Do these people not have the internet?
Folks are all kinds of pissed off:
The Curious George cartoon character is getting dragged into the presidential race again in an ugly way - and Boston’s WGBH-TV isn’t happy.
A Georgia tavern owner has been selling T-shirts showing the cartoon monkey happily eating a banana with the words “Obama in ’08” written underneath.
The tavern owner, described as an “ultra-conservative,” has since seen his Marietta, Ga., establishment picketed by outraged critics who say the characterization of presidential candidate Barack Obama as a monkey is racist.
…WGBH, which co-produces a “Curious George” children’s television show, isn’t happy with George’s use against Obama, an African-American.
“It’s offensive,” said Jennifer Welsh, a spokeswoman for the PBS-affiliated station. “We would never grant permission for this.”
Of course the article doesn’t mention that the cartoon monkey has been used for years and years as a mockery of the current president. Hello?
Is this T-shirt “offensive”? How about this image:
No, because he’s white? Well you know what, I’ve decided I have issues with everyone 100% of the time referring to Obama as “African-American” or “a black man.” It is neither logical nor accurate to do that, because he precisely as white as he is black, every bit as “European” as “African.” Why does that count for absolutely nothing? I’d be pissed if I was his mother.
It’s like calling a mule a “horse” or a “donkey”, isn’t it? It’s like calling a cat with orange and white stripes “orange.” It’s like calling a person with a very short mother and a very tall father “tall” even though they’re exactly halfway between the height of mom and dad. Hell, it’s like calling a hermaphrodite “male” or “female”. It is neither!
Yeah I’m being nitpicky. Tough shit, it bugs me. And of course I don’t have any ideas for what the appropriate label should be, I simply assert it should be mentioned far more often that he’s HALF WHITE.
Just imagine how offended blacks would be if Obama did call himself a white man. What about his blackness? Is he ashamed of that half of himself? Racist!!!
Liberals.
Hypercrites.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:33 amESTThe appropriate term would be “biracial.”
You can thank me later.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:41 amESTYes, they would be, and yes, he is.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:41 amESTMaybe someday we’ll find out why he chose to repudiate the (white) grandparents who raised him. Maybe someday we’ll find out why he stopped being “Barry” and started being “Barack.” Maybe the truth will come out that he chose to be black instead of white (or even mixed-race) as a political expediency.
Oh, WAIT! That would inject honesty, integrity and accountability into the Democrat Party race for President. Not gonna happen.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:44 amESTI guess some people haven’t been paying attention. It’s impossible for anyone to be racist in favor of black people. They say it’s so, thus it must be true.
May 14th, 2008 at 11:54 amESTThe Libs always amaze me with their ability to out-hypocritize themselves. It takes a certain level of
May 14th, 2008 at 12:03 pmESTgeniusmadness.Race is arbitrary. I tell people I’m Blaxican. They can’t prove otherwise without appealing to my skin color, which makes them racists.
People who think race means anything should all be deposed of their voting privileges, for the sake of the children. BObama would still be a tool if his skin was green with purple spots, and the Curious George characterization would still be just as pertinent.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:05 pmESTTypical liberal hypocritical media double standard. They can bash and tear Bush apart limb from limb, but the second you start in on precious little Barry the messiah, you can do no right.
You notice what is in the news a lot right now? Oil and gas prices. You know who promised to lower both (back when gas was a dreamy $2.20 a gallon) and took over both parts of congress on that promise? The Democrats. You know who said in her first speach to the House that she would lower the both? A one Ms. San Fran Nan. You know who immediately blamed Bush when confronted w/ her aforementioned speech, saying that he was standing in the way of the bill? A one Ms. San Fran Nan. You know who has many times stated that he is willing to negotiate w/ N. Korea and Iran, regardless of the fact that they both have stated they would love to eliminate the USA from the maps and burn Israel to the ground? A one Barry O. Who is it that wants to tax the major oil companies b/c of their profits and their supposed “price gouging”, but will not let the USA drill in Alaska, which has one of the largest oil reserves on the planet, thus keeping the prices high for the consumers? Just about every Democrat w/ a title.
But does any of this get covered? Does any of it get mentioned in any MSM outlet? No. You have to go out to the internet to find the actual facts (scarey as that may sound), but then the second you do that, the MSM claims that it is false b/c they didn’t report it. Well, if they weren’t all a bunch of smelly tree-huggin Socialists, they might have reported it, but Big Brother Barry might not approve.
The media is a joke. In my opinion they are worse than the politicians they cower to. At least the politicians lie 90% of the time knowing that Americans are probably not going to believe them. The MSM report blatant fiction and try to pass it off as the holy scrolls, and when some one challenges it or stands up to the complete bias of it all, they deem them a hazard to society and unleash personal attacks like a bunch of middle school girls.
Like I said earlier. Fuck them. They smell.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:06 pmESTAnother question I have is, Why is it racist to vote against Barry because he’s black, but not racist to vote for him for the same reason?
Why are the people of WV raicst for voting for Hillary in such overwhelming numbers but those in NC not sexist for voting for Obama? Why does the MSM not call it racist when 90% of blacks in an area vote for Obama simply because of his race? Why don’t they see their own reporting of the fact as biased?
Just some questions from one more monkey-man.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:34 pmESTOut of curiosity one day, I had MSN up at work and turned to one of my black co-workers and said : Oh, look, here’s a picture of Obama’s mother and he looks just like her”. She came over to look and I said ” I don’t see why race is an issue, you know, with people saying they don’t want a black man in office- he is half white.” She didn’t say anything. I really don’t think blacks (African- American or whatever- I am so non PC heh?)want him identified as anything other then black. And I don’t think he does either.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:36 pmESTThis is interesting and kinda funny to me because the people who get pissed about the Obama = Monkey t-shirt but not about the Bush = Monkey t-shirt are actually granting the ancient false premise of some of the worst racists who ever lived: That blacks are Monkeys/Apes, while white folks aren’t. By granting the racist’s premise, the offended idiots are relinquishing the high ground and arguing on the same low level as the people who hate them.
The perennially offended should just cock their heads to the side like that little puppy in the old record player ad (you know the one I mean) and say “now, why would anyone equate a black man with a monkey? You’d have to be an ignorant rube to do something like that” and move on. But of course, they can’t, because they are so heavily invested in being pissed off that they can’t see the logic of ignoring the “offensive” material.
Lawyerly disclaimer: I do not now, nor have I ever, believed that constantly bereaved liberals are puppies or even similar to puppies in any way. Or, for that matter, monkeys.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:36 pmESTkeyrist….why can’t we all just be Americans. Well, I guess some would still require the term Asshole-American
May 14th, 2008 at 12:42 pmESTWhat is the airspeed velocity of an unladen Obama?
What do you mean — the African or the European?
May 14th, 2008 at 12:46 pmESTIt is silly, but perhaps referring to a mixed black/white person as “black” is a holdover from the days of “one drop” rules.
May 14th, 2008 at 12:49 pmESTWould the correct term be mulatto? Also, I’m as white as they come and I call my boys monkeys all the time. Does that make me racist?
May 14th, 2008 at 1:06 pmESTI wonder what kind of outrage you’d see if a Georgia tavern sold shirts that said:
“Obama ‘08: I support the mulatto”
Of course you could vote PRI in Mexico:
“Apoyo el criollo.”
It’s all good.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:12 pmESTPress Release
14 May 2008
We are deeply offended at the cartoon depicting presidential candidate Barack Obama as a monkey enjoying a banana. CAMR condemns Mike Norman for the appalling slander that he has committed. We demand that all of the t-shirts in his possession be destroyed, that he donate all the money received from the sale of said t-shirts to CAMR and that he desist from comparing Obama to a monkey in the future.
We are not socialists.
PR Office - Council on American-Monkey Relations
May 14th, 2008 at 1:29 pmESTSnarky: I call my grandsons wild monkeys all the time, and I’m white.
I’m just tired of the idiocy, like Rachel.
May 14th, 2008 at 1:33 pmESTHey, I live near Mulligan’s. Think I’ll get me one of those t-shirts.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:21 pmESTIt was not right for the Dems or anyone else to compare Bush to a monkey, just like it is not right for anyone to compare Obama to a monkey on a t-shirt. If this is how republicans and conservatives in general are going to fight the election they are going to lose. Wrong is wrong no matter who does it. The fact that anyone is sticking up for this guy is sick, if it is wrong shouldnt he be called out on it, irregardless of what the “other” side is doing.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:27 pmESTSomething I find interesting is that a number of blacks cite the history of how black families were treated in American as to why they support him, as if he knows their pain. However, his father was from Africa, and the back side of his family never lived in the segregated south, or experienced the racism of the American black experience. How can he understand it, with out his family ever truly living it?
May 14th, 2008 at 2:29 pmESTAnd, until the university academics and ministers and leaders such as Rev. Wright, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakan come to terms with the kind of things you’ve been discussing, Rachel, we will NEVER see a “moving forward” of honest discussion and resolve of race problems in America.
Change I can believe in? Hardly! Sounds like the same ol’ bullshit I heard back in 1969. And, you, Rachel, have pointed out part of the problem that needs to be addressed. And, not by an act of Congress or by throwing govt money at the problem. Just good, honest discussions and answers.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:33 pmESTI see the double standard here, but there is a difference, I think. The difference is in what aspect of a monkey is being used as the comparison for the purposes of the graphic. A picture of a monkey with Bush’s face on it is comparing George’s facial expressions to a monkey’s. (Not to mention the fact that the name “George” has been associated with a famous monkey for decades.) Obama is most likely being shown as a monkey because of his race. And I say that with some confidence: where I grew up a commonly used term for blacks was “porch monkeys.”
I love Sharkman’s suggestion–a very “Miss Manners” type of response!
May 14th, 2008 at 2:42 pmESTWhy? Because people tend to judge race and ethnicity by appearance rather than genetics. If his skin is dark he’s “black”. If his skin is light he’s “white”. If it’s somewhere in the middle he’s either “latino” or “Middle Eastern” depending on how his name is spelled.
I knew a guy in high school who caused a huge ruckus when he tried to become a member of the minority student union because, even though he was a native Mexican, his skin was whiter than mine. The MSU didn’t want to let him in because (and I swear to God I am not making this up) his skin tone would make the other MSU members “uncomfortable”.
May 14th, 2008 at 2:51 pmESTBoth Bush and Obama have funny looking ears.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:00 pmESTBirdman -
You are a frickin’ genius. Seriously.
‘What about two Obamas beating their wings in tandem?’
‘They could grip it by the husk!’
May 14th, 2008 at 3:03 pmESTMy monkeys look more like David Spade.
May 14th, 2008 at 3:07 pmESTOhmygosh birdman! Thats fantastic, I so wish Id thought of that.
Any yes…the correct term is mulatto, although Im sure its considered very racist to use such a term. Never mind the truth…it hurts their pwecious fewlings!
May 14th, 2008 at 3:46 pmESTMightysamurai says:
“I knew a guy in high school who caused a huge ruckus when he tried to become a member of the minority student union because, even though he was a native Mexican, his skin was whiter than mine. The MSU didn’t want to let him in because (and I swear to God I am not making this up) his skin tone would make the other MSU members “uncomfortable”.
That happened to a friend of my oldest daughter: a young Cuban-American who found himself shunned by the “Hispanics” on campus because his skin was too white and his features too European.
BTW Abraham Lincoln was called “Honest Ape” by some of his detractors, and you can imagine what the newspaper cartoons looked like. (Tried to find someone online and couldn’t, but I know they’re out there.)
May 14th, 2008 at 4:02 pmESTSee, that’s the thing, these whiny liberals have been calling Bush, “chimp” for years now but suddenly, referring to a candidate as a monkey is racist solely because he is half black?
And that’s another thing I’ve never understood, if you are born of one white parent and one black parent, why are you only “black” and not black AND white? Like, Halle Barry for instance…why is she considered only black? Isn’t her mother white? Doesn’t that make her part white? Or do we just pick and choose what we call ourselves. It’s as stupid as if I called myself Irish simply because I have 1/4 Irish blood. Nevermind the rest of my ancestry.
What gets me even more is that I wouldn’t have even thought, for one moment, that a Curious George character had anything to do with Obama’s skin color…until a racist liberal pointed it out. Morons.
May 14th, 2008 at 5:34 pmESTHere’s a bit of irony for you (from the “About the Reys” page on the pbs kids website):
I only knew this, because I grew up with a copy of Zozo! (used — ahem, yes, I’m sure it must have been a used copy — I’m not quite that old!)
May 14th, 2008 at 7:21 pmESTJust the good, old double-standard at work. Nothing new or unusual. (but, then, youknow, hussein IS a saint!)
All those damned people would complain if you hung’em with a new rope.
(And, NO! I’m not advocating lynching!)
May 14th, 2008 at 7:50 pmESTYep, that’s exactly the thought I had when I heard of this current brouhaha.
May 14th, 2008 at 8:27 pmESTSaying the H-word portion of his name is taboo already, right?
May 14th, 2008 at 9:11 pmESTSo how will it go over if I start calling him
-Barack Halfwhite Obama- instead?
Sadly racism is still a huge part of this nation…and most of it is coming from the left.
You know. I have never cared what a person looked like, all I care is what they are like. Sadly people like Obama and Rev. Wright are the worst kind of racists…they feed off keeping it alive…just like Jesse and Sharpton and other “Leaders” of color. When will people be taken to task for exploiting racism?
May 14th, 2008 at 9:26 pmESTI’ve never understood the howls of “Chimpy Bush! Bush is a chimp!” He doesn’t particularly look like one to my eye.
May 14th, 2008 at 10:04 pmESTNice work, morons. Uncurious is not a word. I assume you were too incurious to check the dictionary.
May 15th, 2008 at 1:31 amESTSo…I swear I’m as much a politics junkie as anyone, but can anyone tell me just what happened to Barry’s momma? Did they lock her up somewhere or is she just dead?
May 15th, 2008 at 6:36 amESTThe second one. Ovarian cancer.
May 15th, 2008 at 7:45 amESTAfter seeing the curious george tee shirt i began to think in the same way. while it was totally okay to call george w bush a chimp, why then is it inappropriate to disparage obama in the same manner. we are perfectly within our constitutional rights to do so. Anyone that hinders that right is violating a persons right to freedom of speech. it all comes down to whether one can stand up to being called a racists.
Since the chimp thing does have racial overtones, its probably better just to avoid it. Rachel however you hit the ball out of the park when you brought up the mule, horse donkey comparison. Its clear obama’s mixed blood makes him a mongrel like the rest of us. few of us if any can fit neatly into the horse or donkey category. that makes us, including obama, mules. Maybe an Obama 08 with Obama’s face transplanted on a mule would sell well. I wonder how many stupid democrats would think a tee shirt like this is official DNC gear. Its a little sneaky, but Obama the mule would be an incredible inside joke amongst those that have an appreciation for subtle humor.
May 15th, 2008 at 8:15 amESTObama: Half honky, all donkey.
May 15th, 2008 at 9:01 amESTAccording to Wikipedia, she died of cancer. Barry wasn’t at her side when she passed, as he was starting his first political campaign.
Figures.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:01 amESTAnne B. You are correct about the cartoons of Lincoln being compared to an ape. I have seen them myself years ago. Most appeared in newspapers in both the North and South. (they were very old pictures, I am old but not that old). BTW, when Tiger Woods is asked about his race, he responds”mixed”. Seems appropriate to me.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:02 amESTYou know, the Obamamessiah IS changing race relations in America.
I used to feel vaguely guilty when the subject of racism was brought up. Now I’m pissed to be accused of something I never was a part of.
The race pimps have well and truly jumped the shark. Game over for the race card.
May 15th, 2008 at 10:58 amESTI remember when Tiger Woods was being touted as the greatest black golfer in the history of the world. He quickly corrected this error and made the media aware that his mother was Asain. This was the end of the discussion. I think Tiger is a gentleman and would never hurt his mother that way. I also think it took courage to clarify the point.
If Barry will not stand up for his European relatives (a rich grandmother who helped raise him and send him through Harvard), what does this say about him? As Shakespere wrote: “Unto thine own self be true.”
On the other hand, many in America have no one to vote for in November. I am looking forward to ‘12.
May 15th, 2008 at 12:14 pmESTLee, that is brilliant! Now THAT sounds like a T-Shirt to make!
Let’s see - start with the Democrat Donkey, put Obama’s head on it, and that caption beneath it. Yeah!
May 15th, 2008 at 12:56 pmESTWhy insult the man with a stupid comparison to an ape?
Isn’t it enough that he has accomplished nothing in his legislative career, has spent all his time in the Senate running for president, and associates with traitors, haters and criminals?
I wouldn’t let him seal my driveway, based on his accomplishments and associates. His race is irrelevant.
May 15th, 2008 at 4:31 pmESTFor me, Obama will always be a High Yellow.
May 15th, 2008 at 5:04 pmESTHe can call himself anything he likes as long as it isn’t Mr.President.
May 16th, 2008 at 5:12 pmEST