Aisha Harris at Slate wrote a piece about the impact of growing up as a black kid celebrating Christmas with a white Santa.
Fox News responded to the piece with cartoonish hilarity you would expect from a Saturday Night Live sketch, but in actuality is consistent with the low-level empathy-free thinking that passes for commentary on the network.
They also didn’t even bother getting what Richard Pryor called the “(negro) that they hire” to corroborate their entrenched point of view.
I do hope Harris saw the Fox News segment and grasps that this is the mentality to which she’s appealing when she’s asking for inclusiveness from a holiday that has no true cultural connection to her.
After all, try to imagine white kids celebrating a holiday with a black savior and welcoming an old black man into their home late at night with cookies and milk.
Fox, I suppose, is at least honest that this is their holiday. They forced it on you after they enslaved you and they are not interested in your concerns, in your “hypersensitivity” and desire for inclusion. This is Christmas, not Burger King. You don’t get to have it your way.
Because Santa is “who he is.”
Which was an elf in the Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” and, also, you know, fictional… just like the carpenter he upstages each year.
“That photo of you and the girls in matching sunglasses is a big hit on Facebook.”
“It is a nice shot of me,” Gina corroborated. “How many ‘Likes’ did it receive?”
“Lemme check. You know, people complain that Surface doesn’t have the Facebook app but you can access the Web version just as easily through Internet Explorer.”
“I’m sure,” she replied, only half-listening, as she read quietly from the Wall Street Journal app on her iPad.
“Forty-eight likes,” Charlie declared. “That’s funny. You’re not one of them.”
“Liking your own photo is tacky, Charlie. Besides, I tend to filter the profiles of people who post a lot about their kids.”
“Even me?”
“Especially you,” Gina confirmed. “I can’t make personal exceptions or I lose all credibility.”
This woman’s problem isn’t asthma. Her abusive, jackass husband doesn’t seem to care if she lives or dies, just that her painful coughing disturbs his beauty sleep. Her “bestie” could teach an advanced course in passive-aggressive snarkiness. Oh, and I think she might work for the mafia.
It’s the one piece of advice I consistently give other writers and the one piece of advice that is most consistently ignored. Yet if they were to listen to just one thing I tell them, this would be it:
DO NOT USE POP SONG LYRICS IN YOUR BOOK.
It is expensive — often prohibitively so — and it’s often unnecessary if you stretch yourself. I rewrote a lot of song lyrics out of my first book, Mahogany Slade. At the time, I didn’t see how it would be possible and the, once complete, I was glad I’d removed the lyrics, as they had become anchors on the story. Instead, I found other means of conveying how important music was to the characters.
Blake Morrison wrote a great “learn by example” piece about this in The Guardian.
My favorite part of this Green Mountain coffee commercial: “Ambassador” Kelly Clarkson manages three Spanish phrases (“buenos dias,” “salud,” and “cinco”) yet asks the Peruvian coffee bean picker a full English sentence and apparently expects him to understand. And he probably does, which is the ultimate indictment of our education system.
10.7.1992 — I saw Manhattan for the first time at the Tate Theater in Athens, and once the credits rolled, I’d determined that I’d eventually live in New York. Like your average Gen-Xer, I felt directionless but Manhattan served as a magnet drawing me into adulthood.
There was a lot of interest in the film at the time, as the Allen/Farrow scandal was in the news. However, this was coincidental rather than exploitative programming (the selections for Fall Quarter would have been made in May at the latest, a few months before the scandal broke).
I was only a few months removed from 17 when I saw the film (my friend Zach, I think, was still 17 when we went), so the idea of a 42-year-old man in a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl did not disturb me as much as it does now. What 17 year old doesn’t want to be treated like an adult and discuss Mahler and Fitzgerald with thirtysomething New Yorkers? That desire, of course, is precisely what a responsible adult man should *not* take advantage of.
Allen has a habit of presenting as romantic choices the uncomplicated ingenue and the shrill, pretentious harpy. In Manhattan, the latter archetype (played by Diane Keaton) has betrayed Allen’s character, who now races to reunite with the former archetype (played by Mariel Hemingway). It’s too late, of course, and she leaves him to spend six months in Europe. He knows that she will return a different person, that she will grow up, and she was already more mature than he is.
Twenty-one years later, Soon-Yi Previn, Mia Farrow’s daughter who Allen married (yes, it’s as bad as it reads), is herself now the 42-year-old New Yorker. Time moves on.
1) Congress has “pulled the grenade” — i.e. it has done what it has threatened to do and cannot do anything more severe. This action also affects them, so it is analogous to pulling the grenade and not actually throwing it but splattering bystanders with bits and pieces of your exploded body.
2) The “goal,” or I suppose the “sane” goal as there are some in Congress who claim to have desired the current outcome, is that the President would have “blinked” and avoided the pulling of the grenade. As that didn’t happen, the original goal, which I am still benignly referring to as “sane,” was not achieved.
3) This is the point of negotiations when you wait out the clock, and the weaker party is the one to break first. Unlike the previous government shutdown, the sitting President is not up for reelection and what’s being demanded of him is significant enough that he would gain nothing by surrendering it. Members of Congress are always up for reelection, and what they’re demanding is not static: Unlike Gingrich and Clinton’s face-off about the terms of a budget that was not yet in place, the Affordable Health Care Act has already started. The Shutdown did not prevent that, and more people enroll as each day passes, which makes the situation more difficult for them. So, the time advantage is not in Congress’s favor.
4) It is obvious now, as it was obvious before the Shutdown, that the GOP members of Congress are divided on this issue, whereas the Democrats are not. That is not good for the GOP.
5) Regardless of party affiliation, no one should negotiate with people who are willing to go nuclear to get what they want (these people probably watch a lot of movies with Clint Eastwood or some other suitably testosterone-rich star where that works out well but that’s not reality). You only encourage those actions and guarantee a repeat of what just happened. I presume that the President, as the father of young children, is aware of this, but if not I think the Dreamy Prime Minister from Love Actually says it best.
I was only able to get through about 30 seconds of this at a time.
I loved Mork & Mindy when I was a kid (and still do through the lens of nostalgia) but aside from that, I don’t find Robin Williams very funny. Maybe it was always Pam Dawber that made the show work. I think Williams is a great actor. He’s amazing in the rarely seen Seize the Day. I even think his performance in Robert Altman’s Popeye has a lot of uncredited depth.
Oh, and of course:
Yet, as a comedian, Williams reminds me of someone’s uncle after too much wine at Thanksgiving. Give me Madeline Kahn any day.
1) How was Sean Hayes conned into making this series? If this is the pilot, then it’s not like he received a great first script, signed on, the writers all died, and the producer’s trained seal picked up the slack for the rest of the season.
2) There is not one authentic moment or character in this trailer. Human beings and actual human situations are funny. You can have legitimate conflict and thoughtful performances… or, I guess, you can go with mustached men who have birds resting on their shoulders.
3) The trailer touts its “Emmy-winning” star who can’t be bothered to learn another first name for his character. I gave Tony Danza a break in “Taxi” and “Who’s the Boss” The man was a boxer and took some hits to the head.
serhasacomplaint 
Santa Claus Nonsense…
Aisha Harris at Slate wrote a piece about the impact of growing up as a black kid celebrating Christmas with a white Santa.
Fox News responded to the piece with cartoonish hilarity you would expect from a Saturday Night Live sketch, but in actuality is consistent with the low-level empathy-free thinking that passes for commentary on the network.
They also didn’t even bother getting what Richard Pryor called the “(negro) that they hire” to corroborate their entrenched point of view.
I do hope Harris saw the Fox News segment and grasps that this is the mentality to which she’s appealing when she’s asking for inclusiveness from a holiday that has no true cultural connection to her.
After all, try to imagine white kids celebrating a holiday with a black savior and welcoming an old black man into their home late at night with cookies and milk.
Fox, I suppose, is at least honest that this is their holiday. They forced it on you after they enslaved you and they are not interested in your concerns, in your “hypersensitivity” and desire for inclusion. This is Christmas, not Burger King. You don’t get to have it your way.
Because Santa is “who he is.”
Which was an elf in the Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas” and, also, you know, fictional… just like the carpenter he upstages each year.
Posted by Stephen Robinson on December 12, 2013 in Social Commentary
Tags: Fox News, Megyn Kelly, Santa