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Hey guys, don't be so hard on therealjayknox. Maybe he's just acting this way because he is from a foreign land, and has no idea how to behave.

This is a good example of what I think is a common problem: people not understanding the difference between a generalization and a stereotype. I think it's pretty simple. A stereotype is when you OVERgeneralize. A generalization is not necessarily good or bad. But when you take it too far, that's when it becomes a stereotype, and it's wrong even if it is based on a generalization that is true. The ways people stereotype include, but are not limited to: -Making a hasty generalization when you don't know what you're talking about (I heard black people like watermelon from a few other white people, so I'm going to just assume they do). -Assuming the generalization applies to all members of the group (I read that criome is higher among black people, so I assume you're going to steal). -Taking a reductionist view of a group and/or individuals based on a few broad generalizations. Bonus points when they're all about inane, shallow shit! (Oh, you're an accomplished professional dancer? It must be because you're black! All the years of dedicated practice and study mean nothing to me.) A lot of people have trouble with this, but racists ESPECIALLY have a problem with this. Even if we could somehow demonstrate, 100%, that watermelon is statistically most popular among black people, it is still racist to make jokes like "of course you picked the watermelon, you're black!" But to a racist, it's like, "Hey, it's not racist because it's TRUE!" On a related note, this is also why it's usually not the same thing when people make generalizations about the south being racist. Because what racists don't understand is, when we say "the south is racist," that doesn't mean we assume every single person we meet from the south is racist. But that is the way racists think, so they just assume everybody else does as well. Oh, and for the specific situation the caller mentioned: OK, if you're intentionally making an ironic "ha ha, this is what a dumb racist would say" joke, I could see it maybe, MAYBE, qualifying as "not racist." But when that guy added on an "It's not racist if it's true" he pretty much eliminated all chances of not being racist. Unless he was taking it even further, but if that's the case he is so wack that no one should hang out with him ever, even if he's not racist.

I agree, it was nice to listen to. And I like to hear people from the military speaking out against the hero worship of our military that so many people think we should all do.I mean, at the end of the day, soldiers are just like everybody else. Now don't get me wrong, I think that soldiers deserve respect, and I would argue gratitude, for what they do. Just like any other public servant, be it firemen (and firewomen!), policemen (and policewomen!), etc. But this attitude of putting soldiers on pedestals, as if by being a soldier that AUTOMATICALLY makes you a hero, is such bullshit. Yeah, a lot of soldiers are heroes, and a lot of them aren't. It may make you feel like a good person because you're saying certain things, but you're still making assumptions about people without knowing them. I totally think it would make me uncomfortable if I were in the same position of having people give me a standing ovation just for being there, or just having a stranger come up randomly and call me a hero. People who do that probably think they're being kind and respectful, but I don't think they're really thinking about the soldiers they're doing it for as a person, if you follow me. I mean of course you still have to be polite and gracious, but I think people should just treat soldiers like regular people for the most part. And sometimes as a society it feels like we give soldiers this hero worship, holidays dedicated to them, and parades, to try and compensate for the more tangible things we're not giving them. Like good compensation, effective help with integrating into society, and in many cases not even proper health care for things that happened to them. OK, sorry for ranting so much. Just ant to say again I enjoyed the podcast and would love to listen to you again. It was very cool that you were such an obvious fan of the show.

Fair enough. This isn't about what qualifies as real hip-hop. I'm not interested in having that discussion, because it's irrelevant. Whether you want to consider stuff like Watch the Throne hip hop, or hip-hop derived pop, or even if you think it's totally separate from hip hop, it doesn't really matter. The point was that there are many songs which contain the n-word that are pop enough that it's reasonable enough to think white people would want to do them in karaoke. And I say, it should be OK as long as they censor out the N word. Do you disagree with this? Should Kanye West, Jay Z, and Nicki Minaj just be off limits to white people? Or should they just stay away from songs using the N word? Whatever your opinions, if you do choose to respond I would appreciate an actual answer, and not just some tangent about whether that stuff is "real" hip hop.

I think they're being kind of reductionist when they disagree with the guy's premise. OK fine, I'll grant you that most people who are heavily into rap wouldn't be into karaoke (maybe), but hip hop is so integrated with pop music these days that I'm sure plenty of hip hop songs are popular in karaoke. Like I'm sure there are lots of white people who want to do Jay Z and Alicia Key's "Empire State of Mind." Personally I think it should be fine as long as you do a "radio edit," i.e. you don't say the N word if it comes up in the lyrics, and you're not just doing it because you automatically think white people rapping is hilarious. I mean it might still be wack, but it isn't racist.

Listening to this episode has made me so happy. Almost as happy as when I'm eating a delicious cake!

YES! I don't think I've ever been hoping for a bonus cut as much as I was this week.

I was mostly talking about conspiracy theorist nutjobs. And like I said, I don't think racism is making them believe that aliens created the pyramids of Egypt and Meso-America, so much as I think it affects the kind of theories they are more likely to accept. So when they hear "it's too advanced for them to have made on their own," the fact that it was non-white civilizations makes them more likely to take the claim at face value. Would they believe the same thing if white people had built them? Perhaps, but I would argue not as easily. I think there is a very similar racism in a lot of the 9/11 deniers. "What, we're supposed to believe a bunch of Arabs managed to organize an attack like that? Much more likely that the FBI, CIA, and Jewish elite all worked together to arrange it, without making any mistakes or having anyone leak information about this massive conspiracy that killed thousands of people, even though they would have no discernible reason to do such a thing. But that still is easier to believe than a bunch of towel-heads destroying the World Trade Center, right?" I do agree though that a lot of the time when academics try to make ridiculously far-fetched links between ancient civilizations and white people, that there is some racism involved. Like they just REALLY want to prove that white people were responsible for all of civilization.

It's not that the theories are based in racism, so much that people are more inclined to take the "aliens did it" explanation when there are brown people involved. Kind of an inherent bias to think it was too advanced for "those people" to come up with on their own.

I was going to post basically this. There has in fact been plenty of research done on the pyramids. It turns out they weren't built by slaves. There were actually ENGINEERS who designed the things, and the people making it were CONTRACTED by the government and actually paid for their work. The first recorded strike in history was by people working on the pyramids! Now given, the work was not always entirely voluntary--most of the people there were required to go as a sort of tax system, and there probably were some actual slaves doing the simple menial tasks. But for the most part, they were not built by "slaves" as we think of them today. I'm sure there is a lot of info about the pre-colonial American pyramids as well but I confess I haven't read about them.

Am I racist? Whenever Nick is talking, I keep thinking of that kid going "Hey, I moved here from Canada and they think I'm slow, eh?" from The Simpsons.

Racism? In a Hollywood action movie franchise? Well I never!

Of all the recent "encore"-type episodes where they revisited characters and setups from earlier episodes, I think this is my favorite. They really took things in a new and fresh direction. I don't think I'll ever get tired of listening to them.

Stargoyle is so adorable. I would really like to see someone with great art skills draw him (no offense to RIP Spirit Bear, your version is hilarious).

I usually to skip to the phone call after the first day because it's the same thing every day, but I want to make sure I hear Jake saying "king Shit of Fuck Mountain" every day.

I think this movie is worth watching, although you might want to skip everything except the music numbers if you can. Maybe that's what everyone was thinking when they recommended it. I have to admit Queen Latifah did win me over, as terrible as her character was. I find that is usually true of Queen Latifah.

Still, it points to how much things have changed. 10 years ago, a presidential candidate would have been afraid to even say something like that, much less use it to his advantage. And I'm sure there were people who thought it was a bad idea, worried it would cost him conservative blacks and "middle America." Maybe it just shows the Democrats have finally learned that pretending to be conservative on social issues doesn't win over moderates, and brings the national discussion on to things the GOP wants to talk about. Anyway it definitely speaks to the fact that homophobia isn't as strong in the black community as people think. Also I think it's worth mentioning that there is a difference between the KIND of homophobia in the white versus the black community. There may be more black people opposed to gay marriage overall, but they are not the people who think the sky is falling down and all of society will crumble if men can marry other men. White people have a lot more of the kind of homophobes who commit hate crimes, harass gay people and their families with protests, and fight tooth and nail to do things like force a vote on gay marriage when the supreme court has already declared them legal. Black people may be more likely to vote against gay marriage, but it's usually white people who really fight hard to oppress gays.

I think part of the reason that liberal white people tend to fixate on homophobia in the black community is because they don't compare them on equal levels. Like, they see themselves as a separate group from the less-educated "white trash" that tends to be strongly religious and homophobic. But they lump black people together into one group, so they wind up comparing the relatively educated and tolerant white people they identify with black people in general. In fact I would say the "apples and oranges comparison" is a common way that racism works today--they take the relatively good parts of white people and compare them to the average or bad parts of other races. So whenever you see anything saying that white people are better than other races in some way, check to see if it's really an equal comparison. Chances are, it's not. As for the actual statistical differences in homophobia... very debatable, and indeed they get much smaller (or nonexistent) once you take into account educational and religious background. Also I think the media doesn't really appreciate how much the pro-gay people in the black community have been more active lately, and are really stepping up their efforts to spread the message that homophobia is not okay. And so many black celebrities have been going out of their way to voice support for gay rights. I mean, Obama is the first president, Democrat or otherwise, to come out strongly in favor of gay marriage and he did it JUST BEFORE THE ELECTION. Compare that to 2004, where the Democratic candidates were giving the wishy-washy "I support civil unions" bullshit. Finally, I just want to say that one of the most awesome things about the 2012 election is that the bigots in the Republican party totally tried to win over black voters by appealing to homophobia, and it completely failed. They totally bought into the "black people oppose gay rights" myth, and tried to use that to erode Obama's support... and then black people came in record numbers to support Obama after he had openly voiced support of gay marriage. So maybe there is a silver lining, heh heh.

Ooooh, dis podcast has me so excited I can barely contain myself!

The problem isn't them calling Chicago racist so much as that in early podcasts I remember someone talking about how New York isn't racist because you have so many people mixed together. Which is total bullshit--I mean having different races may make it less racist than most areas of the USA, but it still has the same segregation by neighborhood as any other big city, with the white people generally living in the richest areas. If their point was that New York may still be racist, but is still relatively better than most of the country, fine... but then isn't the same true of Chicago, LA, etc.? I also think it would have been interesting to have a discussion about how racism works in Chicago specifically, but that never happened. Listening to them talk it sounded like neither of them knew jack shit about Chicago.

Shamelessly ripping off D&D is a long-established Final Fantasy tradition. The original was the most blatant about it--the monster list is basically the Dungeons and Dragons bestiary, with only a few small alterations. They even had to change the names of several enemies to avoid getting sued in the American release. Final Fantasy's Bahamut is loosely faithful to the D&D Bahamut, in that he is a dragon god who is on the side of good and order.

For Glinishmore! SOOOO pumped for this!

Listening to this podcast I was like, has Jocelyn ever even set foot inside Chicago? "There's a Jewish town..." followed soon after by "I don't even know WHERE the Asians are." Uh, well, there is the South Asian neighborhood that BORDERS the Jewish town, for starters. And they didn't even talk about what was racist. OK, so the city is segregated... like every other American big city. It just annoyed me that she didn't seem to know what she was talking about. She also has her perceptions skewed by living in the suburbs, which are super racist... not that the city isn't racist too. The cops are racist, and HOLY CRAP the politicians are racist. There's a lot of that old school "hey, the Dixiecrats weren't as bad as the hippies who took over" attitude. So there's plenty to talk about with Chicago racism... and none of it happened. Oh yeah, Blackhawks mascot. From what I understand the Blackhawks fanbase is heavily centered on those northwest suburban white people, so I'm sure there's plenty of racism to be found. I totally support Andrew for just saying "yeah, it's racist" without splitting hairs over whether it's as bad as other sports teams. Okay, maybe it's not as bad as the Indians mascot, but who cares, both of them should go away. And Chicago doesn't even have the excuse of "we don't want to change the name, it's tradition" because they could so easily just change the mascot to, oh, I don't know, a fucking hawk that is black.

Yet another reason to love Wompler: as soon as someone mentions Andrew Lloyd Weber, the first thing she says is "I love Starlight Express!"

My reaction upon seeing the lineup for today's CBB: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLnWf1sQkjY