Cracktivity

Yeah! Crossroads! You guys should talk to Seth from the Uhh Yeah Dude podcast. He has a small role in that movie:

damn pfchangs, you torture logic so much, Dick Cheney wants to hire you

"So I can empathize with your situation, but I certainly can't sympathize with your belief that your situation is equatable to centuries of racial oppression." My belief? What the fuck are you talking about?

And I never said that my experience was something common, just that the relentless theme on this show and these forums is that there could not possibly ever be any racially tinged experience that could ever cause more than passing inconvienience to a white person, which at the very least shows a lack of imagination.

First of all pfchang it's interesting that you assumed the theater was "all black" when I didn't say that in my original post. you're right, but anyway... Basically I was on vacation in Memphis and at the theater with my friend. When the movie was over and we were leaving I heard someone behind me yell, "Hit the white boy! do it!" Then a fist hit me in the back of the head and three guys ran away. I didn't call the cops because I wasn't hurt that bad and didn't want to waste my vacation talking to cops. OBVIOUSLY if I had called the cops it would have been taken more seriously than if I had hit the guy who hit me, but that's another issue entirely.

I knew no actual experience could ever cause you to step off the dogma bus for a minute

There's no comedy in this podcast

I don't understand your point. How does informing the authorities erase an act of violence?

um, you have to love Andrew's myopia. There are a few instances of prejudice against white people that are a bit worse than not being trusted with chopsticks or spicy food. Like, for instance, getting sucker punched because you happen to be the only white person in a movie theatre.

Episodes like this are depressing because they make me realize that Andrew doesn't know very much--about history or culture or almost anything. Does he know that Star Trek was one of the only shows Martin Luther King allowed his children to watch because the Uhuru character was portrayed as an equal to the white characters? Science Fiction has always been a place where racial politics could be extrapolated, satirized or seen through metaphor. And what about Samuel Delany or Octavia Butler or "Brother From Another Planet" or the current Will Smith movie? The Star Wars movies are pretty racist, but it's ironic that this episode came out the same day George Lucas married a black woman.

This was a massively ignorant episode. Worthless.

I think Besser might not want do a Case Closed where he might look like he's not the liberal one an issue.

The problem is always going to be that most people don't use that as their main definition of racism. They would say that being racist is hating someone because of their race, something of which anyone can be a victim. This may actually be "prejudice" rather than "racism" but Andrew mixes up the two concepts all the time. It would probably cause less confusion and fewer message board battles to say that white people can't suffer from institutional or systemic racism, but they can certainly be the victims of prejudicial attitudes or hate crimes.

The thing about trying to decide by demographics whether a region or a state is racist or not is kind of up to the observer. If a state votes 60% for the Democrats we call it a Blue state even though we know that 40% of the people there are Republicans. But even if a state has a majority non-racist population, the large minority of racist is going to make it racist to a person of color. Imagine if you visited a state and 4 out of ten people you ran into were racists. Or 3 out of ten. Even two out of ten. You'd probably leave there saying, "That state is full of racists." Because racism is slightly louder than non-racism.

but not to hate Jazz, the Blues, Reggae, Reggaton, Zydeco and Mariachi music apparently

you can also never say "wheelhouse"

As far as context, there was no reason for Besser to say "n****r" (instead of "the n-word") in order to prove his point. It added nothing. It only made me think "why did he just say that? Is he an idiot?"

It was a bit lame for Besser to do this without having Andrew Ti on to defend himself--since they do both host shows on Earwolf. Then again, the YITR? episode took shots at frequent Earwolf guest Nick Kroll.

uh oh Earwolf war starts on Improv4humans Episode 85.5

This guest is nuts.

I think Andrew Ti did a poor job of explaining himself here, or was trying to say something kind of beside the point. The caller was possibly (she also didn't explain herself at all) talking about the fact that if someone came into her class and wrote an essay in the same vernacular that is (maybe) spoken in the community in which she teaches, she would probably have to grade that student down for "poor grammar" even if the grammar in the essay conformed exactly to that vernacular. Ti could have talked about that rather than the correct spelling of 'your' or 'you're' ad whether people on the internet should make fun of each other for typos.

any word on getting this episode on the itunes feed?

this one doesn't appear on itunes yet

Groups, in general, racist or not, where people get together and all dress the same way and cut their hair the same way are basically idiots. And they OBVOIOUSLY have fascist tendencies. Society doesn't offer you a chance to conform enough? Join a group where the hivemind polices your outfit and whatnot. It's small minded, cultish behavior.

I don't think SHARP uses swastikas, that was an analogy the guest brought up--a good one too: even though skinheads were originally 60s British kids who were really into Jamaican music, the style got hijacked by racists. Now if I, or anyone else, sees a dude with a shaved head and combat boots, we're going to have to assume they're neo-Nazi.