2018 What Is Racist and Offensive?

I just watched the new Dave Chappelle Netfilx special Equanimity, and it is brilliant, but no one needs me to tell you that Dave Chappelle is brilliant. He answers the recent criticisms against past jokes about transgender people eloquently and with more jokes and hopefully that community forgives him and understands him better.

Earlier today I challenged a friend of mine who is a very responsible gun owner about the shooting of Philando Castile and the excellent NPR podcast about his case 74 Seconds

I wondered why the NRA didn’t defend Castille. I believe it is because the NRA is racist.

Here is an excellent article filled with nothing but facts and history that I believe backs up this view The Secret History of Guns

Then I pushed my luck and showed him this Chappelle clip.

He responded that he felt the clip was racist against whites – OK now we’re about to have some fun, because I’m open to that argument.

He also said Chappelle had no evidence for this type of police discrimination, and admittedly it is an anecdotal joke, but Dave also has 44 years of life as a black man to back him up.

You see it is the sad fact that our current president Donald Trump is a racist and white supremacist. I highly recommend this article, which points at the current administration as a backlash against our first black president. The very classy Barack Obama. The First White President

Now Donald Trump election was helped by a man named Steve Bannon who has a supposed news site called Breitbart, and he has this movement called the alt-right and it is their tricky strategy to be white and offended and claim that they have been treated racially insensitive. They do their best to use the first amendment against believers in the first amendment by using it to help foment their racism and mock the politically correct. They think they are very clever – they aren’t they’re just awful.

Personally, go ahead. I supported the ACLU defending the Skokie Nazi march even though it made me sick.

My real view on racism in America is the following and Charles Barkley just said it and Dave Chappelle just reiterated it, but Bob Dylan said it over 50 years ago in Pawn in Their Game. It’s not about black or white it’s about rich or poor – it’s about green!

A South politician preaches to the poor white man
“You got more than the blacks, don’t complain
You’re better than them, you been born with white skin, ” they explain
And the Negro’s name
Is used, it is plain
For the politician’s gain
As he rises to fame
And the poor white remains
On the caboose of the train
But it ain’t him to blame
He’s only a pawn in their game

But let’s let it fly for a second. Is the Chappelle nerdy white voice offensive? Maybe a little although he is imitating a man who he says is his friend. But is it anywhere near as offensive as this and does Chip have the economic and racial history of these people.

Here is a summary of Dave’s likely response. “Chappelle begins Deep in the Heart of Texas by saying that “Texas is “pretty damn good,” but mentions that he did get a banana peel thrown at him by a white guy in Santa Fe – “not to indict the whites, not to profile … I’m just sayin’.” Dave says the “Bananagate” attack was premeditated – “you could tell, because the peel was too brown. He didn’t eat that s—t recently.”

Dave later circles back to “Bananagate,” revealing that the man who threw the banana peel at Chappelle got arrested again for throwing another banana at another guy in a bar.

“And, that guy was black too,” Chappelle said. “I’m just sayin’.” Chappelle said that the culprit said he threw the banana because he said Chappelle was racist.

“So? That’s not the best way to handle that if I am racist,” said Chappelle. “What if Martin Luther King just went around throwing tuna casserole on white people, would that work?”

I recently told a friend. He could say anything he wanted about the Jews, which I am, but never to mess with American Blacks to me because the Jews have stuck up for their own, we sort of have mixed in and we’re sort of out of the woods, but that if he said anything with a slur towards American Blacks I’d kick his ass.

As for Native Americans, as Dave Chappelle did in a famous bit earlier. If there were any of them left I’d stick up for them too!

That’s how you wind up with someone like me. I idolize Malcolm X. I think the greatest book I’ve ever read was Alex Haley’s The Autobiography of Malcolm X. Malcolm X evolved. At his death, Malcolm X was still a little anti-Semitic, but in my defense I think Malcolm admired the Jews because he wanted his people to look out for each other and gain economic power in the same way. He still was a bit anti-Semitic and his former organization the Nation of Islam is still very anti-Semitic.

Here’s the philosophy I have chosen it’s hate vs love. I choose love even if I get shot like MLK, JFK, RFK, or John Lennon. I just wish I had loved like JFK (sorry too tempting – Marilyn Monroe was really beautiful and sexy and I’m a feminist).

Now in Do the Right Thing Radio Raheem winds up dead due to Hate and in fact Spike Lee yells “Hate” as he throws the trash can through the Sal’s Pizzeria window.

Now that kind of love and hate is common. If I love you I love you, but if I hate you I hate you! It’s often accompanied by he treats his friends and family very well, and indeed my grandfather’s only advice to me ever was, “Stop worrying about the world. Take care of your family. Take care of your own.” Now that is how the racial brotherhood usually works.

Paul Ryan and his type always talk about how they love Ayn Rand and supposedly Ayn Rand never lost an argument. The sad thing is hate and selfishness is a dominant strategy. You can have a ton of people loving and sharing with each other but if enough greedy assholes want to they can fuck it up for everyone, and usually they do this by using race to acquire wealth. That’s why I’m always for the poor no matter how bad they act, because the world is run by money and they don’t have any. Sounds like Jesus doesn’t it.

No one has perverted the message of Jesus more than Donald Trump and he swears the bible is his favorite book, but I challenge him to go on television and take a fifth grade christian private school bible test, because you know he’d flunk.

There is no man alive today who is less like Jesus than Donald Trump.

Jesus often talked about military superiority! Nobody realizes that Muslims believe in Jesus too. The Jews? Well no one likes us, let’s move on.

As to comedy my usual line is anything goes and it’s intent that matters. I like to say only be offended if the intent was to offend you. Well, I’ve been offended by the alt-right and they think it’s funny. I don’t. It’s not a game.

Calling people cucks doesn’t make you Lenny Bruce.

When it comes to comedy I’ll support your right to say whatever you want. I’ll likely judge you on it though so you better do a better job than Kramer did.

One joke that I totally supported and was outraged at the outrage was when Sarah Silverman went on Conan O’Brian and told a joke about trying to get out of jury duty. The punch line was that she wasn’t a racist, but wanted to get out of jury duty so she said “I love chinks!” Now she clearly wasn’t trying to pass on racial hate to Asians. Only be offended if you mean to be offended. Also do jury duty as Doug Stanhope says it is the most power you will ever have.

Should OJ have walked? No, but as Chris Rock sort of said “I understand.”

If you say something with love and good intent you are OK. If you are an adult and you say something awful among a group of people and you know it is awful and you are mocking it’s awfulness it’s OK. If you are Steve Bannon and you are partying with a guy I find equally as crazy and you say to Ben Carson “What do you call a black brain surgeon?” and he laughs and answers “nigger” it is probably not OK. It’s not hard to tell.

Why are these alt-right people trying to speak in Berkeley so badly? Because they want to cause violence from the other side and call them first amendment hypocrites. I don’t know the answer, but it’s a really expensive joke for our police departments to have to enforce and protest.

Learn the true history and make an educated decision.

For a long time I’ve had a joke about what my movie rules are and for a long time it was no southerners and no retards. I’ve never seen Forrest Gump. Now I wasn’t trying to be insensitive to anyone and now you are going to hell if you say the word retard, but I was simply stating that most movies about the mentally handicapped like The Other Sister are horrible and demeaning to us all.

As for the word retard, I answer with George Carlin’s incredibly written shell shock routine.

I never say redneck though and it would have probably been wrong if I had. Since then I’ve seen great TV shows like Justified and changed my mind.

But as for those who were infamously called deplorables by Hillary Clinton, they still have a lot to answer for. Roy Moore the craziest person in the world almost got elected Senator!!

Look I feel for poor whites, but in a world that has been dominated by rich white men since the beginning of history, you have to face it they just haven’t helped themselves at all. They can either join the rest of the world or reform the Klan and they have seemingly opted to do the latter and I understand. The age of the white man is ending and they are dying out. So I understand their rage and now that they are becoming a minority the rules are changing. But if you are poor and white please stop electing rich whites who don’t care about you. They don’t. The Republican party as currently constituted even if there are brilliant conservatives within it are either rich, bigoted or evangelical Christians and the former two are being used by the first one because there are not enough rich white males to win even the electoral college.

Now I’ve brought religion into it and everyone is offended. Fine, I admit it – I’m racist against poor, religious, southern whites. I admit it. I can’t help it. It’s all I’ve ever known in my life. I went to my friend’s wedding in Virginia in 1992 and they were still having arguments about the civil war. They all voted for Trump and he doesn’t care about them. Call me a racist but is there anyone as stupid in American history as the poor southern white man?” I’ve even heard conspiracy figures claim that poor whites in the days of slavery were jealous of the slaves because they had a steady gig. Daniel Carver of the KKK was on Howard Stern for years yelling “Wake up White People” and I agree! Was George Wallace a racist? George Wallace would have said anything to anyone to get elected. If he had an entire black constituency, he’d have paid through the roof to have Otis Redding at his speeches. In the meantime, thank God for the Southern Poverty Law Center!

Still, I do not use the word redneck or cracker very much if at all. So yeah I agree right now there has been a lot of racism towards poor Southern whites, but they also need to stop deserving it. I don’t know how to solve that other than the following from the best political movie I have ever seen Bullworth.

Barack Obama is not a Muslim! Someone besides John McCain needs to say it on that side of the aisle, and if he were what of it?

I have used the word faggot and regret it. I never understood what it meant when I was young. Eventually, I was transferred to San Francisco. There is also some really funny, Eddie Murphy material from the ’80s that is really uncomfortable know about gays. He probably regrets it, but then again he made a lot of money from it too.

Is this funny? I laughed at it when I saw it live in 1982. It was probably hurtful. Maybe it’s both funny and hurtful. You have to be careful.

Eddie could probably somehow rework it now and make it still funny but not hurtful, but he won’t for a variety of reasons.

Here is gay humor I don’t find offensive but I’m not gay. Opinions are welcome.

I asked Norm in 2007 why Will Farrell was doing his Harry Carey voice and Norm said it was because he loved it and just asked him to do it.

Gay humor is tough, because a lot of men aren’t homophobic, but like to tease each other about it. Gays have made tremendous progress in my life. I don’t know the answer, but I know it’s a lot better except in Alabama.

Here is the best thing I’ve seen on the subject by the disgraced Louis CK

Charles Barkley finally heard the Dylan song: “All politics is rich people screwing poor people. Poor people are too stupid to know they’re just chess pieces in a game. All the poor white people, all the poor black people, all the Hispanics, they’re in the same boat. They got no economic opportunities … they spend all their time blaming each other because rich people throw words at them like, illegal immigration, and racism and things like that. If poor people ever get smart, and realize like, ‘We should band together, rise up, instead of fighting each other,’ we probably can make a difference.”

The poor whites should import the poor blacks from the North and team up and change the world and end the hate.

Here are a few personal anecdotes.

I was in Europe, Paris to be exact, and a friend and I met two girls one from India and one from Eastern Europe and had dinner. My friend isn’t a racist really but he likes to say racist things for shock value or I don’t know why actually. So he said something bad and I said sarcastically “racist much?”. We got into a huge argument about it later. He claimed I was wrong by calling him a racist. I said I wouldn’t have to if he stopped making me look bad by saying racist things. Being racist is worse than calling someone a racist, although there are plenty of people who will argue that point in 2018.

After it happened, the Eastern European girl admitted she only knew one racist joke and I told her she could tell it. It turned out to be a not very funny holocaust joke about the ash tray of a Volkswagen. Now it made me a little sad, but I wasn’t pissed. How can I be pissed when she told it to someone who was so obvious Jewish and hadn’t a clue. She just needed to be educated she wasn’t evil. It’s scary though.

Many people laugh at this and don’t realize it was written and performed by an Orthodox Jew.

OK, there it is another cheap joke against Southern Whites. I agree but these people need to stop watching Kirk Cameron argue Charles Darwin and join the real world or become like the Amish. I don’t have any answers, I just know they are being used by televangelists and politicians who are making a fortune off of them.

This other Jewish guy I know started to have open mic nights at a German Hall and Pub in Cleveland. One day I was there with four other comics and they were, of course, all Jewish. She was drunk and upon hearing it was an open mic night said she knew a joke and did the grossest “Jew boy” joke I’ve ever heard. It was gross, but again I wasn’t pissed – she was pissed (Drunk).

This may be apocryphal, but supposedly a Jewish comedian brings a group of Germans to a comedy club in Los Angeles and they love it and one says, “how come we don’t have this in Germany?” and is told, “because you killed them all.” Is that funny or offensive or both. Depends on how true it is. Right now there may be less racism and antisemitism in Germany than there is in Alabama.

My main point is you can tell hate when you see it. If you wind up paying for hate and don’t like it leave. Other than that I’m with Joan Rivers here.

In any case, I’m open to discussing anything with anyone, especially in person.

Sadly, today we live in a world where people are internet brave. Behind a computer, they are scary as hell. In person, they do the same thing as two guys who say you want to step outside? They either shut up or if they go outside they usually decide to throw their shots in the air and drop it, but sometimes they fight. There is no progress with internet trolling only damage and I’ve been drawn in and I hope I can resist it in 2018. If you find one just call them despicable once and let it go. They want attention don’t give it to them.

Hopefully, when the women all take over in 2018, we won’t have an animal farm situation. Equal should mean equal.

Finally some thoughts on the word nigger.

My mother loves Dr. Laura, who I hate because she isn’t a real psychologist her degree is in like gym or something and all she does is tell idiots the obvious. “I have four young kids an abusive boyfriend and a heroin problem what should I do?” Do you really need a doctorate to answer that question? Then this happened?

My mom tried to defend her but I wouldn’t have it. Why does Dr. Laura want to say that word so badly?

The real question is should blacks and black comics use it and I’ve read about this and thought about it a lot.

I even read this book by a Harvard professor which was very good.

Nigger: The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word is a 2002 book by Professor Randall Kennedy of Harvard Law School about the history and sociology of the word “nigger”.

Now in the early ’60s, Lenny Bruce tried to use it.This is Dustin Hoffman, Bruce would be better but I couldn’t find it in any good form.

Well, it was an interesting idea but taking the power out of those words didn’t work.

That’s why Do the Right Thing is the least racist movie ever made and why the one who did the right thing, was actually Sam Jackson’s character!

In the 70’s Richard Pryor and Paul Mooney tried to claim the word for blacks and use it with pride.

Most famously they did it in an SNL sketch with Richard Pryor and Chevy Chase with a word association test during a job interview