wakefresh

Nope, you don't know what you're talking about. Racism is not about generalizations. If it was then Auburn fans saying Alabama fans are hicks would be racism. It is not. If we went by your definition then the home team fans sitting on one side of the football field and the away teams fans sitting on another would be apartheid. And yes, when the majority of people in a country vote two times for someone that means that generally approve. And no, the majority of Americans don't hate George Bush. In fact about half of them still support his ideas and philosophies. In fact, even though N.C. went for Obama in the 2008 election, they still have a Republican state assembly made up of people who think Dubya was an ok guy. I don't know where you get this idea where if you have a public election and the majority of people elect an asshole, that it doesn't say something about the people in that state, district, or nation.

If you readily admit that the close-minded racists and homophobes outnumber the progressives in the state, then why are you upset when someone calls the state racist? They are having Moral Monday protests right now in Raleigh for a reason. if you are working against racism and sexism then you recognize that the state government is a roadblock, a roadblock setup by your fellow citizens who think blacks and wimmen should know their place and fags don't need to be gettin' married.

You have to forgive, Hyde. The biggest racists on the planet, to him, are Black Student Unions that use the Papyrus font for their flyers. He has a very skewed way of looking at things.

No, Besser, the show isn't "Yo, is this a sweeping generalizations?", it is "Yo, is this racist?" Racism is about the many ways the majority oppresses minority groups, not about (true) generalizations about your hometowns.

And once again, thank you white men for telling us what is and isn't racist. If it wasn't for you, us minorities wouldn't know what to do with ourselves.

Besser, don't get mad because the guest called out Arkansas for being racist. It's not like the state is a beacon of light in the racial history or present of the United States. Also, your fellow Arkansasite(?? Arkansasions??) elected this man.

As a life long resident of the South, I have to take issue with this. The South gets generalized as being racist because the South overwhelmingly is very racist. That's great that towns like Cary exist but they do not cancel out all of the Kernersvilles, Walkertowns, and other itty bitty backwater towns that are downright racist and homophobic. Where were all of those progressive people when N.C. passed that law limiting gay rights? Even if every single progressive person showed up in the polls, the bill still would have passed because the idiots outnumber you 10 to 1.

I watch movies released by major Hollywood studios. And you've already made up your mind about this subject, so getting a full list won't do a damn thing to change it. Instead I'll suggest that you look up Sut Jhally's work on minority representation in popular media.

This is like saying all of the collateral deaths in Fast 6 are cool, because when Dom and the team stopped Ian Shaw from getting the component to make a bomb, they saved countless more lives than if Shaw HAD built the bomb and sold it to a terrorist. For Superman's on-screen history -- from the 1950s til this movie -- Superman's on-screen character is seen as an idealistic boy scout. So now in 2013, Superman killing people is very jarring. it does seem weird.

A couple of points, Hyde: Your scale of what is to be included as Racist Evil is very lopsided. So far, Black Student Unions that use the Papyrus font are very high and the only point on the scale. No one has to be read departmental blogs at the University of Pennslyvania to know that society judges certain speaking patterns as being ignorant, dumb, uncultured, etc. You can see that with your eyes. Anyway, it would not have made a difference to you either way, because like I said before, your Racist Evil scale is skewed toward BSU that print flyers with the Papyrus font. People don't speak grammatically correct on television. Writers want to go for this thing called verisimilitude, so they try to approximate how real people talk. The way real people talk breaks a lot of "rules" of language -- dropped consonant or vowel sounds, using words that aren't a part of English, like "ain't," combining words that are separate into one -- "whatya," split infinitives, and all sorts of crazy shit. Now what people CAN approximate, even sometimes mockingly, is the midwestern accent that is used for announcements and the news. Andrew said that if you are in school and you are trying to learn this skill, then you should abide by the rules that are set forth in the skill. The problem, in his mind and mine, is when you privilege that way of speaking over another and use that as an excuse to shut down conversations about topics you don't want to talk about, like racism. There is nothing inherently professional about one way of speaking or inherently dumb about another way of speaking. Those are adjectives that are given to those ways of speaking, those grammars, by people with an agenda to promote one group over another. Hell, you liked Joshie's post about the Universal Grammar. If its all just one grammar and one is looked down upon and the other isn't, there is something more going on than just a lame excuse that "one is more professional."

You missed an opportunity to ask him about the bald vagina question. Brandon paused for so long, I thought my internet connection had dropped and the podcast had stopped streaming.

Lol, I think the black girl stuck the bird up her pussy, but they had to cut it for the censors. I beginning to think that this was just a Skinamax movie that shared a title with the Nathaniel Hawthrone book. This is also on Netflix, so I may check this out some time over the weekend.

I hope they read that whole thread. I hope they read when I say that black people don't have the same level of representation that you counter that (oh, excuse me, "pwn me") by bringing up two examples of non-white senators (one dead and one retired). When another user calls you out on that, that's when I tell you go back to playing video games (you see how language gives clues to who are? I didn't say go back to crocheting) because you don't even know what you're talking about. Then you come back with, I believe, two non-white, current sitting senators and say that your point still stands. What was that point? At first the point seemed to be that non-white racial representation is at parity with whites because at some point during the 200+ year history of the Senate, there had been non-white senators. Or was it that because there were more non-white senators than I had originally thought (I think I said there was one, and I was wrong, there are 4 or 5) that the issue of racial parity needed to be dropped? It was an avalanche of stupid. 95 to 5 isn't equal in any sense. Its like you want to be pedantic, just for the sake of it. People could clearly understand what I was saying (because another use r basically agrees with me, if not my way of expressing it) and people could clearly understand what Andrew was saying in this episode. Is it because you want to show off how smart you are? Fine, Joshie, you are the SMARTEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE. Let me repeat again: JOSHIE, YOU ARE THE SMARTEST MAN IN THE UNIVERSE!!!! Are you happy now? Are you satisfied? So, now we can drop this nitpicking bullshit you like to do and actually discuss the topic at hand? If you want to drop in these little nuggets of wisdom you can still do that, but if they are not going to add anything to the day's topic, I would regulate them to interesting side notes. That's great that you know about the universal grammar theory! But we are talking about certain grammars being privileged over others. That is the topic.

So, I watched this and you were right. The last 20 or so minutes is just full of twist after twist after twist. And there was a part where after they find out that Dunbar was black that they are riding to the airplane to intercept faux-Dunbar where the girl from SVU says how a major screwup like this could have happened. But I couldn't hear it and all I got was "blah tha wah wah blahy blah. He knew all he had to do was switch the dogtags." And I did let out a laugh when at the very, very end someone hands Travolta a beer and they say, "Here ya go, colonel." The girl from SVU looks all surprised, Travolta smirks, and then hard cut to the music playing over the credits. It was sorta a last minute "fuck you" to the audience.

It is a weird thing that they were SOOOOOO close to making a good movie and misstepped so much. I still think the sci-fi stuff could have been thrown out and it would have made a much better movie if father and son were out camping and shit went awry.

Nope, how I wrote it is exactly how the scene plays out. She asked them to get out, they ask where they are AND THEN the camera focuses on two black people minding their business. Both the geek and the douchebag cringe and the douchebag says, "Fuck that!" If there is one thing that geeks and douchebags can agree one, is that black people are scary. The director was obviously trying to allude that they were in a "bad" neighborhood or some such shit because of why else would there be two black people out at night talking to each other. And the geek wasn't scared of everything, he was scared of girls, so unless he was going to try to pick up those dudes he had no reason to be afraid. Well, except they are black and black people are very scary.

Pedantic score keeping aside, I think he was very clear in what he meant by "grammar". He meant that using the way someone expresses themselves is not a reason to shut down arguments against people or disregard the sometimes very true things that they are saying. It means not privileging one grammar over the other (in your chart does "SE" stand for Standard English? Why is that the "standard," if all grammars are one?), because in a society, how you speak is going to give clues as to where you are from, what class you were born in, and in this country, what race you are. The group that does not have much power in society always has the way they talk be branded as incorrect, wrong, nasty, vulgar, aggressive, and any other adjectives deemed appropriate. Its just another way power expresses itself and leaves the groups out of power at a disadvantage because nothing they say will ever be "correct." In the late 80s and early 90s, RnB and hip-hop groups were creatively spelling their stage name and group names. White folks were aghast and poked fun at them because, hell, didn't they know that you spell "gravediggers" with an "s" and not a "z"? Compare that with the creative spellings of lolspeak and how differently that was embraced by the mainstream or even called out for what it was -- not a knock against the intelligence of the people using it -- but a fun, quirky way of talking on the internet.

Yep, The General's Daughter did come out before BASIC. Either way, you're really making me wanna go see this movie tonight.

I remember seeing this in the theater when it came out and it was a joy! This a serious summer action flick. Even the humor provided by Duece Bigalow and Dennis Leary isn't all that bad.

I'm starting to think was Vince Vaughn ever funny.

No problem. This movie is sucks, and poor Aasif Mandvi can't catch a break after leaving the Daily Show.

Oh yeah...I forgot about that part. Wasn't part of the tension too was that he couldn't get background information on who was in the mission? Wasn't there someone or something blocking him? I also vaguely remember there being a time constraint as well...or was that The General's Daughter? I mean, history speaks for itself. He did so good in the role in BASIC that studios made another military mystery movie with Travolta as the lead.

I thought they showed what really happened in a quick montage at the end? I have to look at this again. I wonder if it is on Netflix.

I like Will Smith, but it is probably the latter.