Posts Tagged ‘racism’

Sarah Palin emails Rush Limbaugh

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

If you've been paying attention to the news at all, you might have seen the conflict between Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh. Apparently, Sarah Palin demanded that President Obama fire his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, after it was reported that Emanuel said "fucking retarded" in a private meeting. She considered any version of the use of the word "retard" to be disrespectful.

Separately, Rush Limbaugh grew frustrated with protests around Emanuel's use of "retard", saying "our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult's taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards."

Now, you see, we have the bloated, drug addicted face and voice of the Republican Party butting heads with Alaska's biggest disaster since the Exxon Valdez crash. How will those Republicans who follow Fox News blindly know who to listen to? Should they go rogue or hope Obama fails? Which is it? This could break the Republican Party in half!

Luckily, Sarah Palin had a solution. I've obtained an exclusive look at the email she wrote to Rush to try to defuse the entire situation.

"Dear Rush,

I think we can both agree that it is in the best interest of this great country of ours to come to an agreement. I do have a problem with the word "retard", but I suggest as a compromise that the word "tard" is more acceptable because it has fewer letters. It also has a bit of a cutesy tone to it, and Toddy says that I do well with cutesy.

So if you would be willing to redirect your anger about people protesting Emanuel's statement, I won't worry about my little tard having his feelings hurt. This is for the greater good, remember, and no matter what, we have to compromise whatever principles we have to make sure that nigger doesn't get another term.

Love and winks,
Sarah."


In other Avita-news, today is the 38th birthday of my good friend and Geekette Supreme, Heather! She doesn't look a day over 25, especially when she's in uniform. Happy birthday, Heather!

New ways to be offended by the Internet

Thursday, May 28th, 2009

Thanks to the Internet, (relatively) new terms have been entering the vernacular of the web. There's texting and blogging and Twitter and Facebook and Woopra and iPhones and email, just to name a few. And these new terms in turn created new terms. Blogger friends might be called "bliends". People who follow you on Twitter can be called "tweeps". Et cetera ad nauseam.

With all of this new vocabulary, it's only a matter of time until we start seeing offensive terms crop up. In order to head off the stereotypers and hatemongers at the pass, I thought I'd just go ahead and create all of these new offensive terms first. That takes away the word's power. Right?

Here's my list of new offensive, bigoted, racist, sexist terms for new media usage:

Twigger: (n) A person who uses Twitter to sound like an urban African American, whether or not this person actually is African American and/or from an urban setting.

Wopra: (adj) The situation when one's search engine stats show high traffic from keywords such as "cooking pasta", "gold chains on men", "where to buy velour", or "working in sanitation."

E-tard: (n) Electronic correspondence sent in which the sender seems to quite obviously have severe mental deficiency, whether through incorrect spelling, improper grammar, or overall failure to use sentence structure, punctuation, and capitalization.

Paki-mail: (n) Electronic correspondence received in response to any customer service query made through a corporation's website, especially when the correspondence was written or copied and pasted by someone who did not read the original query and does not have more than a basic understanding of English.

Blymie: (n) An internet journal or blog dedicated to finding examples of Anti-Semitism, no matter how far-fetched or ludicrous. Typically owned and written by someone in the jewelry, finance, or entertainment industry.

Firefags: (n) A group of individuals who are gay for Firefox.

Chinkipedia: (n) An instance where a Wikipedia page is constantly edited and censored as if subject to the whims of a communist censorship-happy government.

Cunting: (v) The act of sending a text message that dredges up past arguments between the sender and the recipient even if said arguments had already been resolved.

iHun: (n) A multimedia device that is used primarily for looking at pornography and more specifically pornography involving defecation or urination.

Blogpollack: (n) A list of blogs in the sidebar of one's blog that one doesn't actually read but lists because everyone else lists them.

Cyberspic: (n) The corner of the Internet reserved for people to post pictures of and discuss their vehicles outfitted with spoilers, sound systems, and racing gear worth many hundreds the times the value of the actual car.

Now, lest any of you think that I'm racist or prejudiced (unless you're ugly, that is), let me assure you that my goal here is to take the power of these words away by creating them before some bad person could. I'm kind of a hero.


******

In other Avita-news, thanks to those of you who listened to last night's episode of "Clearly, You're Retarded." Britt and I talked about the military and whether or not they are still fighting for our right to live the American way or if their mission has been co-opted by the military leaders to pursue a more imperialist agenda.

If you missed it, you can go here to listen to it, along with all of our archived shows. You can also download the mp3 or find us on iTunes by searching the podcasts for "retarded".

The black section?

Thursday, January 29th, 2009
Front of card

Front of card

Inside of card

Inside of card

On Monday, at Texas de Brazil, I got the above birthday card from a friend as a joke. After I read it out loud at the table, laughing, I flipped the card over to see that it's apparently from "Mahogany", which is a separate division of Hallmark.

What makes them different? Well, Mahogany is a division of Hallmark devoted exclusively to cards for black consumers. From the site:

Mahogany features more than 800 cards to help African Americans honor their relationships in innovative, compelling and culturally-relevant ways . . . Mahogany's innovative, dynamic designs and heartwarming sentiments serve as an affirmation of African-American culture and heritage.

I'm not sure how you would know this from the card. Is saying "baby" and talking provocatively something that black men do on birthdays? If I read the card in a deep Barry White voice, will it make women orgasm instantly? What makes this card black? In my opinion, it's just a farce that fosters corporate greed while SEGREGATING RACES!

Apparently, it's working, though, because Hallmark has now announced a new division of cards called Cherry Blossom. This new division would be dedicated primarily to those of Asian descent. Here are just a few of the cards that will be coming out shortly:

For Vietnamese, Korean, Middle Eastern, and Indian cultures

For Chinese, Vietnamese, Korean, Middle Eastern, and Indian cultures

For the Japanese

For the Japanese

For the Chinese

For the Chinese


In other Avitanews, my birthday was outstanding. Thank you to each and every one of you who took the time to wish me a happy birthday. I also wanted to individually thank the people who sent me a gift, a card, or who took the time to mention my birthday in a post. I'm hoping that this list is inclusive, but if for some reason I'm a total tard and I forgot you, please email me so I can rectify the situation immediately. It's not that I'm ungrateful, it's that I'm disorganized!

Thank you to:

Janelle
Poppy
NYCWD
Heather
Finn
Karl
Bethie
Sheila
RW
Grant
Liquid
Becky
Faiqa
Hilly
Sybil
Karen
Britt
Stephanie
Tracy
James

Updated to add:
Cris
Lisa
Paul

Nigger

Thursday, May 15th, 2008

"Adam, you wouldn't seriously want a black guy to be our President, would you?"

That's an actual quote from one of my uncles a few weeks ago. The thing is, I didn't grow up in an explicitly racist household. My parents had an interracial couple as some of their best friends, and my mother worked quite closely with plenty of black employees, both at her level and below her on the chain of command. But there was an undercurrent of prejudice that was constant and unwavering.

I never heard the word "nigger" from my parents. I was, however, told to be careful when driving in bad neighborhoods because "they" like to drive into you in a beat-up car and then sue the insurance company. "They" was never explained, but merely understood.

My first girlfriend, Vickie, had olive skin that I thought was gorgeous. Over at my friend Randy's house, showing her picture to his grandfather proudly, I was mortified when he and his son started mocking me for dating a "sand nigger". I didn't even know what that was, but I knew it wasn't something nice.

As a teen, I spent my summers and vacations working for a business owned by family members other than my parents. It was there that I heard "nigger" bandied about regularly, even from relatives who worked closely with many black friends. "You can't trust them." "You have to watch them like a hawk or they'll rip you off." "They're lazy and will do the work half-assed if you're not careful." I was taught these "lessons", along with phrases like "nigger-rig" and "nigger rich".

Yet, with all of this subtle and overt prejudice affecting my perspective, education, and growth, I still managed to be objective and come to my own conclusions. I'll never forget Nicole, with her great smile and gorgeous chocolate skin, holding hands as we walked down the beach that summer. And Angela, with that beautiful curly hair and intoxicating laugh. And friends who were African and Indian and Asian and Filipino and black and Jewish and Hispanic and the only thing that mattered to me was whether or not we got along.

I'm not writing this post to pat myself on the back – yay me for not being racist! No, my goal is to give a bit of hope. My parents' generation grew up with the civil rights movement. They had to change their perspective on race and prejudice during their formative years. I can't blame them for being affected by their environment and upbringing just as I was affected. However, I, and my generation, and the generation after mine, and even the one before mine, grew up with an integrated society. And maybe, just maybe, it's possible for us to become increasingly color-blind, even if raised in a color-aware environment.

If Obama gets this nomination, and I'm sure that he will, I hope that there are enough of us out there – generations of young adults who grew up in an integrated society and know that racism doesn't even make sense. I hope that we are legion enough to make a difference in November. To show my uncle and those like him that yes, we seriously want a black guy to be our President, because we want a "smart" guy to be our President, and it doesn't actually matter if he's black, white, yellow, brown, or not even a guy at all.

Big Black Fuck Ox

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007


Breaking News from the Onion. Might not be safe for work.

Thanks to liquid.