Cartoon in NY Post... Racist?

[Pangloss]

Well sure, hate all you want, it's a free country.

 

But I guess I'm still not clear on what it is that I'm supposed to get so hot and bothered about.

[ParanoiA]

See Clerks 2 for Randall's accidental racism - it doesn't have to be intentional or conscious to be offensive.

 

I couldn't disagree more or be any more insulted. It does have to be intentional or conscious to be offensive since that's the whole POINT of language in the first freaking place - to convey ideas that a person MEANS. If a person says something they don't mean, then it's an inaccurate exercise of language, an inaccurate representation of what someone meant. Poor exchange of ideas, but not offensive action.

 

Sure, one can accidently say something that can be interpreted by another as racist, and therefore be offensive, but the offense was not "meant" or "created' by the offender - it's purely an inferred offense.

 

This cartoon should not have run because there are plenty of people empowered with running that paper that have a duty to their market to catch the potential offense that wasn't "meant" nor "created" by the paper or the cartoonist. They should apologize. One of them, should perhaps be fired.

 

The cartoonist should tell everyone else to blow it out their ass if they don't like it. He knows what he meant, and shouldn't accept anyone else telling him what he meant or telling other people what he meant. If I was him, I would draw a book of them and sell them just to piss off all of the nitwits that like to pretend as if they're free to infer the worst of motives and then act on their delusions by over compensating for white guilt and taking it out on the artist.

 

Artists should never squirm in the face of controversy or compromise their message just because society is too uncomfortable and cowardly to handle it. The New York Post cartoon proves americans are still overrun with whine bags and victim politics. Perhaps a country of adults might work better for this sort of thing.

 

That's all that's happening here. I'm abundantly confident that not a single poster was arguing to take away their constitutionally protected rights to express themselves, just that they should face the sincerity and passion of the negative response they generated.

 

Abolutely. We're all free to respond just as we're free to initiate. And I'm glad we haven't had that downward spiral where we start rationalizing restricting speech. Now to work on society. Getting people to drop their feelings from their shoulders and getting them to stop pretending they're justified in being offended about messages that are just "gray" enough to make a case out of in the right courtroom - the pop culture court of public opinion. The most egregious, inaccurate, inept judgement by a collective ever manifested. We have an entire branch of government to dodge that joke - just for that very reason.

Edited February 25, 2009 by ParanoiA