Discussion for article #230443
Glad that he owned-up to the horribleness of his “joke” and is making a genuine apology followed-up by action.
But I still can’t help but wonder where the impetus for him to tell the joke in the first place came from? Is it a deep-seated thing from within or did he really think this was something the audience would enjoy? Quite strange.
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I think he’s a good person who done fucked up.
I actually met Handler once at a conference where he was doing a book signing. I showed him a picture of my dog, who is named Snicket after his nom-de-plume. It occurred to me maybe he would find this offensive but he was very cool about it.
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Handler is big presence on the literature scene here in San Francisco, and has always been involved in good works around the arts. Also was a big contributor to Occupy Wall Street. Perhaps somebody spiked the lemonade.
Simony Fixit…
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Oh, I’m sure he’s a good person and like agio described he “done fucked up”. In fact, it’s probably because I believe him to be a genuinely good person that it makes me curious about where the “joke” came from: maybe he just gave in to a bad impulse?
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Bravo, most learned sir, that was excellent.
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Something about having an open mic and a rapt audience, I’d guess
Jeb looks terrible.
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I guess he figured, for an overconfident moment, that everyone there would understand he was making a meta-joke that mocked the crude stereotype involved, not offering the idea of the other author’s allergy as an actual remarkable fact. It’s the same kind of momentary overconfidence and bad judgment that causes highway crashes, but you can’t assume that the people who made the mistakes involved actually think crashes are a good thing.
Oh, and if any purity trolls want to flame me over that, knock yourselves out but I won’t care. It’s a nuance thing, you wouldn’t understand.
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Probably alcohol was involved. Once that pre-frontal lobe censor passes out, all kinds of inappropriate stuff happens.
Sad example of how casual racism and privilege in well intentioned individuals distort communication and make it difficult for the races to trust each other. Coupled with the many, many examples of people in positions of power who are frank racists, it is no wonder we do not yet have an egalitarian society.
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I want absolution for being a racist at the price tag of $50,000.00.
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I’m whiter than fuck and I love fried chicken and watermelon.
I’m not being facetious.
In fact I’m having fried chicken tonight. Unfortunately watermelon is out of season.
I always could jump high tho. Maybe I am black after all.
I just don’t get the continuing obsession that white people have about watermelons and African Americans. It’s been a staple of white racist stereotypes for well over a century, and the “jokes” were unbearably stupid and dumb when I heard them as a kid in the '50s and '60s, yet these pasty, corpulent doofuses just…can’t… stop…making… watermelon jokes in 2014. It seems to be a strange, irresistible compulsion that they’re powerless to fight.
Anyone who admits that something they said or did was racist, and apologizes for it, deserves points for honesty. Like the song in Avenue Q goes, everybody’s a little bit racist, sometimes.
Contrast with people who insist that racism is a thing of the past (except for Democrats and blacks who complain about racism, who are the “real racists”), and that they’re totally color-blind and above such things.
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For once, a real apology, and REAL action to back it up. A nice change from the typical GOP “I’m sorry that YOU were offended” bullshit.
Take the hit, Handler; write the check and move on.
Lesson learned.
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The weird thing is, having grown up in the 70s and 80s, I don’t remember ever hearing them (except as a reference to a bizarre, outdated stereotype) until about 2000. It’s like people started to become more racist, or at least more openly so, during the Bush years, even more so than Reagan who at least used dog whistles.
He probably thought it would be perceived as light and wacky at the time. The truth is people often joke about things that in the wrong context could be taken as mean or offensive. Context is everything and I think pretty clearly he lost sight of it in that instance.
Sounds like he shared the joke with her and her with him and he just jumped the shark thinking that made it ok for public consumption. I commend the guy for giving a real apology and I commend him for going a step further to prove it was not who he really is. Everyone makes mistakes…not everyone owns up to them.
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