John Scalzi is KING

I have just spent the whole afternoon reading this article and comments following it.
Highly recommended reading.
I reproduce the article below, you will have to click on this link to get to the original and the comments..

God, I love blogging.


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“Fox News Would Like To Take a Moment To Remind You That the Obamas Are As Black As Satan’s Festering, Baby-Eating Soul”
by John Scalzi

Back in the day – you know, when presidential candidates were respectably white – news organizations called potential First Ladies “wives.” But now that black folks are running, we can get all funky fresh with the lingo, yo. So it’s basically fine for Fox News to use “Baby Mama” for Michelle Obama, slang that implies a married 44-year-old Princeton-educated lawyer is, to use an Urban Dictionary definition of the term, “some chick you knocked up on accident during a fling who you can’t stand but you have to tolerate cuz she got your baby now.” Because the Obamas are black! And the blacks, they’re all relaxed about that shit, yo. Word up. And anyway, as the caption clearly indicates, it’s not Fox News that’s calling Michelle Obama “Baby Mama,” it’s outraged liberals. Fox News is just telling you what those outraged liberals are saying. They didn’t want to use the term “Baby Mama.” But clearly they had no choice.

Meanwhile, over at her personal site, Michelle “Fox News’ Ethnic Shield” Malkin defends Fox News’ use of the “Baby Mama” phrase by essentially making two arguments. First, Michelle Obama once called Barack Obama her “baby’s daddy,” and as we all know, a married woman factually and correctly calling her husband her child’s father is exactly the same as a major news organization calling a potential First Lady some chick what got knocked up on a fling. Second, the term “baby-daddy” has gone out into the common culture; heck, even Tom Cruise was called Katie Holmes’ baby-daddy, you know, when he impregnated her and she subsequently gave birth while the two were not married, which is exactly like what happened between Michelle and Barack Obama, who were married in 1992 and whose first child was born six years later.

So by Malkin’s reasoning it’s perfectly fine for Fox News to call Michelle Obama the unmarried mother of Barack Obama’s children because an entirely different phrase has to her mind entered the common culture, and there was this one time that Michelle Obama once uttered something that sounded like that entirely different phrase, which is not the phrase that Fox News used. But wait! Malkin also points to someone in her comment thread saying that one time, Michelle Obama actually used the phrase “baby daddy”! No apostrophe! It’s in a comment thread, so it must be true. Therefore, Michelle Obama apocryphally using a piece of urban slang makes it perfectly okay for Fox News to use an entirely different piece of urban slang. And that’s why, you see, it won’t be a problem for Bill O’Reilly to refer to Barack Obama as “my nigga” on the next O’Reilly Factor.

It’s shit like this that makes this story on CNN, about whether Barack Obama should be considered black or biracial, an absolute hoot. Here’s a quick test on whether Obama should be considered fully black: Poof! Barack Obama has been magically transported to a KKK meeting in deepest, whitest Klanistan without his Secret Service detail. There’s a rope and a tree nearby. What happens to Obama? If you say, “why, Barack Obama walks out of there alive, of course” then sure, he’s biracial. Also, you’re a fucking idiot. To everybody who cares about Obama’s racial identity, either positively or negatively, the man is a black man, married to a black woman, who has black children. Black black black black black black black black.

It sure as hell matters to Fox News, which is why it’s dog whistling about Barack so loudly that it’s vibrating the windows. Calling Michelle Obama a “baby mama” isn’t just Fox News having a happy casual larf; it’s using urban slang to a) remind you the Obamas are black, b) belittle a woman of considerable personal accomplishment, and c) frame Barack Obama’s relationship to his wife and children in a way that insults him, minimizes his love for and commitment to his family, and reinforces stereotypes about black men. Someone at Fox News just ought to call Barack Obama “boy” at some point so we can have all the cards right out there on the table.

This will keep happening. Fox News will keep finding ways to remind its viewers that the Obamas are black (and possibly Muslim), Michelle Malkin will continue to make excuses for Fox News’ dog-whistling racism that expose the fact that she’s about as familiar with logical thinking as a rainbow trout is with knitting, and eventually some portion of the Fox News audience will get to the ballot box in November convinced that they’re not really racists, they just know that there’s something about that Obama boy they just don’t like. This is how it will go. Let’s not pretend it’s not part of equation, this election year.

Michelle Obama speaks...let's listen...

let them bake cake...

this article has to be the most offensive thing i have read online from a mainstream uk newspaper all year.

at this moment, all i can think is "heck, i sure is glad i is no wife of a presidential candidate". they would have me applying tons of skin lightener liberally all over my body and bigging up the fact that my parents are from ghana "no slave descendent in sight here" - ohhh lordy.

kudos to michelle for riding this storm. as far as i can tell it is only gonna get worse.

this section in particular made me sooo mad, i reached for the keyboard and starting typing furiously:

Race is the wild card, the great unknown, of this election. Like the golfer Tiger Woods (and to a lesser extent Colin Powell), Obama transcends race. He is the post-racial candidate, not black but African-American in its literal, not politically correct, sense. The son of a Kenyan father and a white American mother, he is not descended from slaves, nor was he shaped by the struggle for civil rights.

Indeed, if he, like Woods, had married a white woman, the question of his race might never have arisen. But he didn't. He married Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, product of the historically black south side of Chicago, whose father worked in the city's water department, whose ancestors were slaves, whose family roots are in the deep south, in South Carolina.

Her ability took her to Princeton, a venerable white Ivy League university. "No matter how liberal and open-minded some of my white professors and classmates try to be, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus, as if I really don't belong," she wrote in her final- year thesis. "It often seems as if, to them, I will always be black first and a student second." No matter that these words were written almost a quarter of a century ago, when she was just 21, the essay has resurfaced in this election year.

Rightly or wrongly, it has cemented an image of a woman who, for all her success in life as a lawyer and hospital administrator, remains prickly and resentful, in a way that her husband is not. In this internet age, one thing has inevitably led to another, including the unsubstantiated allegation that she once railed in a speech at the evils perpetrated by "whitey".

hello!!
lights on and no-one home?

obama transcends race? what are you saying? that no-one notices that obama is black? if he had a white woman hanging off his arm, race would never have entered the discourse? give me a BREAK! (michelle, you know you are just *too* black. obama is this pleasant coffee-colour, no, milky coffee. we like him. he reminds us of the great american dream, but you honey, you are just too dark...). so, really, no one notices tiger woods or colin powell's colour because they have white partners? does that work in reverse too? (hey whoopi, you know when you were dating ted danson everyone forgot about your pesky dark skin!!!)

african-american in its literal not politically correct sense? what the hell does that mean?

michelle remains "prickly and resentful" because of something she wrote when she was 21? i was thinking she simply expressed her opinion - you know - free speech? but maybe, when you are a black woman, you need to think about the future consequences of writing something quite so honest as "i feel i don't really belong" before you open your mouth? i think we are comfortable with hillary clinton talking about glass ceilings though. she has such a nice smile...


and that neat little reminder of the "whitey" comment (it is of course, unsubstantiated, but let's publish an article about michelle obama with the word "whitey" in it anyway, just to continue perpetuating that myth).

the saving grace of the article is the section at the end which gives michelle some advice about how to rebuild her image for the united states:

Inevitably, the rebranding has begun. Last week, Michelle was a guest co-host on a popular TV talk show, recounting how she cooked bacon for breakfast and didn't like wearing tights. Soon she will be visiting servicemen's families, appealing for better care for veterans, dutifully wrapping herself in the Stars and Stripes. Above all, perhaps, she must throttle back – just as Hillary Clinton was obliged to do in 1992, after she had outraged male supremacists by defending her career choices with the remark: "I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas." Right now, a little more cookie baking would also suit Michelle Obama fine...

yup - if i am ever blessed with a daughter, i'm gonna ensure that i make good the mistakes that my mother made with me - teaching me to go to university and get a degree, what was she thinking?
sharon junior will bake the meanest chocolate chip cookies you have ever tasted...maybe just maybe, she will be accepted as a nice woman (whose colour we don't notice).




Full article:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/rupert-cornwell/rupert-cornwell-out-of-america-851910.html

Woman = White, Black = Man

I am really pleased to have come across this article online which reminded me of the weird feeling I had during the Clinton-Obama duel over which one would eventually become the presidential candidate for the Democrats.

Obviously, I somehow successfully supressed it...I certainly didn't blog about it.
Yet, in the blog article linked above (I'm also adding the sister's blog to my favourite links on the right) Aishah Shahidah Simmons sums that weird feeling up so beautifully in one sentence: "I’m struck by the fact that in 2008, woman is still equated with White and African-American is equated with man…"

I remember reading articles and participating in discussions which invariably some contributor would state: "Obama has the Black vote, Hillary has the women's vote" and I would be mystified.
I mean - what kind of statement is that? And right now, I am remembering it was a Black woman who said it.

Being a Black Woman is obviously still a strange phenomena...

The Obama Doll

What is wrong with this picture?




Links to the story:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,558768,00.html (english)
http://www.sueddeutsche.de/panorama/artikel/749/179200/ (german)

It is genuinely a shame that the toymaker's attempt to honour Obama (I will take his words at face value) are so seriously backfiring...at least in the minds of people who know about the dangers of perpetuating racist stereotypes.
I have been reading article after article and have yet to come across any journalist who has anything more to say on the subject other than "it doesn't look like him very much does it?"

Well, no it bloody doesn't. But it does look very much like a random black doll dressed in a suit - the sole identifying features being the fuzzy hair, prominent lips, wide nose and vague childlike expression - oh yeah, and the non-white skin (oh, does it remind you of this http://www.sarottimohr.com/Mohren.htm too?)

Should we be upset about this? ('We' is broadly phrased to include everyone who might think this is offensive - the comments at the end of the article in German are a breath of fresh air).

I asked a few friends of mine, cause I thought to myself "ahh hang on... you is overreacting again. And the guy *meant* well..."

Here some responses:

"oh my GOD! What the FUCK!
I think it's so off the deep end. Is there a Sarkozy doll or a Merkel doll out there?
It wouldn't be so bad if it actually did resemble barack but this black Sambo job is just disgusting and insulting."

"very bad! very very bad & insulting"

"this guy is taking the piss!"


It is true that actually, there are other dolls of politicians...

http://www.presidentpuppets.com/

http://www.talkingpresidents.com/products.shtml

And the toymaker has made dolls of Angela Merkel, Princess Diana, the Pope among others. Yet - here is the thing - the other dolls do not rely on stupid race-based stereotypes. They couldn't afford to do that - they would all end up looking exactly the same.

Whereas toymaker admits "To create a new doll head from scratch would have cost about $45,000, and that would have made my dolls way too expensive, even as collector items. We've opted for an off-the-shelf black doll's head, making it affordable for customers."

http://abcnews.go.com/International/Story?id=5053396&page=1


Off-the-shelf black doll's head for the first ever Black presidential candidate of the USA. That just about sums it up.



Afterthought:
By the way - the Princess Di doll at 179 € is far more expensive than Obama at 139 €...I'm just saying...

http://www.deutsche-klassiker.de/beruehmtheiten/index.php