Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Explaining Yesterday

I wrote yesterday's post with my tongue just slightly in cheek. What I meant to convey (and boy, don't anyone ever accuse me of being a transparent writer) was that targets of bias and insensitivity are everywhere...and sometimes they're so subtle we don't even notice them.

Last weekend, I watched a comedy show during which Carlos Mencia referred to white people as "crackers." I watched a political discussion digress into "amusing" banter about blonde women, and I don't have to tell you where that led. The point is that race isn't the only criteria by which we as a society separate ourselves from others just to feel superior.

I don't personally know ONE PERSON who isn't guilty of some form of prejudice.

And it cracks me up that we think firing a person is progressive. If anything, getting rid of Imus allowed us to anesthetize ourselves into believing the rabbit crawled back into the hat.

Meanwhile, on this morning's Mark and Brian radio show, Mark recounted hearing Stevie Wonder's song "Living For the City"--on SATELLITE radio over the weekend. Remember that song? Having been a disk jockey back in the day, Mark remembered the shorter, edited, radio version, and the longer, unedited album version which contained the N-word. Well, guess what. In 2007, the unedited version on SATELLITE radio, became the EDITED version without the N-word. Now, come on, people. This song was recorded in the 70's, for God's sake. To me, taking out the N-word is like re-writing the author's story.

What's next? Covering up the genitalia on all those offensive statues? Oh, wait. Didn't someone in the Bush administration already try to do that?

1 comment:

John said...

You got political. Were you always and I just didn't notice? Cool