Oct.29.2008 Urban Dictionary + Adsense X Racial Intolerance / Obama = Fail
This is either the best or worst ad targeting I’ve ever seen.
The only way this could be worse juxtaposition is if it the page were about deadbeat dads or how to dunk a basketball. Poor form, Urban Dictionary.
[via]
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Aug.19.2008 The 7 awful movies that will prepare you the most for college
So I recently saw the awful trailer for the new movie College (BEWARE IF YOU CLICK THAT LINK…PARTIES AND GIRLS AND BOOZE AND MADCAP ADVENTURES AHOY!) and thought that many people, especially incoming freshman, may be mislead by that movie right as they’re starting to get on campus for the first time. College isn’t all about fun and excessive drinking. It’s about learning. There are so many college-themed movies out there…let’s take a look at the ones that will impart much needed wisdom to you before you hit the college campus.
Soul Man
Majors in: Theatre, Anthropology
Lessons to Learn: Blackface will help you achieve all of your academic dreams; Entitlement is a curse, not a blessing
I don’t care if you read the rest of this post, but if you do one thing for me ever, watch this clip above of C. Thomas Howell getting caught by his parents in his crazy scheme of acting black to get a college scholarship.
Yes, that’s right. The premise of Soul Man was that C. Thomas Howell was rich and privileged but, since his dad didn’t want to spend money on him any more and wouldn’t pay for his Harvard education, CTH had to pretend to be black for some reason to get a special scholarship. With a lot of bronzing pills and some “soul” in his voice, apparently people believe that he’s a black guy. Yeah. Honestly, the producers of this films should have to pay reparations for the fact that this film exists. Not just to black people, but to everyone who ever even saw the box art.
Higher Learning
Majors in: Ethnography
Lessons to Learn: We’re all different but beautiful; Lesbianism can find ways to be depressing
And now the other end of the racial spectrum…
There aren’t many movies that can combine the first theatrical appearance of critically acclaimed actress Tyra Banks with the musical stylings of Michael Rappaport, but fortunately, Higher Learning is indeed one (and, unless God is punishing us, the only).
The film is a drama, so there’s a lot of stuff going on, all in a crrrrrrazyyyyy couple months of college. For example, skinheads (oh you know how college is always filled with skinheads…college is a big place for radical conservatism) recruit Michael Rappaport since he’s lost in the “multicultural shuffle” of college; Kristy Swanson is date raped, then becomes a lesbian with Jennifer Connelly (not in the fun, let’s make out for attention way, but in the Lilith Fair way); and Omar Epps goes through a militant black stage before realizing he can be a black athlete and a student and blah blah there’s a lot of race stuff in here that wasn’t heavy handed at all.
With Honors
Majors in: Public Policy
Lessons to Learn: The homeless are valuable academic resources; Jheri curl tips from Patrick Dempsey
The tagline: If You Want a Degree, Go to Harvard. If You Want an Education, Go to Simon Wilder.
This film deserves a spot on the list for the poster alone. In the film, Joe Pesci plays a homeless guy (the Simon Wilder in the tag line) who lives in a boiler room at a Harvard library, only he’s smart and reads stuff and teaches important life lessons and doesn’t scream obscenities at me. Granted, I don’t hang out with many homeless people, but I find them to be less about debating professors about politics and more about crapping themselves and worrying about the satellites that are digging into their head because they saw aliens kill JFK. But that’s what college is all about…expanding your horizons.
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Aug.05.2008 Bailiff shot by pair of pants
Sometimes a story just catches your eye. Like a story about a pair of pants that shot its owner.
Police believe a court baliff’s pant leg may somehow have caused his weapon to fire last week at Merrimack District Court.
Bailiff Logan Crocker was wounded in the ankle when his pistol went off while in an ankle holster last Thursday.
Police say Crocker was not handling the weapon at the time. But Deputy Police Chief Mark Doyle told the New Hampshire Union Leader that Crocker was moving his trousers or hiking them up, and something along his trouser leg may have grabbed the hammer or trigger and caused the weapon to fire.
If I had a dollar for every time a pair of pants has shot at me, I’d have like no dollars. But a pair of pants did kill my grandfather. These pants, they have no respect for our laws or our lives. That’s why I refuse to allow any of them to touch my skin. Filthy pants with their penchants for crime. And if they’re not committing a crime, they’re just laying around, getting fat off of my tax dollars. Popping out more and more baby pants. And these pants are always so well-hung too. They have some sweet deal, let me tell you. What’s next? A pair of pants being elected President? THESE PANTS ARE RUINING OUR COUNTRY AND NO ONE IS DOING ANYTHING ABOUT IT.
[Artist's rendering of a separate pants crime, above]
Jul.11.2008 ..but America remains the king of putting racism into practice
Yay, apparently it’s Racism Friday here on the blog! Some Ohio town has been denied WATER by local authorities for years, so they’re now getting some financial retributions.
Residents of a mostly black neighborhood in rural Ohio were awarded nearly $11 million Thursday by a federal jury that found local authorities denied them public water service for decades out of racial discrimination.
Each of the 67 plaintiffs was awarded $15,000 to $300,000, depending on how long they had lived in the Coal Run neighborhood, about 5 miles east of Zanesville in Muskingum County in east-central Ohio.
Coal Run residents either paid to have wells dug, hauled water for cisterns or collected rain water so they could drink, cook and bathe.
“As a child, I thought it was normal because everyone done it in my neighborhood,” said one of the plaintiffs, Cynthia Hale Hairston, 47. “But I realized as an adult it was wrong.”
That’s so fucked up that it’s kind of hilarious. Like even before black people had civil rights, at least they had WATER FOUNTAINS. Granted, they were separate, but they still HAD them. Like it might not be in the constitution, but it’s kind of a fundamental right. Even the sky gives us water. We kind of need it. Unless we can drink our urine yet without being labeled “social outcasts”. Sigh. I still haven’t lived my sophomore year of college down. How long can you hold a grudge, world??!?!
Jul.11.2008 Mexico’s pretty good at racism too
The handsome little fellow below is known as Memin Penguin in Mexico and his comic adventures have come under fire for being sold at some Wal-Marts across the country.
Shawnedria McGinty was taken aback by “Memin Pinguin” comics she found at her local Wal-Mart. The series, by Mexican illustrator Valencia Burgos, tells the story of a young black boy who often gets into trouble and isn’t too bright. The character is something of an iconic cultural image in Mexico, much like Bugs Bunny is over here. McGinty did a little research in order to try and better understand the comics and was disappointed to find that her gut instincts were correct: The comics? Are kind of totally racist:
“They are calling him names. They call him an animal in one section. His mom is spanking his butt and it looks like they are drowning him,” said McGinty, who went so far as to buy a Spanish dictionary to better understand the comic books.
She found one passage particularly offensive. In the frame, Memin Pinguin is being kicked by a light-skinned man and called “a black troublemaker.”
“Memin Pinguin” caused a stir in the States a couple of years back when the Mexican government issued a postal stamp commemorating the character. The comic book was then reissued after not having been published for a number of years. So it’s a wee bit surprising, given the blacklash those stamps received, that Wal-Mart would decide to carry it in its stores. In the United States nonetheless! Now they are feeling the wrath of the African American community.
Yeah I mean this caricature isn’t exactly flattering but when that stamp was released, Mexico made a good point about Speedy Gonzalez being a complete atrocity of racism but for some reason that’s okay because we’re America and he’s a mouse. Perhaps if Mexico had made Memin into some sort of monkey racial stereotype named “Jorge Curioso” and had him engage in adventures with a human character called “El Gringo en el Sombrero Yellow-o” then it’d be cool.
I want to know more about this dude though, from Memin’s wiki:
Ernestillo: The intelligent and hard working one. His mother died when he was young and has since been raised by his father, an alcoholic carpenter. Ernestillo is so poor he has no shoes.
Man, this sounds like a really funny comic. Dead parents, drunken carpentry, a lack of shoes. At the very least, the adventures of Ernestillo should replace Beetle Bailey. We get it, the military is incompetent.
Jun.27.2008 Gossip Girl’s Blake Lively and Penn Badgley do shitty impressions
In this photo, they do an impression of Black people. Which is fine, other than the fact that they’re in the Hamptons. Diddy’s family is like 94.3% of the black population up there.
Jun.16.2008 Obama to black dads: “Yo. What up?”
Now that he’s won the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama is letting loose on some interesting issues. First on the docket: Absentee black fathers.
Barack Obama celebrated Father’s Day by calling on black fathers, who he said are “missing from too many lives and too many homes,” to become active in raising their children.
“They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men. And the foundations of our families are weaker because of it,” the Democratic presidential candidate said Sunday at a largely black church in his hometown.
Reminding the congregation of his firsthand experience growing up without a father, Obama said he was lucky to have loving grandparents who helped his mother. He got support, second chances and scholarships that helped him get an education. Obama’s father left when he was 2.
Obama urged black parents to demand the best from themselves and their children.
He compared it to his own presidential campaign and early comments from black voters who said they liked him but didn’t think a black man could ever be elected president. He said they were admitting defeat before the competition had even begun.
“That was when I wasn’t black enough. Now I’m too black,” he said in a joking aside.
Hmm, now I love Obama. But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out how unfair it is that he can make these comments. Whenever anyone else mentions race it’s like “Whoa whoa you can’t do that!” But when he does it’s like “Haha oh you.” When I start talking about the failures of black men, and granted it’s a different “er” word being bandied about other than “father,” all I get is glares and occasional fists to the face. Which just seems unfair.
Jokes aside, I think this is kind of bold on his part to talk about Black issues. There are few things that make white people, both liberal and conservative, feel more icky than black people candidly discussing racial issues. They feel excluded and uncomfortable and, unfortunately, might be too close-minded to understand that Obama is trying to improve the country by lifting up one of its weaker segments. Shrug. On the plus side for black people, the NBA Finals are pretty entertaining! And I hear there are some “ill” sneakers available for sale! We are truly living in a new era.
