Why is Racism so Damn Funny? By Felix Serrano – Robot Dialog #6
October 19, 2010 Felix Serrano 11 Comments
Q: What do you get when you cross a Jew with a Puerto Rican?
A: A superintendent who thinks he owns the building.
Having a sense of humor is one of the most important things in life. Anyone with a sense of humor understands that behind every good joke there is an unspoken taboo of truth that we love to look at but are ashamed to admit. I think racist humor is hysterical. It’s what helps set us apart from each other, it’s an acknowledgement that we are different and it’s ok, even funny. I was upset for years when I heard Bill Cosby bought the rights to the Little Rascals to bury the racist parts and reedit them. I was relieved when I learned it was a rumor. You can’t bury and hide the past away. We need these snippets of history to learn and laugh at. They are an integral part of what our social landscape was at the time.
It’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt.
I really don’t want to take responsibility for any supremacist or hateful racist that hide behind patriotism. As much as they try they can’t use race as an excuse for being hateful idiots. So please, let us have our fun without ruining it. Tell your black and Jewish jokes. Make fun of the dirty Mexican or the bus full of Puerto Ricans and let the Irish guy sleep in his drunken stopper. Just be free and don’t hurt anyone while doing it.
On another note, if you love gayness, poop, pee, midgets and white trash then you must see Jackass 3D. I saw it on Friday with high expectations for the 3D factor, but was a little disappointed. Still, if you loved the other movies or the TV show then you’ll consider the 17 bucks money well spent.
I leave you with Italian Spiderman. I think I caught MOTU’s cold. Thanks Davis.
-F
Vinnie Bartilucci
October 20, 2010 - 10:02 am
“I heard Bill Cosby bought the rights to the Little Rascals to bury the racist parts and reedit them.”
It was Amos and Andy.
What we don’t seem to want to have anymore is a sense of context. In almost all situations, you can tell if a person telling a joke is just funny or a racist ass. But we’ve made a national industry aof being offended, and there are a whole percentage of the workforce dedicated to coming to the defense of peopkle who didn’t hear the joke but would surely have been offended if they had. Also, there are all the people who don’t REALIZE it’s offensive, and may have actually laughed at it. You know, the stupid people that the helpful busybodies have to speak for.
I don’t like that we live in a country where Disney can’t re-release Song of the South for fear of it coming under fire.
It’s not even the old “If THEY can use the word, why can’t I?” chestnut. It’s that there’s no attempt to parse what’s being said by anyone in any situation.
Unless they agree with you politically, of course, in which case there’s any number of explanations for what was said, and in fact it’s likely the people taking the offense are the racists.
Mike Gold
October 20, 2010 - 2:37 pm
Felix, I’ll probably see Jackass 3D on television because I found the first two remarkably funny and truly outrageous — two qualities I respect in anything except food. The teevee show, not so much. I proudly get my share of gayness, poop, pee, midgets and white trash every day as a faithful follower of Craig Ferguson.
As for Amos and Andy, well, I’m gonna go lick the third rail here. My comments are ONLY with respect to the teevee show, not that radio show with the white guys playing most of the black male leads.
Amos and Andy was a very funny teevee show that did not depict people any differently than the way people were depicted in most other successful teevee sitcoms of the 1950s — the Honeymooners, I Love Lucy, Jack Benny, The Goldbergs. It starred one of the great performers of the first half of the 20th century, Tim Moore, a man who was so funny he made Jackie Gleason seem like David Brinkley.
Those aren’t just my words — Jesse Jackson said the same thing about both the show and about Tim Moore. Jackson pointed out that the show was the only program to show blacks as doctors, policemen, businessmen (Amos), and lawyers. Yeah, the lawyer was shady, Kingfish was scheming and Andy was a little dumb but with a heart of gold. Like THAT’s never been done on television, before or since.
As a small child watching the show, I learned that the inside of black people’s apartments looked the same as mine. That the folks in their neighborhood were pretty much the same as the folks in my neighborhood, except more funny. That was a good lesson to teach a white urban kid in the 1950s.
Because of the NAACP, virtually nobody knows of Tim Moore. That’s an insult. That’s a crime. When he died in 1958 at age 71, there was no money to pay for his funeral.
John Tebbel
October 21, 2010 - 6:06 am
It wasn’t the NAACP, it was the Pittsburgh Courier. NAACP doesn’t need any more hits in this despicable election cycle.
Do we hate anything more than being prevented from buying or selling a product because a third party objects/is damaged/happens to hold a copyright? Downright un-American.
Amos and Andy ended up on television due to greed. Everything they had to “say” was said during their multi-year reign at the topmost, tippy-top of the radio heap. By the time the bosses would move it to television it was all about money. I’m glad to read the network and the station owners weren’t able to keep every last penny, but there was nothing about art or artistry involved by that time, and no one gave back a thing to the community that was ruthlessly, profitably parodied for all those years. That would be communism.
John Tebbel
October 21, 2010 - 6:09 am
I apologize, the NAACP was involved in 1966 in shooing the re-runs off CBS daytime, thereby ruining everything.
Mike Gold
October 21, 2010 - 7:04 am
John, as we all know “greed” is what motivates all media decisions. But back in the early days of network television, when the nets were spending money hand over fist in order to establish television, they played it safe by porting the most successful radio shows: Jack Benny, Burns and Allen, Amos ‘n’ Andy, Superman, Lone Ranger (the latter two were syndicated, not network, but there were very few non-network local stations in the day)… Even I Love Lucy was just a retread of My Favorite Husband. Variety shows were simply total rips of burlesque, vaudeville and reviews.
Given all this, my respect for Ernie Kovacs continues to grow like amoebas at a mitosis-fest. And Sheldon Leonard, who brought story to sitcoms.
Felix, I feel like I hijacked your blog. My apologies.
Felix Serrano
October 21, 2010 - 9:11 am
No worries, Mike. It just makes me happy that this dialog was started; and that’s what it’s all about. I’m staying shut because it’s turned into more of a history lesson for me. Happily being schooled right now. Continue…
Vinnie Bartilucci
October 21, 2010 - 10:12 am
There’s a documentary about The Goldbergs, specifically about Gertrude Berg, an amazing woman who created an amazing show, both all but forgotten today. Like Amos & Andy, the ethnicity of the characters is almost a diversion – it was a show about people, and families.
http://www.mollygoldbergfilm.org/home.php
I’ve gone on in the past about how much of black comedy in the first half of the century is all but forgotten due to it being deemed “racist” by the Well Meaning Busybodies of today. Is is criminal that so few people today have heard of Bert Williams or Pigmeat Markham. “Open the Door Richard” tracks directly to the one-sided conversations of Shelley Berman and Bob Newhart.
Who’s the first black man to win an Oscar?
WRONG.
It was James Baskett, who got a special award for Uncle Remus in Song of the South. FIFTEEN YEARS before Poitier got a “real” one.
You ever hear the NAACP crowing about that one?
Mike Gold
October 21, 2010 - 10:40 am
“NAACP Crowing.” Hey, you got balls, Vinnie.
The story of Bert Williams is one of the most important stories in America’s cultural history. Yet, as you point out, he’s all but forgotten. He was one of the first black performers to headline on Broadway in an integrated cast, and he started at the top: he was the only black headliner in the 1910 Ziegfeld Follies, the most astonishingly popular franchise to ever hit the Great White Way. Hell, black folks have been lynched for a hell of a lot less than that.
But more important, he was the first black man to be allowed (by Mr. Ziegfield’s edict) to headline Broadway under his own name. Prior to that, even in lesser venues he was often known as one of the “Two Real Coons” or “Sons of Ham,” both names for a long-running vaudeville act he did with George Walker. After Walker got sick and retired (and died), he went solo often billed as “Mr. Nobody,” after his huge, huge hit record “Nobody.” Until 1910. Then he became Bert Williams full-time.
In fact — since Felix is digging the history! — it wasn’t until the late 1940s when the next major black performer, singer/comedian George Kirby, was able to get work across the board without the cover of a stage name.
Vinnie Bartilucci
October 21, 2010 - 12:36 pm
Bert Williams walked into a bar and was denied service. When he complained, the bartender gave in, but claimed that a martini was $50.
Bert took out a wad of bills the size of a baby’s head, peeled off three Benjamins and said “I’ll have six”.
Now is that a MOTU move or not?
Mike Gold
October 21, 2010 - 12:47 pm
MOTU would have tossed all six in the waiter’s face.
IF he could run real fast.
mike weber
October 21, 2010 - 11:51 pm
Vinnie’s comment about “The Goldbergs” – that it was about people and families – puts me in mind of the way i sometimes get strange looks when i sing the praises of Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Look Out For.
A friend once asked me why (as he put it), as “a penis-possessing human being” i loved a strip about lesbians with a strong anti-patriarchical bias.
I said “Because that’s just what it is. What it’s about is the human condition.”
And it’s funny as all hell.
That helps.