Sunday, September 14, 2008

Waffles, we love you

 Breaking news:
Activists at a conservative political forum snapped up boxes of waffle mix depicting Democrat Barack Obama as a racial stereotype1 on its front and wearing Arab-like headdress on its top flap.


Values Voter Summit organizers cut off sales of Obama Waffles boxes on Saturday, saying they had not realized the boxes displayed “offensive material.”2

Playing off the old image of Aunt Jemima, widely criticized as a demeaning stereotype,3 Obama is portrayed with popping eyes and big, thick lips as he stares at a plate of waffles and smiles broadly.4 It also displays Obama in Arab-like headdress.

The box was meant as political satire, said Mark Whitlock and Bob DeMoss, two writers from Franklin, Tenn., who created the mix. They sold it for $10 a box.

1 Caricature n. A representation, especially pictorial or literary, in which the subject's distinctive features or peculiarities are deliberately exaggerated to produce a comic or grotesque effect.

2 “In the islands of Oceania, the savages who fill the office of priests often indulge the whim of declaring some specific object to be…taboo, that is to say, sacred, and from that point on no one can touch it under pain of sacrilege and of death.” - Louis Veuillot.

3 The Aunt Jemima character was a housekeeper. A lot of women are housekeepers. My grandmother was a housekeeper. Not the most glamorous job, certainly, but honest work. It’s not “demeaning” to be ordinary. The black demand to be depicted only as exceptional (at least by non-blacks) results in the absurd ubiquity on television and in movies of black doctors, black lawyers, black brain surgeons, black rocket scientists, etc.

4 As can be seen above, his features aren’t that exaggerated.

Sunday, September 7, 2008

Chinese Craptocracy

"A lot of people think Western-style democracy is a joke — it's more like a pop-idol contest or a beauty pageant," said Pan Xiaoli, an anchorwoman for International Channel Shanghai, an English-language TV station...


"For ordinary Chinese observers, it is hard for them to differentiate between the platforms or understand the anxieties. They've seen it mostly as a competition between a woman, a black man and an old man," said Wang Jisi, dean of the school of international studies at Peking University, speaking at a seminar of journalists earlier this week in Seoul, South Korea.
- Chinese have surprisingly accurate view of U.S. elections.

Obamanuggets

Obama supporters never miss a chance to mention how Obama graduated from Harvard Law School. This can only be because they have no first hand knowledge of Harvard lawyers. Anyone who has can tell you Harvard lawyers are colossal shits.

Obama picks up key endorsement.

Obama accidentally admits being a Mussulman.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

Sarah Palin met with pro-Israel lobbyists to express her support for U.S.-Israel ties.

Palin, the Alaska governor who was tapped last week by Sen. John McCain to be his vice-presidential running mate, met for 45 minutes Tuesday in the Minneapolis area with several leaders of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Also in attendance at the AIPAC meeting was U.S. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), the McCain campaign’s most prominent Jewish backer.

McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb said Palin spoke about “the relationship between Israel and American national security, and the threats to Israel from Iran and others.”

“She was extremely well received,” Goldfarb said, noting that Palin was interrupted by applause twice.

AIPAC also praised the meeting.
 - Palin meets with AIPAC leaders.

Republican Convention Highlights

Fred Thompson tells America about McCain banging a stripper, producing wild applause and cheering from the audience. Urges America to rent Aces: Iron Eagle III, resulting in a mixed response of some cheers and a few scattered boos.

Joe Lieberman follows, urging Americans to increase the amount of fiber in their diets, “So you don’t end up like me,” he warns, then he talks about the burden of being a sad-faced muppet. The crowd responds tepidly.

Next Sarah Palin makes surprise appearance, to wild applause and cheering. Announces daughter Willow is pregnant too, causing even wilder applause and cheering. Then the audience erupts with chant of “U-S-A! U-S-A!” and spills out of the auditorium into the cold night, and under the twinkling stars takes off all its clothes and begins joyously leaping into the river…

…Here our coverage ends when I remember they’re showing women’s team handball on the Russian channel.