A post that's not about D&D.
Jul. 7th, 2010 03:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alexandraerinSo, Joel Stein wrote a thing for Times which received a backlash that prompted him to write this:
And you know what? That sounds like it would have been a great article, a really thought-provoking piece full of introspection and self-examination that could serve as examples for us all. But what he wrote doesn't come close to that. Well, it does come somewhat close to that maybe once or twice. At one point he stops and compares his reaction to finding his hometown now has a thriving Indian-American subculture to the reactions of people in Arizona.
Well, no. He doesn't stop and compare... he just compares and moves on. There's no examination. He applies no value judgment to the thoughts he imagines he shares with white xenophobes in Arizona. Given the tone and tenor of the rest of the article, it's hard to see that he's doing anything but honestly sympathizing with them.
In the end, it's impossible to tell if his "stomach-sickness" is describing his sincere intentions that he utterly failed to convey (it can happen to the best of us, especially when grappling with -isms we've thoroughly internalized while learning to think of as being wrong) or whether it's a total ass-covering maneuver by someone who thought the atmosphere was right for a piece like this to be well-received.
But also in the end, it doesn't matter: whatever his intent, he wrote some seriously offensive shit that won't be funny to anyone who doesn't already chuckle at slurs like "dot heads" and he tried to pass it off as humor, and he did this not in some private blog but under the auspices of Time, who regret that his humorlessly offensive writings offended anyone when they were intended to be humorous.
I truly feel stomach-sick that I hurt so many people. I was trying to explain how, as someone who believes that immigration has enriched American life and my hometown in particular, I was shocked that I could feel a tiny bit uncomfortable with my changing town when I went to visit it. If we could understand that reaction, we’d be better equipped to debate people on the other side of the immigration issue.
And you know what? That sounds like it would have been a great article, a really thought-provoking piece full of introspection and self-examination that could serve as examples for us all. But what he wrote doesn't come close to that. Well, it does come somewhat close to that maybe once or twice. At one point he stops and compares his reaction to finding his hometown now has a thriving Indian-American subculture to the reactions of people in Arizona.
Well, no. He doesn't stop and compare... he just compares and moves on. There's no examination. He applies no value judgment to the thoughts he imagines he shares with white xenophobes in Arizona. Given the tone and tenor of the rest of the article, it's hard to see that he's doing anything but honestly sympathizing with them.
In the end, it's impossible to tell if his "stomach-sickness" is describing his sincere intentions that he utterly failed to convey (it can happen to the best of us, especially when grappling with -isms we've thoroughly internalized while learning to think of as being wrong) or whether it's a total ass-covering maneuver by someone who thought the atmosphere was right for a piece like this to be well-received.
But also in the end, it doesn't matter: whatever his intent, he wrote some seriously offensive shit that won't be funny to anyone who doesn't already chuckle at slurs like "dot heads" and he tried to pass it off as humor, and he did this not in some private blog but under the auspices of Time, who regret that his humorlessly offensive writings offended anyone when they were intended to be humorous.
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no subject
on 2010-07-07 08:41 pm (UTC)A slight silver lining: Kal Penn's response.
no subject
on 2010-07-07 08:56 pm (UTC)"In retrospect, I question just how good our schools were if 'dot heads' was the best racist insult we could come up with for a group of people whose gods have multiple arms and an elephant nose."
I actually understand the tone he's going for: I suppose there's a degree of "yuk yuk, isn't racism funny" that some stand-up comedians can pull off with the correct amount of irony. Mr. Stein fails at it completely.
no subject
on 2010-07-07 10:18 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-07-07 09:40 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2010-07-08 04:19 pm (UTC)And your right the arctile has potentail but it turns into nothing more then a bad attempt at bad jokes