down. You’ll also see NiaOnline’s letter to The Independent, as well as the newspaper’s apology to NiaOnline.
Many people believe that overt racism is all but dead in our country, and that the real enemies now are institutional racism and “the soft bigotry of low expectations.” There is also a popular view that if the media would just stop talking about the role of race in this campaign, we could just focus on “the issues.” Call this a cold splash of water in the face of those notions. Good, old-fashioned, overt racism is alive and well, and hard at work in this campaign and in our 21st century lives. Share that cold splash with as many people as you can, by bookmarking this page and passing the web link (www.niaonline.com/news/) on to as many people as you can. Contact The Independent too, and let them know what you think of their little joke. It’s time to wake up.
Low Tidings: “Why I Should Be Our Next President”
NiaOnline’s letter to The Independent
The Independent‘s letter of apology to NiaOnline
After you’ve contacted The Independent and/or passed this along for others to read, we want to know what your take is on this: Is this attempt at political satire acceptable under any circumstances? What do you think of Rick Murphy’s apology and his paper’s decision to take down the online posting? Let us know at editorial@niaenterprises.com (please include your name and city), and we may print your comments in the next NiaOnline newsletter.
Andrew Benjamin
January 29, 2008
Maybe i should make myself clearer Nia as some completely misunderstand the issues and distract with phony ones as the above about the current president who had little to do with the War in Iraq other than execute his constitutional duties for a war that was planned in 1998 and established into American Law. I will be happy to update your readers about the facts of history — not the re-written history you read in the media.
As soon as the self-righteous critics: gays, black, women, who are soooo offended by the Obama parody (parody – social commentary in high relief — exaggeration) can provide this writer with evidence that they have applied the very same standards to Redd Fox, Dave Chappelle, Richard Pryor, Damon Wayans, Eddie Murphy, and Chris Rock — all of whom have potentially offended others not of their race — I’ll accept their criticism.
Many of the comedians I mention above have given performances far more offensive to various groups, including whites, Jews, Christians, and Hispanics than Rick Murphy’s “LOW TIDINGS” column which, in its very title, makes it clear what is to follow.
Where would YOU draw the line?
At what point do you impose on others where to STOP 1. being funny, 2. being tasteless, 3. being mindful of others “feelings”? and 4. making political commentary?
Are blacks’, womens’, or gays’ “feelings” more deserving of the velvet glove treatment than the feelings of other groups who were at one time or another persecuted — AND RIDICULED?
Why do these groups deserve more protection under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment than the other groups within the body politic?
What gives ANY politician immunity from being the target of satire because of his alliances, history, belief systems, or religion, AND yes, RACE — AND SEX — WHEN THAT POLITICIAN USES HIS RACE AND HER SEX TO GET ELECTED?
Some people with thin skins CHOOSE to get offended because effective satire PILLORIES one of their gods with the similarly effective circuitous mechanism of humor. Certainly, one need not apologize to people who claim tolerance as their birthright and who are in fact consistently intolerant of those who do not conform to their partisan and provincial world views.
The issue is NOT whether Rick Murphy’s writing is “award-winning” in each case, or even funny, or the best parody ever written. Or if it’s racist (of course not! Murphy allows similar treatment to other candidates and is mostly liberal in his political sentiments as anyone who has read the paper knows.)
The issue is the corrosive, obsessive-repulsive, demeaning, illogical and anti-democratic attitude that we call Politically Correct. The issue is not if better satirists exist or that my examples may not “fit” YOUR standards for good satire. Again, the issue is that some people MAKE THE CHOICE to become offended — and there are ALWAYS people who get offended no matter what — and would MUZZLE the free speech of others with whom they don’t agree with, not because of what the satirist said, but because of what the former FEELS about what the satirist said.
In other words, consider the observation of the greatest satirist of all time, Samuel Clemens, otherwise known as Mark Twain, who must have had the people I speak of in mind:
“They make much of “feeling” and mistake it for thinking.”
Andrew G. Benjamin
agbenjamin@gmail.com
R.E.
January 28, 2008
This isn’t satire. It is nothing resembling satire. You want a good example of political satire, try Jonathan Swift’s “A Modest Proposal.” He was talking about the plight of the Irish, but he did not use a stereotyped Irish “voice” in his writing and he didn’t pull out every Irish stereotype in the book. He was subtle, and he was devastating.
Americans (and I’m one) don’t know how to write satire. Period. Then again, Americans really don’t know how to *write.*
My take on the first comment here: I differentiate between white people slamming black people, and black people slamming one another. The difference to me is like the difference between murder and suicide, respectively. Whatever black people want to do to one another, I might not like it but it does not rise to the level of full-on political oppression (except when it’s black men oppressing black women, which gets into the larger issue of patriarchy and gender politics). I just don’t want my racial group doing that to them–it’s been oppressing them for long enough, it needs to back the hell off. So this is why the huge outrage, at least from me; I would imagine that if you ask other white folks who have thought about this, they’d tell you the same thing.
Commenter #3: I’ve noticed that some people have trouble differentiating between jokes about a person’s physical traits and jokes about a person’s behavior. This, for instance, is why people who are outraged about Israel’s behavior toward ordinary Palestinian civilians are often accused of anti-semitism. But it doesn’t fly. If a public figure acts like a jerk, he should be called on it. If a public figure is merely black, that is not grounds to slander him. If Bush supporters want liberals to say nice things about him, perhaps they should suggest to him that lying to Americans about WMDs in Iraq and then cutting funding to the VA are really bad ideas. I understand, however, that he doesn’t take criticism well, so I’ll give y’all the benefit of the doubt.
T
January 26, 2008
**Reader, I am approving this message with the sidenote that we try to address the issues and not the commentators. Please refer to the guidelines tab if you need further clarification.**
To #3,
It’s apparent that you do not understand the issue at hand. The typical knee jerk Republican response without knowledge.
This parody about Obama and his run for president is representative of the latent racism and demoralization of black people in general. It says how dare a black man run for president? You can’t be serious to think that you can do anything but feed our babies, change their pampers, sing me a song or throw a ball around. The racial stereotypes that have fueled racism and lynching for hundreds of years are nothing compared to the political satire of a president. This condescending attitude because of race is disgusting. AND, if this was a parody of rich Jews in Montauk in the Amsterdam News, we would never be able to hear the end of it.
And Bush is an idiot. Anyone who would send hundreds of thousands of soldiers to bomb a country of millions of innocent people to destroy weapons that do not exist is an idiot. Where are the WMDs? Where is Osama and why can’t we get him? Al Qaeda is stronger than ever in Pakistan because we went to Iraq. And what happened to Iran’s nuclear program that his own people have cited that stopped years ago. What happened with Katrina, the Social Security plan, the immigration plan, etc. He hired a horse trader to head FEMA. If that’s not stupid then what is.
Andrew Benjamin
January 25, 2008
I wonder if the very same people who are so offended at the Obama parody are equally offended about gross jokes made of our duly ELECTED president and Vice President DURING TIME OF WAR? Chimp. Idiot in the White House. Trim Bush.
How about:
I bet not.
Hypocrites.
D. Bell
January 24, 2008
Thanks for your comments and feedback. I don’t think that anyone presented this as “our problem” but it was presented in a way that the readers who support Obama can delve into it further if they so wish. There has been a lot of discussion on this site about the upcoming election and it was item of interest that we thought our readers might want to add their voice to. You certainly did! Cheers!
Anonymous
January 24, 2008
I went to Eisa’s site and told her,
I find this level of concern over this matter a poor use of your talent and resources. Shock of all shock, there are racist. So what? is that news? Are you surprised? Think about it, who cars about this publication, you’re only feeding into the hype and actually exposing them to people who would otherwise not give’em any attention or concern at all.
Your problem? This is the obvious, the easy target to hit out of the park. Requires no skill, talent, or even intelligence to address this. Now if you want to be relevant, actually say something about something that matters and is significant, why don’t you speak to Bob Johnson slinging mud on Obama and referencing his cocaine use and marginalizing him today, for some youthful experimentation?
But that would mean you addressing Black on Black shameful behavior. It’s far more significant when a Bob Johnson says what he did about Obama, than some newspaper no one cares about. Step up to something relevant, will you?
And Bill Clinton’s certainly said some outrageous things about Obama, the “fairy tale” speech and all that. I have found Bob Johnson and Bill Clinton to be the spokesmen of demeaning speech about Obama, their words are far more damaging.
The real question is do you have the skill set, intelligence, and talent to dissect the subtle nature of empowered people that are degrading of Obama in their speech? People who matter?
Step up your game if you want to make a difference.