Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
I don’t have the Google Image Search (GIS) skills needed to find a shot of Sheri Doub in her red bikini. I’m either not bright enough, or I don’t have the right aptitude…or the picture is simply not available. And I’m not alone in this deficiency, judging by my Siteminder referrals. Hit after hit after hit, The Blog That Nobody Reads hosts an inquisitive visitor combing through the world wide web in search of Sherry Doub’s swimsuit picture…and apparently still unsatisfied.
I do not know if I’m missing something. And I do not know if this image remains so well-hidden. But I do know this: I can’t find the cartoon. I can find lots and lots of people instructing me and countless others to come to the conclusion that the cartoon is racist.
Without showing it to us.
Why? More importantly, how? With what kind of befuddled, gullible readers are these pundits accustomed to dealing?
Racist the cartoon may be. But whoever directs me to think such a thing, without showing me the evidence, represents are far greater societal problem.
We’ll just have to wait to see if the cartoon surfaces in the next couple days. It will be small consolation if & when it finally does.
What incredible nerve.
Update: Here it is.
Which I suppose might get some folks in a froth. Three criminals are shown; all three, it would appear, are black. Okay, some people find that offensive and racist. Point one: Why do I need to go looking for this? People find the cartoon offensive, and that is somehow “news”; the cartoon, itself, is not? How can it not be, if the conclusion drawn from it, is? And point two: Are those frothy people, going to get so frothy about this…
Before the movie spun, the motion picture industry had inserted a one minute infomercial on the evils of movie piracy and intellectual theft. To make their melodramatic point, they showed a criminal stealing a cell phone….Of course, in the pre-movie infomercial, all three criminals were white men. Which got me to thinking. In the make believe land of movies, television, and commercials, if there is a heinous crime to be committed, 99.9% of the time, it’s now going to be done by a white guy. In fact, it has to be done by a white guy.
Political correctness and the fear of offending, or worse yet, getting sued or picketed, is such, that you will no longer see blacks, Hispanics, most minorities, or even women for that matter, commit a fictional crime. No. Hollywood and the ad agencies have decided that criminal activity on film is now the sole domain of the “too successful for his own good” white male. [emphasis mine]
Maybe the shock value isn’t due to our moral sensibilities about skewed representations; maybe it’s due to our own skewed perspective about what’s normal. Criminals in movies, ads, cartoons — must be white male. And we’re just not used to seeing anything different.
Or, the guy who drew the cartoon could really be racist. But that brings us back to my original question: If you can’t spare the space for the cartoon itself, how can you spare the space to report on people getting all peeved about it, and telling your readers what to think about it?
Here and here and here and in the link up top…they just can’t quite seem to spare the column-inches to reproduce the cartoon itself. Just lots of huffing and puffing about how awful it is.
Update: Sheer coincidence, last month Neal Boortz had a similar observation to make.
I’m just waiting for the day when some home alarm company … ADT, for instance … actually has the nads to put an ad on television that shows a family being threatened by a black intruder. Have you noticed that the intruders — the people trying to break into those homes — are always white?
Boortz didn’t manage to channel much populist passion behind his little observation there, nor do I suspect he had much expectation that he would.
And yet, we’re supposed to take to the streets with pitchforks and torches in hand, up to the offices of St. Mary’s Today. Because three criminals were depicted, and all three were black.
The double-standard is somewhat offensive, but not nearly so much as this notion of journalistic elites instructing the commoners when to get offended about things, and when not to be offended — without taking the initiative to show us what’s offensive.
Update: Some more on the unfortunate Ms. Doub. Still no picture. Sorry, web-hunters.
Sheri Doub was a manager at the Citizen’s Tri-County bank on Signal Mountain. She was fired allegedly for posing in a bikini in the Lifestyle section of the Chattanooga Times-Free Press newspaper…She says everything was fine, until a picture of her appeared in the Chattanooga Times Free Press Lifestyle section in May 2005. It was part of a story on the beginning of summer and new styles in swimwear for 2005. Doub says she was fired the following day, when the bank’s president hand delivered her a termination letter and she was escorted her out of the building.
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