Racist Jag-Bags
By Mitch Berg
The fall of Wonkette – from moderately-readable all-over-the-place blog to vacuous giggly snarkblog distinct from “Oliver Willis” only by being…well, actually, “editor” Alex Pareene might be Oliver Willis…
…down to the corrosive racism at the very core of his stunted little excuse for a psyche.
“Michelle Malkin to Go to Iraq, Hopefully Stay” says Pareene’s (?) piece on Malkin’s “Odd Couple” trip to Iraq with disgraced former CNN chief Eason Jordan. He accompanies the “story” with a cowardly forgery within a cowardly racist forgery; the old, photoshopped “Girls Gone Wild” slag copied into a photo of a World War II Japenese internment camp. (Mount an intellectual defense of a deeply-flawed 65-year-old policy? Get your ethnic background sniggered at by “liberals”. See how this works?)
Did you know Michelle Malkin was from the Philippines? The idea seems to obsess the leftybloggers.
Michelle is going because there’s an Associated Press source in Baghdad who she thinks doesn’t exist, and, like Curt Weldon, she knows only her and some other no-name blogger can find the truth.
Oh, that’s gotta leave a mark!
But did the big-name bloggers at “Wonkette” pay much attention last time a bunch of “no-name bloggers” got the truth about the media making stuff up?
Why, no. They didn’t!
I look forward to meeting Alex Pareene at the ’08 GOP convention.
He’ll probably remind everyone that Michelle Malkin is really Philipino. Woot.
December 18th, 2006 at 8:29 am
Manzanar was an internment camp for Japanese-Americans on the West Coast. The Phillipines was an ally of the United States, thus there would be no reason for a Philipine internment camp.
While all decent Americans view Manzanar as a shamfull episode when we failed to live up to the high standards of American liberty, Michelle Mallkin wrote a book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:03 am
Yep. Had a late-night brain fade. Have corrected and elaborated.
December 18th, 2006 at 9:06 am
So Rick:
Malkin’s defense of internment (with which I disagree) justifies the deeply stupid racism with which the likes of Oliver Willis and many of the left’s other giggly fratboys attacked her, personally?
Is that your position?
December 18th, 2006 at 12:10 pm
One of the most telling, yet predictable facts I’ve gleaned from web is that wonkette is incredibly popular with DC media types.
December 18th, 2006 at 2:24 pm
My position is that Malkin’s deffence of internment means she deserves Wonkette’s ridicule in the post you sight. If you think internment, was not an obscenity, but was something for which there can be an “intellectual deffense” (even if you “disagree”, paranthetically), then I suppose you might not get the joke.
If you have other examples you need my views on, please post.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
My position is that Malkin’s deffence of internment means she deserves Wonkette’s ridicule in the post you sight.
Ah.
So if a black conservative runs afoul of the PC police for *discussing* a topic they deem decided, they would deserve to be called “uncle tom” and other racist names by liberals…
…oh, wait. That’s exactly what happens today.
If you think internment, was not an obscenity, but was something for which there can be an “intellectual deffense” (even if you “disagree”, paranthetically), then I suppose you might not get the joke.
In other words, you’re plugging your ears and going “naa naa naa”.
Calling racism a “joke” – and portraying it as the offended party’s problem if they call it “racism” – doesn’t make it anything but racism.
If you have other examples you need my views on, please post.
No, your views are perfectly clear.
Racism on the part of liberals against conservatives is perfectly fine.
Got it.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
Oh, and Rick?
Please elaborate on the scare quotes around “disagree”.
I mean, before you post about anything else.
December 18th, 2006 at 3:24 pm
1. “In other words, you’re plugging your ears and going “naa naa naa”.”
You got it. Malkin’s position deserves to be mocked then ignored. It is not the “PC police” who decided to put internment outside the bounds of reasonable debate, it is all real Americans.
There is nothing racist in either my position or Wonkette’s.
2. Please elaborate on the scare quotes around “disagree”.
In the punctuation I learned, single quotes (‘ ‘)were used as scare quotes. I used double quotes (” “) because I was really quoting your exact word. Let me be explicit. I do not think your disagreement with Malkin is feigned. I think disagreement is a accurate way to characterize your position. I also think disagreement is an entirely inadequate response to Malkin.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:01 pm
There is nothing racist in either my position or Wonkette’s.
Going “Look! She’s Philipina!” and portraying her as a “girl gone wild” as an answer to a disagreement is both racist and sexist. There is no other way to see it – and the left would see it no other way if it were aimed at anyone but a conservative pundit.
I also think disagreement is an entirely inadequate response to Malkin.
But racist, sexist, sophomoric name-calling is.
December 18th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
“If you think internment, was not an obscenity, but was something for which there can be an “intellectual deffense” (even if you “disagree”, paranthetically), then I suppose you might not get the joke.”
RickDFL you seem to have learned everything about Japanese internment from a high school history class. It is a very complicated subject and deserves a more nuanced response than to merely call it an “obscenity” and to say that Malkin’s opinion on the subject should be “mocked and ignored” — especially since I doubt you’ve read her book.
“It is not the “PC police” who decided to put internment outside the bounds of reasonable debate, it is all real Americans.”
So now RickDFL gets to define who is and who is not a “real American”?
December 18th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Mitch
1. Nothing in the Wonkette post says “Look! She’s Philipina” (see that is one of those cases where I would have used single quotes, not double). Of course, there is a picture of her and she is a Philipina and I woman, but I don’t think you want to rule all visual depictions of Phillipina women as racist and sexist.
As for ‘girl gone wild’, I can not speak for Wonkette, but it seems to me essential to the joke. Someone dumb/unserious enough to write a retrospective defense of Manzanar, is the kind of person who would mistake a real trip to Manzanar for a girls gone wild sping break vacation. It adds to the humor that the same person also seriously underestimates the current violence level in Iraq and is about to travel there.
The joke would not be as funny if the subject was Bill Bennet, a fat white guy, but it does not depend on any racist or sexists beliefs about women or Phillipinos.
So, Mitch, you are going to have to explain to me what sexist or racist beliefs the Wonkette joke relies on.
December 18th, 2006 at 8:45 pm
Terry:
I don’t remember studying internment in high school. I learned about it mostly through “Freedom From Fear” (the standard Oxford history of the Depression and WW II) and a biography of Earl Warren. Since internment was ultimately the responsibility of Earl Warren and F.D.R., two of my personal heroes, I know “it is a very complicated subject and deserves a more nuanced response than to merely call it an “obscenity””. But to be part of that discussion, someone need to see that it was an obscenity and not try to justify it.
My power to define a “Real American” is neither greater or lesser than yours or anyone else’s. If you choose to include Malkin’s position on internment as part of your circle of legitimate debate, you can. I can only make that decision for myself and try to get others to agree. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe most Americans will agree with you. Maybe America is not the country I thought it was. But the only way to find out is to try and draw the line and see what others say.
December 18th, 2006 at 10:09 pm
RickDFL-
Haven’t read Freedom from Fear. A few minutes research on the internet, however, reveals that internment by race or ethnicity was upheld by the supreme court as a constitutional response when the nation was at war. Of course the supremes did not have the foresight we have today :). My few minutes of research also revealed that the internees were mostly residents of California and that 62% were nissei, eg American citizens, while the remaining 38% were not American citizens. They had resided in America (sometimes for decades) but legally were subjects of the Emperor of Japan. The total number of internees was a bit over 100,000. Nearly 6,000 of that 62% (works out to about a little less then 10%) renounced their US citizenship during internment. Over a thousand of those requested repatriation to japan. One number I could not find was the percentage of the Nissei that were children. I think those should be removed from the total number of nissei internees for a number of reasons that, I hope, are obvious.
Starting in 1939 (no foresight was missing then!) the state department began to keep lists of foreign operatives in the US, citizens and non-citizens. Unlike the California internees they were of all races and nationalities. They were arrested en-masse a little while after Pearl Harbor and kept in special internment camps (a big one was in Texas) without benefit of legal representation or a trial. In California there were confirmed AJA ‘hardcases’, a few thousand in number, that were kept isolated in a higher security camp.
Despite what you may have heard, there was an internment camp in Hawaii. A few thousand ‘hard case’ AJA’s and issei were held there. The reason the rest of the AJA’s in Hawaii were not interned is because the entire territory was placed under martial law on Dec T 1941 and stayed under martail law for the duration of the war. Habeus corpus was suspended. The military felt that with martial law they had the tools they needed to counter any trouble executing the war that originated in the Hawaiian japanese community.
An interesting bit of history is that in sept 1946 the remnants of the disarmed japanese navy sailed into Hilo harbor on the Big Island for refueling. A rumor spread that the story of the japanese defeat had been a trick and that the Emperor was in actually the victor. A crowd of older japanese, probably issei, went to the ridge overlooking Hilo Bay and greeted the japanese fleet by cheering and waving home made japanese flags.
RickDFL, you’ve mentioned Malkin’s position on internment as being an obscenity and intellectually indefensible. What is her position, exactly? Was she for or against martial law as an alternate solution? Was internment of people who were known to be agents of the Japanese Empire before the war justified? Should they have been given a trial? Before you condemn people the way you’ve condemned malkin you should know at least as much about her position as she does.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:11 am
Rick DFL said:
Since internment was ultimately the responsibility of Earl Warren and F.D.R., two of my personal heroes, I know “it is a very complicated subject and deserves a more nuanced response than to merely call it an “obscenity””. But to be part of that discussion, someone need to see that it was an obscenity and not try to justify it.
I suggest you research the names and story of Shigenori Nishikaichi, Yoshio Harada and Irene Harada, if you want to begin to understand why your personal heroes are responsible.
I’ll give you a hint where to look: the first chapter of a certain book by a certain female of Phillipino descent.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:19 am
Mitch asked:
Did you know Michelle Malkin was from the Philippines?
Sorry Mitch, you messed that up too.
Michelle Malkin is indeed a full-blooded Phillipino; but she was born and raised an American citizen. Her parents are the immigrants.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:32 am
So, Mitch, you are going to have to explain to me what sexist or racist beliefs the Wonkette joke relies on.
My confusion about Manzanar tripped me up on the racism; the Wonkette bit isn’t. But many leftybloggers – most famously Oliver Willis – have attacked Malkin’s Philippine heritage.
However…
If I disagree with, say, Amy Klobuchar, and rather than cite specifics I merely say “She’s just a stupid bimbo”, am I being sexist? Of course.
And if I photoshop her head onto the body of a bimbo, it’s different exactly how?
December 19th, 2006 at 8:33 am
Terry:
Sounds like you approve of the internment. You do not deserve this country.
Paul:
So what? Do you think their actions justify internment.
Mitch:
If I repeatedly claimed someone was a racist, I would at least provide a spcific example.
It would depend on just what about which you disagreed with Amy. Malkin’s ideas are so far off the deep-end they deserved to be mocked.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:56 am
Malkin’s ideas are so far off the deep-end they deserved to be mocked.
Really? Which ones? I mean, specifically, not the usual generalizations. Because as you showed in your answer to Terry, you have not the faintest idea what Malkin really wrote about internment.
I have an unfair advantage; I’ve actually interviewed Malkin on the subject. So, unlike you, I have a pretty fair idea what she means.
So give me specifics, Terry.
And then tell me how “Girls Gone Wild” addresses her ideas (that was the word you used) as opposed to her being female.
As to specific examples of racism – you want examples of leftybloggers attacking Malkin with anti-asian, anti-semitic japes? You think there are none?
Care to place a little bet?
Or are you just going to rationalize them all anyway?
December 19th, 2006 at 8:57 am
Oh, and Rick? Yet again, you dodged a specific question. My Klobuchar bit.
Answer?
December 19th, 2006 at 10:28 am
1. “Really? Which ones? I mean, specifically, not the usual generalizations.”
The war-time internment on West-Coast Americans of Japanese Ancestry was not an example of racial hysteria, but was a legitimate response to a real security threat, especially as revealed by Majic intercepts.
I think the thesis is utter garbage and has been completely demolished by every legimate scholar. For more start here:
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_08_08_dneiwert_archive.html#109219067601454226
or here
http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004/09/malkin-and-historical-revisionism.html
What part of her thesis do you support or think is a legitmate subject for debate?
2. As for GGW, I posted previously.
“Someone dumb/unserious enough to write a retrospective defense of Manzanar, is the kind of person who would mistake a real trip to Manzanar for a girls gone wild sping break vacation. It adds to the humor that the same person also seriously underestimates the current violence level in Iraq and is about to travel there.”
3. I am sure there are some anti-asian posts out there, it is a big world wide web, you just keep failing to link to a single one. I am not your personal researcher.
4. I did respond on Klobuchar. It depends. There are not simple and well defined rules about what is/is not funny or when it is proper/improper to use certain properties in a joke. Just photoshoping Amy onto a bimbo to go ‘hah’ is a relatively stupid and juvenile exercise. It all depends on the context. What point would you try to make? As I explained (again) above, Malkin’s positions on interment and the relative safety of Iraq, provide a context that makes Wonkette’s picture both funny and illuminating.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Mitch wrote:
“So give me specifics, Terry”
I think you meant “So give me specifics, Rick”
But it don’t matter. No time to respond anyway. RickDFL is having my citizenship yanked so I’ve got to take it on the lam. I’m not sure who’ll take me – Canada’s out. Bahamas want too much cash. Guess I’ll convert to Judaism and go to Israel. Wait! Maybe if I defect to Cuba whoever runs that hellhole these days will put me up in style.
It’s your loss, America!
December 19th, 2006 at 1:18 pm
Terry:
You’ll love Cuba, they share your elastic concept of personal liberty.
P.S. I replied to Mitch in a post that seems to have been / lost delayed. Damm you WordPress
December 19th, 2006 at 1:36 pm
Universal health care, prisons for people who express politically unpopular ideas, state control of every public institution, government by a self-selected elite that claims to have the People’s best interest at heart. Sounds a lot more like your kind of place then my kind of place, Rick.
December 19th, 2006 at 4:23 pm
thesis is utter garbage and has been completely demolished by every legimate scholar.
Let’s allow that that’s true (something I do only grudgingly with you, since your data is usually so very wrong); how did those legitimate scholars demolish the thesis? By attacking Malkin’s gender and ethnicity?
No?
What should this tell you?
I posted previously.
“Someone dumb/unserious enough to write a retrospective defense of Manzanar, is the kind of person who would mistake a real trip to Manzanar for a girls gone wild sping break vacation
Rick, that’s just stupid. I’m sorry, there’s no better word for it. There’s no logical basis; it’s a rationalization for statements that are at best moronic and at worst corrosively sexist.
I am sure there are some anti-asian posts out there, it is a big world wide web, you just keep failing to link to a single one.
Oh. So they must not exist, right?
No, after the book came out Malkin came in for a noxious series of bitterly racist, anti-semitic attacks from a lot of prominent leftyblogs – people too ignorant to attack her thesis (she is, indeed, smarter than any of her critics) but going after her gender, her ethnicity, and her husband.
I’m at work, so it’d be unseemly to dig up links now. I’ll find some when I get home (other commenters can feel free to chime in).
Just photoshoping Amy onto a bimbo to go ‘hah’ is a relatively stupid and juvenile exercise. It all depends on the context. What point would you try to make?
that’s transparent BS, Rick. “Bimbo gone wild” says NOTHING about Malkin’s thesis. The only “context” that matters to you in rationalizing sexism (and, as I will show later, racism) is that it’s aimed at someone you disagree with.
I don’t care that you’re condoning sexism and racism. Just quit trying to gussy it up like valid rhetoric, much less a virtue.
provide a context that makes Wonkette’s picture both funny and illuminating.
If you’re a sexist and racist.
There is no other interpretation.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
Mitch:
Somewhere there is a Womyn’s Department waiting for you with open arms.
Other than repeated assertions that I am racist/sexist your post contains no argument to which I can respond.
December 19th, 2006 at 6:32 pm
“The war-time internment on West-Coast Americans of Japanese Ancestry was not an example of racial hysteria, but was a legitimate response to a real security threat, especially as revealed by Majic intercepts.”
There’s nothing in this statement (which you say is Malkin’s thesis) that is not a legitimate subject for debate. What vast reservoir of knowledge are you tapping to attempt to shutdown debate on a topic about which you (& I) know little about?
I’ve read the rebuttals pointed to by the links in your last comment and they were interesting but they raised more questions then they answered — and although they criticized her research methods and her conclusions, none of them said, as you have, RickDFL, that her thesis was not a legitimate question for debate.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:34 pm
Other than repeated assertions that I am racist/sexist your post contains no argument to which I can respond.
Cry me a river. There are plenty of things to which you can respond.
In what variety of legitimate scholarship is making sexist japes considered valid argumentation?
Set the leftyblogs’ and lefty media’s treatment of Malkin against their racist attacks against Michael Steel, the Ohio gubernatorial race, and pretty much every other time an ethnic minority and/or woman exhibits any independence from the liberal mainstream. The pattern of racist, sexist thuggery is unmistakeable.
Not saying you’re a sexist, Rick – merely that you’re rationalizing and abetting it.
December 19th, 2006 at 11:29 pm
RickDFL said:
Paul:
So what? Do you think their actions justify internment.
What I think is that you don’t know what the hell you are talking about.
December 20th, 2006 at 1:47 pm
Mitch said:
“In what variety of legitimate scholarship is making sexist japes considered valid argumentation?”
I do not think Wonkette’s picture is “valid argumentation”. I think it is a funny and illuminating joke. I said earlier I do not think Malkin deserves to be taken seriously. You want to blame me for that fine, as I said earlier, I plead guilty.
Given that I (and Wonkette) want to mock Malkin, the second question is whether it is OK to use racist or sexist tools to do so. I don’t think so. I don’t think (for the reason I outlined above) the Wonkette photo is racist or sexist. You disagree, but yet again you can not provide a reason why you think the joke is racist or sexist. Yes it treat Malkin in a mocking and demaning way, but I think Malkin’s ideas deserve to be treated as such. But nothing in the joke relies on sexist assumptions about women or racist assumptions about Asains or Phillipinos to mock or deman Malkin.
In this entire thread you have never once said how the Wonkette photo assumes or relies on a sexist or racist belief.
December 20th, 2006 at 2:56 pm
Unfortunately your game of “find the liberal racist” ignores the larger, and much funnier source of the story: the “Jamil Hussein” phenomenon sweeping the batshittier corners of the right wing blogosphere, i.e. Powerline, the Pajamas Media Posse and of course Malkin herself. Here is Eric Boehlert’s take on the subject.
December 20th, 2006 at 8:13 pm
RickDFL-
You’re aware, aren’t you, that the original photoshopped image of Malkin’s head on a bikini clad body was an attempt to smear her after she wrote a post about the tawdriness of the ‘girls gone wild’ streak in american culture. Wonkette’s post on this is here: http://www.wonkette.com/politics/michelle-malkin/michelle-you-ignorant-slut–204095.php
Notice that wonkette does not vouch for the authenticity of the picture — yet they reproduce it in the wonkette post Mitch referenced in hid original post. Also, you may not be aware of this, but in the US military and other cultures where people travel a lot in the far east, young filipina’s have a reputation (deserved or undeserved) for being easily and cheaply available as prostitutes. Still think the joke’s funny?
December 20th, 2006 at 8:43 pm
Tim66-
Eric Boehlert is a typical MM hack. He sets up a strawman — in this case the idea that ‘warbloggers’ believe everything would be just peachy in Iraq if only the AP & the insurgents weren’t working in concert to undermine the american war effort — and then he knocks it down. He also engages in a particularly nasty trick of MM in this article. This is referring not to original documents in his links, but to other MM articles that comment on the original documents. This is the equivalent of a used car salesman wanting to tell you what all those documents say before you sign rather than let you read them for yourself. Boehlert (& his comrade Ollie Willis) both have learned that a strawman only has to look strong for a few seconds before you demolish it if you’re speaking to the right audience.
December 20th, 2006 at 9:11 pm
Tim66, your post is disqualified by simply linking to Eric Boehlert, who is more interested in shooting the messengers and protecting narratives than finding out why and how the AP’s reporting was wrong.
Hell, Boehlert can’t even get a story right himself.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:03 am
Yeah, Tim? That was a swing and a miss.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:04 am
Tim:
Never ever ever introduce a new topic with these folks. Only through relentless focus on the issue at hand can you cut through wall of spin.
December 21st, 2006 at 10:49 am
Terry:
Congrats you produced an actual argument. Take note Mitch.
Sadly your arguement is not particularly good.
1. “Notice that wonkette does not vouch for the authenticity of the picture — yet they reproduce it in the wonkette post”.
That is part of the joke. Wonkette explains it in the post you tried to link to. The use of an obvious forgery is a spoof on Malkin’s overeager attempts to find forgeries in MSM reporting. Are we banning all photoshop pictures?
2. “Also, you may not be aware of this, but in the US military and other cultures where people travel a lot in the far east, young filipina’s have a reputation (deserved or undeserved) for being easily and cheaply available as prostitutes.”
So what. Some people may hold a racist / sexist belief that Phillipino woman are more likely / more willing to be prostitutes. That is a bad thing. The question is whether having such a belief or being aware of such a belief is required to get Wonkette’s joke or to think it is funny. I don’t hold such a view and I still got the joke and thought it was funny.
Put simply, there are lots of racist or sexist assumptions about blacks and women floating around in the world. That does not mean there all jokes invloving blacks or women are automatically racist or sexist. A joke is only racist / sexist if it invokes those beliefs in certain ways.
I got Wonkette’s joke and thought it was funny without ever thinking “gee, this implies Malkin is more likely to be a prostitute because she is a Philipino”. I don’t see how invoking prostitution makes the picture funny. In fact, viewing the woman in the picture as a prostitute makes it less funny, because it makes me more likely to feel sympathy for her. It detracts from the idea of a spoiled unserious vactioning party girl.
So Terry, please explain why you think the woman in the picture is a prostitute not a party girl and how that makes the picture funny.
December 21st, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Take note Mitch
When it comes to condescending, Rick, it’s best not to write checks you’re not equipped to cash.
Some people may hold a racist / sexist belief that Phillipino woman are more likely / more willing to be prostitutes. That is a bad thing. The question is whether having such a belief or being aware of such a belief is required to get Wonkette’s joke or to think it is funny. I don’t hold such a view and I still got the joke and thought it was funny.
In your heart of hearts, you might not think using the “N”-word in a joke is an especially bad thing, either. Give it a try sometime.
Leave Malkin out of the discussion for a moment. A woman says “there’s a genetic reason men get lower SAT scores than women”. You respond by saying “nice rack you got there, toots. how much do YOU charge for a lap dance?”
Joke, or ignorant, deeply stupid sexist jape?
The above differs from Wonkette’s “joke” about Malkin exactly how?
Put simply, there are lots of racist or sexist assumptions about blacks and women floating around in the world. That does not mean there all jokes invloving blacks or women are automatically racist or sexist. A joke is only racist / sexist if it invokes those beliefs in certain ways.
Ah. “Certain ways”. Nice, vague and unmeasurable.
And you’re the one condescending to me?
I got Wonkette’s joke and thought it was funny without ever thinking “gee, this implies Malkin is more likely to be a prostitute because she is a Philipino”.
Then you’re either hopelessly obtuse, ignorant, being disingenuous (because even if you leave the philipino prostitute angle out, it’s still sexist), or a bigot.
In fact, viewing the woman in the picture as a prostitute makes it less funny, because it makes me more likely to feel sympathy for her. It detracts from the idea of a spoiled unserious vactioning party girl.
Ignorance of cultural stereotypes is no excuse.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Mitch:
“Then you’re either hopelessly obtuse, ignorant, being disingenuous (because even if you leave the philipino prostitute angle out, it’s still sexist), or a bigot.”
Are you saying you can not look at Wonkette’s photo without thinking ‘Malkin is a hooker’? Seriously, what about the photo forces you to think ‘Malkin is a hooker’?
Is it Manzanar?
Is Malkin’s face? So, every time you see Malkin’s face you think, ‘Malkin’s a hooker’?
Is it Malkin’s head on a bikini clad body? So if you say Michelle in a bikini, say on the beach, you would think, ‘Malkin’s a hooker’?
Is it all women in bikinis you are forced to think of as hookers? or just Philipinos? Or just Malkin?
I have to say I find your comments deeply weird.
December 21st, 2006 at 1:39 pm
Are you saying you can not look at Wonkette’s photo without thinking ‘Malkin is a hooker’?
Are you saying you can say the “N”-word, with whatever context you have locked away in your heart, and have it not be offensive?
December 21st, 2006 at 2:44 pm
RickDFL-
“So what. Some people may hold a racist / sexist belief that Phillipino woman are more likely / more willing to be prostitutes.”
This is where we part company. I think Pareene knew precisely the cultural context of depicting a scantily clad filipina along with the the theme ‘girls gone wild’. And contrary to your assertion Pareene never admitted the photo was a forgery. He also titled the post in the link “Michelle you ignorant slut” to make sure you got the message that she was a bimbo and so her arguments were not to be taken seriously.
If you’d read the debunking posts you linked to in an earlier comment you would have seen that the debunking consists, not of painting her to be an idiot and a hater, but of the linkage she made between the Magic intercepts and internment didn’t fit the documented timeline. The historians agree that internment was a result of military commanders not wanting the issei and AJA’s near their bases and civilian officials not being willing to accept the ‘evacuees’ in their communities without being fenced in barb wire.
Both debunkers admit some interesting points: Muller says that the case for interning Muslim Americans today is far better than that for interning the japanese, and Robinson says that Malkin neglected to offer several arguments that showed that the internment was far more benign than its usual depiction in popular culture.
Pareene had no wish to use facts or debate to dilute his message that Malkin’s arguments could be safely dismissed because she was a bimbo. So that’s what he used fraud to show.
Nice people you got on your side of the debate.
December 21st, 2006 at 2:58 pm
“Are you saying you can say the “N”-word, with whatever context you have locked away in your heart, and have it not be offensive?”
1. Well some comedians can. Chris Rock / Richard Pryor / Eddie Murphy / David Chapelle all come to mind. Personally, I would never use the word in a joke, because the cost of using in inappropriately are just way too high to make it worth the risk.
2. But lets assume that all uses of ‘N’ are racist. In what world is portraying a woman in a bikini equivalent to calling a black man a ‘N’? I guess some radical feminists (or strict religous fundamentalists) might view all visual depictions of a woman in a bikini as inherently sexist or demeaning, but that view is hardly shared by a majority of people / women / feminists. I am sure neither I nor Wonkette subscribe to that view. Do you?
The ‘N’ word was invented by white people explicitly to demean black people as a group. A bikini is a revealing item of swimwear. It may be inherently frivolous (that is part of the joke), but it is not inherently demeaning of all women.
Do you find the SI swinsuit edition as offensive as a KKK rally speech?
Is Victoria’s Secret a modern day Amos and Andy?
Are the boys at Powerline sexists because they like beauty pagents?
How much can a picture reveal without being sexist or does your particular brand of feminism require a burka?
3 If not all visual depictions of women in bikinis are inherently sexist, what is it about the Wonkette photojoke you find sexist? It may not treat Malkin with the seriousness you think she is due, but that is a separate question from whether it demeans Malkin because she is a woman or demeans women generally.
Again I just find this deeply weird.
December 21st, 2006 at 3:40 pm
Terry:
1. “I think Pareene knew precisely the cultural context of depicting a scantily clad filipina along with the the theme ‘girls gone wild’.”
OK this is the part of the show where we present evidence. My evidence to the contrary is that your ‘Philipina hooker’ (expoited victim) concept directly conflicts with the ‘Girls Gone Wild’ (priviledged exploiter) concept. Plus, your concept kills the joke. What is funny about Philipino hookers at a concentration camp for Japanese-Americans? I am willing to believe you if you can provide some evidence other than you think it is so.
2. “Pareene never admitted the photo was a forgery”.
This seems damm close: “we made no claims as to its authenticity — in fact, we comically over-qualified every reference to said image so it would be extra obvious”.
3. “He also titled the post in the link “Michelle you ignorant slut””
It is an ironic reference to a very famous SNL skit with Jane Curtin and Dan Ackroyd. Google “Jane you ignorant slut”. Again there is a difference between not taking Malkin seriously and treating her is a sexist or demeaning way.
December 21st, 2006 at 4:58 pm
RickDFL-
What the?! The ‘girls gone wild’ team was here in Hawaii a few months ago looking for drunk girls to do display themselves as the photoshopped wonkette pic showed Malkin doing. What is non-sexist about the ‘girls gone wild’ theme?
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:47 am
Terry:
Just because X is sexist, does not mean that the use of X in a fictional device, like say a joke is sexist.
December 22nd, 2006 at 9:51 am
Rick,
Walk into a bar full of philipino women.
Wave the photo around.
Tell them it’s not sexist.
Get back to us.