The dogs bark, the caravan goes on. Go on, Bill. They’re idiots.

Posted by: Lupin | Oct 31 2006 6:59 utc | 4

As often, I agree with annie.

Posted by: citizen | Oct 31 2006 7:18 utc | 6

Apologies for the lack of editing, its late, I am tired and i learned my lesson.

Posted by: Fiat Lux | Oct 31 2006 7:35 utc | 8

Is’nt Billmons use of blackface (here) ment to be ironic? Is’nt blackface an exclusively white culture phenomena, ment to charicature black culture according to white culture notions of superiority vs subordinatation? And is’nt the point of the satire itself to illustrate metaphorically Wolfie’s willful subordination to the Lynn Cheney — a white culture charicature of himself on right wing national television. Billmon simply illustrated the equation in black and white, the language anyone, especially white people, should’nt miss. The joke is’nt that Wolf is made to look black, its that he’s a white man being made to look black. If anything, Billmons picture is reverse race baiting. The proof is in baiting the wingnuts into talking back using liberal arguments. Most amusing.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 31 2006 8:19 utc | 10

Thanks anna missed
I was waiting for someone to spell it out for the benefit of any irony-deficient or just plain ignorant readers out there, whom may or may not know who they (themselves)are..lol
Geez, it must have a bit of truth to it, that Americans really don’t do Irony.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 31 2006 8:36 utc | 12

Politically incorrect:
You are right to see that capitalism works best, but not always. The problem with Modern capitalism is that of an imbalanced playing field.
Its not really capitalism, any way, that works so well, its free contract system that works well. But only when the bargaining is done on a level playing field.
From 1776-1862 the bargaining field was level in the United States, except for where slavery occured of course. During those years the bargaining field between contracting parties was largely level. Antibellum northern U.S. had the broadest distribution of wealth in history. That gave rise to a large middle class that eventually reached a critical mass. At that point morality became important in politics and slavery became doomed. Morality is a middle class characteristic – when morality declines the middle class feals threatened, and the first reaction, is to legislate morality to stem the loss.
But that’s an aside.
The point is capitalism only works where there is a level playing field between bargaining units. Prior to the civil war, the bargaining field was level, perhaps even with a slight edge to wage earners as they could always opt to head for the fronteer and become a self employed farmer for almost no money down.
In 1862 came the invention of the modern, limited liability corporation. That changed everything, and gave birth to the gilded age, the age of the robber barons, the large corporations, and massive inequalities in the distribution of wealth. Socialism, Communism, and Unionism is one of many attempts to try to deal with this problem. The real solution lies in the Japanese model of worker primacy as a proxy for shareholder primacy. Japanese frims chased corporate America into a post industrial society – using ‘company’ unions augmented by widespread employee tennure.
Nothing wrong with capitalism, or free contract – provided that there’s a level playing field.

Posted by: Tim Kane | Oct 31 2006 10:06 utc | 14

I thought it was very funny and the caption too.
And if its offensive, presumably Blalk folks would be the most offended. So now its right-wingers shedding tears for offended Black folks. Thats enough to get Black folks very nervous & suspicious.
I think its more than a little condescending to assume that Blacks cannot on their own absorb this cartoon in its context, laugh it off & move on.
Right-wingers are probably also pissed becaause they know they would not be allowed to get away with stuff like this.
Its all in the context.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 31 2006 10:39 utc | 16

See this is what happens when those demopublicans come into the bar. They bring their hackneyed rhetoric with them.
I used to wonder if the blanket denuciation of all race oriented or gender specific language by those liberals slightly to the left of the neo-cons (eg the amerikan democratic party) wasn’t a deliberate attempt to drown out the noise of sensible, well targetted, deconstructions of communication by making the process a laughing stock to all reasonable people. Which is what has happened.
Then maybe the slightly left of neo-con liberals will be free to tell a ‘good’ joke over a beer once more. Which is starting to happen.
But that is giving unimaginative people too much credit for imagination.
It is more likely that what we are witnessing is rather less conspiratorial and more pathetic than any grand plan.
The people who complained about Billmon’s imagery can’t really understand the way language oppresses people but they have been told it does. This means that whether they actually believe in it or not, they must seem to.
Therefore they decry all metaphors which feature race or gender specificity.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 31 2006 13:24 utc | 18

its funny because it’s true
What is true?
That Wolf Blitzer is a fawning sychophant? Well, yes, that much is true.
But what about the other half? The stereotype of the “dumb slave”? Is that true? Were slaves really dumb, ignorant, lazy make-up wearing (all adjectives which neatly fit Blitzer) bowing, scrapping sychophants?
Because if you believe that “stereotype” (I’m being nice here) then you are on a slippery slope to being the kind of person who will say that European Jews “deserved” to be murdered because they were so “passive” (which is a lie–Jews in Europe were NOT passive).

Posted by: Sunrunner | Oct 31 2006 14:08 utc | 20

Just out of curiosity. Has everyone who has been critical of billmon about his Howlin Wolf photoshop been over to ESPN to express outrage over Brian Kinchen’s remarks about caressing the football being “kinda gay?”
Which media outlet has the wider audience?
And remind me, do gays still get bashed in this country?
Anyway. Links to your posts on Kinchen would be nice.

Posted by: Porco Rosso | Oct 31 2006 14:22 utc | 22

When I say liberal, all I mean is someone whose politics are based more on pity than pride, and therefore sympathizes with the weak or unfortunate more than the powerful or fortunate.
I think that might fit the classic radical definition of what a liberal is. That is one who is identified more with their social place of privelege (which is why you have to chose between pity or pride) rather than identifying the problems of the “workers” (slaves!!!) as your own.
A Liberal bestows alms but does nothing to change the balance of power (conservatives happen to be right about this characterization). A radical or a progressive is more conscerned with upsetting/changing/reforming the balance of power that maintains the status quo which benefits liberals and conservatives alike.
But that is only my take: I would love to learn more of Billmon’s ideas on this.

Posted by: Sunrunner | Oct 31 2006 14:32 utc | 24

“When I say liberal, all I mean is someone whose politics are based more on pity than pride, and therefore sympathizes with the weak or unfortunate more than the powerful or fortunate.”
Does that explain why conservatism is animated solely by contempt? Conservatism is based on pride and therefore sympathizes with the powerful and fortunate?
I guess it explains Limbaugh’s place in the firmament.
If you can afford the oxycontin baby, flaunt it.

Posted by: Porco Rosso | Oct 31 2006 15:18 utc | 26

Sunrunner,
You are simply repeating your case without responding to the way people here are actually reading Billmon’s post. I will make a provisional translation of your message:
“Shut up. White supremacist. Shutup. Shut up!”
Hard to engage with that sort of thing, because it’s not at all clear that you mean to speak to anyone here with respect. Worse, you seem to think that Blitzer is being called out for being ignorant and lazy, when instead he is being accused of being servile and treacherous to the rest of his class – the middle one.
In short, you seem to think that
• none of this is political
• that racism and all its evils arise from bad opinions and not bad politics,
• and that strong images should all be surrendered unilaterally to bad politics.
Should we surrender a tool clearly handed to us by the discredited past, a tool that identifies how falsely TV imagines us?
And that’s what blackface minstrel imagery and words are, a mask that now shows what it once tried to cover – that the so-called bad behavior of the underclass is a stage creation, a propaganda show bought and paid for by those who would be our masters.
The question is whether we will be slaves or free, whether we will accept Blitzer’s servile burlesque of a wage slave. Whether Blitzer has bought himself any safety with his burlesque. As you seem to be aware in other contexts, the blackface white minstrel was always a political hammer. So, why do you object to turning those tools to the purpose of freedom? Or is freedom just something for museums and history? Not something to win with the tools history provides?
How would you portray Blitzer’s complicated dance of slavishness?
To me what you seem to reject is the acknowledgment that we still have to worry about becoming slaves, about betraying those we might otherwise love in order to avoid being tortured ourselves. This is today’s battle, and a hard one to face.
I sympathize. But don’t tell us to shut up. It doesn’t help.

Posted by: citizen | Oct 31 2006 15:26 utc | 28

First off, I am not telling any one to shut up, nor am I calling Billmon a white supremicist. Please don’t do an O’Reilly or a Coulter and attribute words and thoughts to me which I do not own.
I would like to draw your attention to this.

I have an unpleasant confession to make. I am a Southerner. Born in the south of southern parents, with Confederate veterans and slaveowners on both sides of the family tree. For all I know, there may even be a few Klansman hanging in the lower branches as well — by their necks, I hope.
I’m also, in some deep subterranean sense, a racist — for one cannot grow up in the world of my childhood and not be marked by its imprint. Believe me, I know: I’ve spent my entire life trying to get away from it.
Intellectually, I believe in racial justice as feverently as I believe in anything. I would rather have my tongue cut out than utter a racist thought, much less a slur or insult. I support just about every item on the traditional civil rights agenda — affirmative action, the Voting Rights Act, you name it — even though I’m not entirely comfortable with race-based solutions. As a privileged white American, I don’t think I have the right to tell black Americans the playing field is level enough, especially when I know that it isn’t.
[…]
But that’s just politics. On a personal level, I know there is still a deep divide between me and anyone who happens to have a dark skin.
[…]
And I ended up a very different person than the one my Dixie Daddy had hoped to raise.
But maybe not that different, after all. True, I’ve lived in racially diverse neighborhoods most of my adult life. I’ve had black neighbors, black co-workers, black nurses — even, for a time, a black doctor. No worries. But I can’t honestly say I’ve ever had any black friends. And I can’t honestly say I’ve ever really tried. At some basic psychological level, black people are still the Other for me, and probably always will be.

Written by Billmon on August 28th 2003, on the 40th anniversary of MLK’s I Have a Dream speech.
I believe it is impossible to grow up in this country and not be personally, deeply impacted by racial politics. Unfortunately too many of us are completely unaware of the ways in which our inner nature has been distorted by those politics.
One of the things which differentiates a Liberal from a radical or progressive is the capacity to search out and acknowlege the ways in which one has become complicit in the thought-structures of the dominant culture. How we have integrated and embodied the “master’s” systems of thought.
My point is that since the blackface minstrel was concieved by whites to “put down” black men, to portray black people as dumb, sniveling, and groveling, it does not and cannot work when applied to a priveleged white man like Wolf Blitzer. Because the face is “blackened,” it still is still a racist portrayal of what it is to be black.
Think Shylock.

Posted by: Sunrunner | Oct 31 2006 16:03 utc | 30

Written by Billmon on August 28th 2003, on the 40th anniversary of MLK’s I Have a Dream speech
Sunrunner, I’ve seen you post this here, wampum, and elsewhere. I find your observation bizarre. Billmon has honestly admitted his awareness of his early programming (a bit of introspection I’ve not seen you demonstrate). That makes me MORE likely to give Billmon the benefit of the doubt, not LESS.
You and Kai both use the word “racism” as if it were Avogadro’s Number – a fixed physical constant of the universe. It is not. As noted above, context is everything. The intent of the publisher must come into play – you cannot take an isolated image and make the definitive judgement of racism you and Kai are pushing here. Kai agreed with that in another post, saying, in effect, “it’s OK if Malcolm does it”. Intent must be a consideration.

Posted by: LittlePig | Oct 31 2006 16:21 utc | 32

I dunno, I laughed.
Of course Wolfie in blackface was “offensive”. The severely codependent relationship that people like Wolf hold with the current Republican regime is pretty damn offensive.
One could write a sensitive 4000+ words on the poisoned nature of American corporate media, or one could just cut the bullshit and point out CNN’s function as America’s Most Trusted Name in GOP Minstrelsy. I prefer the latter.

Posted by: queridobobo | Oct 31 2006 17:12 utc | 34

The fundamental problem is one of theological misconception. Monotheism is based on the assumption that the absolute is the apex, from which we have fallen and seek to return. The reality is that the absolute is basis, out of which we rise and to which we fall. It was politically convenient at the time communities became too large to manage by charisma, to ascribe the soul of the group to some higher order, of which the leader was the representative. Divine right of kings and all that. Currently asserted by the munchkin.
The reality is that intelligence and awareness are not synonymous, as in an “all-knowing God”. Knowledge is the process by which awareness incorporates complexity, but the source of this awarenss is elemental and life rises fitfully out of it.
One, as in mono(theism) isn’t the absolute, zero is. The tendency is to confuse this elemental state of unity with the unit and so we have all these absolutist sects battling to the death. Bottom up processes create these top down structures, but no structure is absolute. We need something along the lines of pantheism as a universal religion.

Posted by: brodix | Oct 31 2006 17:50 utc | 36

But Billmon – it was only a “slapdown”
Froomkin

Here’s the transcript and video of the Cavuto interview.
Cheney was asked about his wife’s pugnacious appearance on CNN last week.
“I thought it was great. We refer to it around the house as the ‘slapdown,'” he said.

Posted by: b | Oct 31 2006 19:30 utc | 38

@Cleveland Bob – 35
First if all it’s funny. Secondly, it’s funny.
Lastly…is it still racism when Spike Leee makes essentially the same point?
http://tinyurl.com/ygtut7
nice read.
First it tells me Blacks attempting satire with race-related images can be just as awkward as Whites trying the same.
On satire, Richard Pryor was a product of his time. The art, comedy and music of today reflects today. Both Blacks & Whites today generally get their aspirations pre-packaged for them. Not the best wetland for incubating art.
In general, people may have some clue of their actual abilities/talents but they do not have even the slightest foresight as to where it could conceivably take them until they are sufficiently challenged by life. This applies more especially to artists.

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Oct 31 2006 22:05 utc | 40

Everybody calm down, cause Billmon aint no Rock & Roll Nigger!
And You Aint No Picasso …
Rock N Roll Nigger

Baby was a black sheep. Baby was a whore.
Baby got big and baby get bigger.
Baby get something. Baby get more.
Baby, baby, baby was a rock-and-roll nigger.
Oh, look around you, all around you,
riding on a copper wave.
Do you like the world around you?
Are you ready to behave?
Outside of society, they’re waitin’ for me.
Outside of society, that’s where I want to be.
(Lenny!)
Baby was a black sheep. Baby was a whore.
You know she got big. Well, she’s gonna get bigger.
Baby got a hand; got a finger on the trigger.
Baby, baby, baby is a rock-and-roll nigger.
Outside of society, that’s where I want to be.
Outside of society, they’re waitin’ for me.
(those who have suffered, understand suffering,
and thereby extend their hand
the storm that brings harm
also makes fertile
blessed is the grass
and herb and the true thorn and light)
I was lost in a valley of pleasure.
I was lost in the infinite sea.
I was lost, and measure for measure,
love spewed from the heart of me.
I was lost, and the cost,
and the cost didn’t matter to me.
I was lost, and the cost
was to be outside society.
Jimi Hendrix was a nigger.
Jesus Christ and Grandma, too.
Jackson Pollock was a nigger.
Nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger,
nigger, nigger, nigger.
Outside of society, they’re waitin’ for me.
Outside of society, if you’re looking,
that’s where you’ll find me.
Outside of society, they’re waitin’ for me.
Outside of society. (Repeat)

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 31 2006 23:39 utc | 42

context is indeed everything . . . and there is very little that Bill says that cannot be understood and/or indeed be forgiven by the reader who identifies with a truth larger than the soundbite. He speak for an intelligence that refuses to be cowed.
Me, I think politics is a crock when measured against the truly infinite questions confronting this planet,not to mention my hopefully incipient soul.
Still, borderline nihilist, that’s a pretty good one for a political philospher.

Posted by: DonS | Nov 1 2006 2:40 utc | 44

isn’t this horse dead yet?

Posted by: annie | Nov 1 2006 3:20 utc | 46

btw: my email: commonprejudice@yahoo.com.ar

Posted by: brian | Nov 1 2006 3:23 utc | 48

Does anyone seriously think Billmon believes that 19th century house slaves were genuinely subservient, shuffling morons?
“Uncle Tom” ?
Is it politically correct to use this rather than blackface ?

Posted by: jony_b_cool | Nov 1 2006 7:17 utc | 50

You know, I swear to god. It’s the weirdest thing: you really CANNOT get very far into one of these discussions without some broken-down, Dennis Hopper wannabe singing and dancing Rock N Roll Nigger around you in a fake raindance circle, their arms and legs wiggling like overcooked noodles. It actually never, ever fails.
(If you want another angle on that song, you can try a movie called Afro-Punk about black and latino punk kids…)
I also just want to thank all the evolved, irony and nuance appreciating white folks out there who took the time to tell Uncle Scam that, while Patti’s song is a great and complex document, it might not have been the most useful thing to post in its entirety right smack in the middle of this thread.
(Just to be clear for those with letter problems, I didn’t say “racist,” but “might not have been the most useful,” which you can shorthand as “un-helpful,” “ill-advised” and so on.)
But really, Billmon: you want a completely practical and editorial reason why using blackface on your blog is a bad idea? Because within a coupla days, someone in your comments will invariably be typing “N-word, n-word, n-word, n-word, n-word, n-word, n-word!” with one hand (just for the purposes of nuance and illustration, of course!) while beating off with the other. How responsible or un-responsible you feel for that is your call, but don’t please act like that inevitable downward spiral is somehow victimizing you or that there’s no relationship between your rhetorical choices and the environment they help foster or create.

Posted by: ebogjonson | Nov 2 2006 15:51 utc | 52