Even more Wankery that we find acceptable...

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

While I generally disagree with his politics I think Mr. Savage raises an excellent point.

Now consider this...

Bill Maher and NYT's David Carr the "Middle Places" and "Low-Sloping Foreheads".

I apologise for linking as I seem to be having trouble embedding the video.

Now I would assume that both men in the second video consider themselves to be reasonably intelligent and enlightened men. If accused of being racist or bigoted I would imagine that they would be properly offended.

Which is why I'm going to ask an uncomfortable question, why is it ok to disparage one socio-political/ethnic class as stupid, dangerous, useless, ect... but not another. Would his comments have been more or less offensive had he been talking about "Fags" "Twats" "Spics" "Wops" "Chinks" or *Gasp* "N*ggers"?

Discuss.

Comments

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

I think you and the OP are incorrectly assessing the situation. Reciprocity is not being encouraged. Rather, certain behavior from a previously privileged group is being discouraged. It's not taboo for a white twerp from the NYTimes to slag off on white Alabamans because both are privileged groups. There is parity there. What is not ok is when a member of a privileged group engages behavior that smacks of oppression against an oppressed group. One can't just say that groups are groups and all groups should be treated equally because that ignores the disparity among them.

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

White privilege is no myth, it was the law of the land for centuries until living memory. Lois C.K. recently pointed out on the Tonight Show that an African American person with gray hair probably knows what it's like to have to use a separate bathroom. The whole society in the U.S. was designed from the ground up to lift up white men and push everybody else down. Everyone alive in the U.S. today directly benefits from or is harmed by the inertia of institutionalized brutality and oppression. To hand-wave this away as "context" is to ignore reality. To claim that everyone is now equal when we are clearly not, is to perpetuate inequality.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Ah, so you believe in the intelligent design of society rather than the scientific consensus of evolution. Interesting.

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

Society is artificial. Like the computer I'm typing on, it is a by-product of evolution, but it was designed by people. It's not that I think the founding fathers were menacingly twirling their mustaches. It's just that the people in power make decisions based upon their self-interest.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

Society is only artificial in the sense that it doesn't actually exist, it's an abstraction. But it's a description of the way people interact, and that is not designed, it evolves.

[surferelf.livejournal.com]

Once consciousness came into the picture, though, it ceased evolving, in that it was no longer merely responding to the environment. Once people were able to arrange their lives according to their desires--or, more likely, were forced to arrange their lives according to the desires of those who had power over them, evolution became a bit player.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

On the macro scale, it's still essentially the same as evolution. There isn't anyone sitting at the top manipulating things. Every individual actor takes actions, but they don't determine the end result of everything on their own. They are still responding to the environment, just not in predetermined ways.