Humor and Satire

The Problem Isn’t That MSNBC’s Talking Heads Are “Offensive”…It’s That They Are Unprofessional, Hateful And Loathsome

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

 

mitt-romney-grandkids

From Mediaite:

“On Sunday’s Melissa Harris-Perry (MSMBC) show, the eponymous host led a panel of entertainers in a rundown of the “photos of the year,” which somehow included a Romney family picture that “a lot of people had emotions about,” according to MHP….“Everybody loves a baby picture,” Harris-Perry said, “and this was one that really, a lot of people had emotions about this baby picture this year. This is the Romney family. And, of course, there on Governor Romney’s knee is his adopted grandson, who is an African-American, adopted African-American child, Kieran Romney.” As Harris-Perry made the introduction, panelist Pia Glenn sang “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just isn’t the same,” a tune whose original lyrics read “one of these things doesn’t belong.” “And that little baby, front and center, would be the one,” she added. …Comedian Dean Obeidallah chimed in by reducing the baby to a token. “I think this picture is great,” he said. “It really sums up the diversity of the Republican party, the RNC. At the convention, they find the one black person.”

Then the host, without missing a beat and without sensing any irony, said that the next segment would be devoted to answering the question, “Hey..is that racist?” Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Steve Martin (Coward, Too)

/ Jack Marshall / 19 Comments

Life imitates art.

Shame on Steve Martin. He is a comedian. He tweets jokes. He tweeted a joke that was not racist in the least. (Everything that comments humorously on cultural quirks isn’t racist.) The political correctness bullies jumped on him too, because they nailed Phil Robertson and destroyed Justine Sacco. Martin, a novelist, a playwright, a TV writer, a comic and an actor, should have the integrity to stand up to this suffocating and unethical phenomenon. He has the stature to make a difference. He doesn’t have that integrity. He took the path of least resistance. He is a coward. He groveled. He apologized. The Blaze headlined that he “had to apologize,” No he didn’t. What he had to do was show some principle and strength of character when being manipulated and unfairly attacked, and he wasn’t up to the task.

By giving them what they crave, Steve Martin made the censors, bullies, cyber mobs and political correctness dictators more powerful, and hungrier still.

Without champions who will fight for free thought and expression, we will lose them. Martin and people of his intelligence and credibility have an obligation to be such champions, and he failed us all.

__________________________________

Spark and Pointer: The Blaze

The Unethical Destruction of Justine Sacco

/ Jack Marshall / 141 Comments
Justine Sacco, victim.

Justine Sacco, victim.

Media executive Justine Sacco tweeted an impulsive, racially provocative joke on the social media site Twitter that a lot of people found offensive, didn’t like, or felt they could justify participating in cyber-bullying as if they found it offensive. As a result, she has lost her job, is being portrayed as a virulent racist across the web,  receiving threats and hate messages from strangers, and has become an international pariah.

It doesn’t matter what the tweet said. It was a tweet–140 characters directed at nobody in particular, that harmed nobody in any way, unlike, say, the tweets by various celebrities trying to direct mobs to where George Zimmerman could be found and beaten. Nobody attacking her knows this woman, what’s in her mind and heart, what she has done in her life or the good works and deeds she may be responsible for. And yet thousands of strangers, many of whom are almost certainly, on balance, less admirable people than Justine Sacco in many ways, have chosen to use her 140 ill-chosen characters as provocation to throw a huge, greasy monkey wrench into the gears of her life. Continue reading →

Unethical Quote Of The Week: Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart

/ Jack Marshall / 5 Comments

“Actually, I think that’s the official slogan of oppression.”

—-Comedy Central’s Daily Show host Jon Stewart, mocking Megyn Kelly’s statement that “just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change.”

Motto Kelly, because she appears on Fox News, is presumed to be an idiot by Stewart, who manages to reserve a disproportionate supply of his barbs for that network as opposed to the even more barbable MSNBC. Her statement, however, was completely correct and responsible, unlike Stewart’s “motto” quip.. In fact, “‘Just because it makes you feel uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it has to change’ is the official slogan of oppression” could be the official slogan of smug, censorious and hypocritical political correctness peddling wise-asses.

This is why nobody should take Jon Stewart seriously, and also why he needs to take pains to discourage anyone from taking him seriously. As an off the cuff comic’s retort to Kelly’s silly defense of racial purity for Santa Claus portrayers, the motto comment is fine—snappy, pointed, properly dismissive. Unfortunately, as Stewart well knows, lots of young, otherwise unread and politically ignorant viewers (and web columnists) view him as a substantive political commentator, and from that perspective, his statement is irresponsible and reckless. Gays make Phil Robertson uncomfortable—should they have to change? Are they oppressing him? Student criticism of President Obama makes some college professors uncomfortable—should the students be muzzled? Stewart’s statement, if it is taken as more than a momentary quip to tweak Kelly, is an endorsement of tyranny of the conveniently offended, which is another form of oppression. There is too much of that going on already, as the current Duck Dynasty flap is demonstrating. Continue reading →

Ethics Dunce: Actress Jennifer Lawrence

/ Jack Marshall / 34 Comments

Walters and Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence is a young break-out movie star. She’s talented and charismatic. Now she need to learn that people pay attention to what celebrities think and say, too much so, in most cases, and she either needs to improve her knowledge base to say, 7th Grade level, exercise judgment by not spouting irresponsible and ignorant opinions as if the national media was a typical blog comment thread, or shut up about anything weightier than what it is like to work with her co-stars and what she eats on location.

I point this out because, in a regrettable instance of the aged fool interviewing a newly-minted one, Barbara Walters—who just told Piers Morgan, on the topic of Barack Obama,  that “We thought that he was going to be – I shouldn’t say this at Christmastime, but – the next Messiah“—-interviewed Lawrence for Barbara’s upcoming  “Most Fascinating People of 2013” TV special, and Jennifer opined,

“I just think it should be illegal to call somebody fat on TV. If we’re regulating cigarettes and sex and cuss words because of the effect it has on our younger generation, why aren’t we regulating things like calling people fat?” Continue reading →

Maybe I’m Losing My Mind, But I Think Geico’s “Maxwell The Pig” Ads Are Racist

/ Jack Marshall / 45 Comments

Well, not racist, exactly, since there is no such human race (yet) as “Pig Men.” If there were such a race, however, there is no question that Geico’s humorous ads would be regarded as racist and offensive. And in Geico Universe, where Maxwell the Talking Pig resides, there is such a race. Therefore the ads are racist. Right? No?

Hear me out.

This has been bothering me for a while, and I don’t think I am imagining it. If we had, living among us, anthropomorphic swine like Maxwell (first discovered being driven home by a friend’s mother and yelling “Wee wee wee!” all the way), would making not so subtle, demeaning pig references (“when pigs fly” in one commercial, “pig in a blanket” in another) be considered acceptable or civil? Clearly not. Obviously Maxwell is a minority, and obviously sensitive about being a pig. Using “when pigs fly” around him is like intentionally inviting an obese friend to “chew the fat,” or accusing a Native American of being an “Indian giver.” Maxwell gets the intent of the insult in both ads, too: “I can’t believe she said that,” he says after one swine-slur, and “I walked right into that one,” after another.

Geico laid the foundation for Maxwell to be a “harmless” stand-in for harassed minorities that the commercials couldn’t mock without serious consequences in an earlier ad, where his car is stopped by a policeman. The cop asks, “Do you know why I stopped you?” Maxwell suggests profiling. “Because I’m a pig driving a convertible?” Yes, it’s strange. The more I think about it, the stranger and more subversive it seems…

This is ridiculous, I know, but also, I think, sinister. Continue reading →

The Obligation To Know Something About What You Are Writing About

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments
Believe it or not, this isn't the most ridiculous feature of the Slate essay it comes from.

Believe it or not, this isn’t the most ridiculous feature of the Slate essay it comes from.

I am constantly being reminded of an old Bob and Ray skit (no, I can’t find it online) they did on late night TV where Bob played an interviewer of a longshoreman (Ray) who had just published a thousand page history of the U.S. that was riddled with errors. “Here, for example,” the increasingly perplexed interviewer sputtered, “you say that Abraham Lincoln was born in 1943 in Bailey’s Mistake, Maine!” Because the internet permits anyone to publish authoritative-sounding nonsense and lies without penalty, that skit seems less and less absurd with each passing day.

Even the content of supposedly legitimate, respected on-line sources cannot be relied upon , because 1) the job of “editor” appears to be obsolete, and 2) if there is an editor, he may be an ignoramus too. For example, a day after after the World Health Organization released a stunning report announcing that citizens of Greece were intentionally giving themselves AIDS so they could get health benefits, it retracted the statement, saying, through  a spokesman, “There is no evidence of people in Greece or anywhere else in Europe deliberately infecting themselves.” What happened? It was an editing error. Oh, well then… wait, what? And nobody other than the editor read the ridiculous release before falsely accusing an entire country of breeding idiots?

This brings us to this “correction” that appeared yesterday on Slate….you know, that sophisticated, erudite, eclectic online cultural  commentary magazine:

“Correction, Dec. 10, 2013: This article originally misidentified penguins as mammals. They are birds.” Continue reading →

Now THAT’S Incompetence: The Mandela Memorial’s Fraud For The Deaf

/ Jack Marshall / 20 Comments
MY...HOVERCRAFT...IS FULL...OF EELS...

MY…HOVERCRAFT…IS FULL…OF EELS…

 Oh, come on!

Really?

According to the the national director of the Deaf Federation of South Africa , the  man who appeared to be signing  on stage next to world leaders speaking at Nelson Mandela’s memorial service had no idea what he was doing, and was faking the whole thing.

The solemn, professional-appearing unidentified man seen on television around the world “was moving his hands around but there was no meaning in what he used his hands for,” Bruno Druchen, the federation’s national director, told reporters. Sign language experts agree that the man was not signing in South African or American sign languages and could not have been signing in any other known sign language because  his arm and hand movements appeared completely random.

How could this happen? Why would anyone do this? And how do I know all the signers I’ve watched over the years weren’t doing the same thing?

This is a very insidious, peculiar, alarming but  funny form of either audacious fraud or mind-boggling incompetence. Who was this guy? What if he had been an assassin? How often are signers just trusted when they say they know sign language for the deaf by event organizers who wouldn’t know if they were translating or signing knock-knock jokes?

And where is Garrett Morris when you need him?

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Facts: ABC

Ethics Dunce: University of Alabama Student NewsPaper Editor Maizie Bryant

/ Jack Marshall / 23 Comments

Ala Cartoon

I hate to criticize the ethical instincts of a college student, but Maizie Bryant’s school obviously isn’t doing its job regarding ethics instruction, so it is up to the rest of us.

Last week, following the epic and shocking finish to the Alabama Auburn football game—Auburn’s Chris Davis turned defeat into victory by grabbing an ill-advised Alabama field goal attempt with one second left and running it back 109 yards for a game-winning touchdown—the University of Alabama’s cartoonist drew the cartoon above. The message to anyone familiar with the devices of satire  and sarcasm was obvious: this was intended as mockery for the perceived tendency of the President’s critics to blame all misfortunes and problems on Obama. I think it’s a misguided cartoon, in that the message–the “joke”— follows the persistent defensive spin of the Obama Administration, its protective media and the President himself that critics unfairly hold him responsible for those matters  for which he is accountable and should be. (If the cartoon was going to be accurate, it would have shown the President attributing Alabama’s loss to George W. Bush.) Whatever its virtues and deficits, however, one thing the cartoon was not is racist.

How could it be racist? It is not racist to criticize Obama even for those things he is not responsible for—such criticism goes with the office. And the cartoon does exactly the opposite anyway. There is nothing whatsoever racial about the drawing. Anyone who perceives racism in this cartoon is

1. Unable to comprehend satire.

2. Unable to comprehend cartoons.

3. Race-baiting, and/or

4. Nuts. Continue reading →

The Onion’s Tragic Headline

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

“Nelson Mandela Becomes First Politician To Be Missed”

viewless…says the headline currently being sported at the Onion, the web’s preeminent satirical website:

JOHANNESBURG—Following the death of former South African president and civil rights leader Nelson Mandela today at the age of 95, sources confirmed that the revered humanitarian has become the first politician in recorded history to actually be missed. “Today we lost not only an international hero and a symbol of the resilient human spirit, but also the very first political figure ever who people actively wish was still alive and affecting world affairs,” said political historian Wallace M. Delaney of Columbia University…

The Onion’s rueful satire may well escape millions of Americans as old as 40, because it probably seems tragically accurate. Continue reading →