Political correctness (PC) is killing comedy

Ask one of your black friends if/why it is different if a black person uses the word vs a white person.

Democrats are “funny”

Cancer was never used as a derogatory to an oppressed group. It's not even a comparison that makes sense.

Not magical powers. Normalising discrimination.

It is a word created and used for hundreds of years to this day to be offensive to a specific section of society. It was a word used by slave drivers to refer to slaves but much more recently by racists to refer to black people in general. That is a time in the living memories of probably a number of posters here, it's not ancient history.

The word has no other purpose.

You cannot detatch the meaning and intent of the word, from the word.

Ask yourself why the F word isn't used on children's television? It's just a word, after all. Why do people get offended if you call them a c*nt or a d*ickhead? Just words, after all.

You are arguing that words don't have meaning or power, something which I fundamentally disagree with, and is fundamentally untrue as history has shown.

i'm not deceived, i just don't agree with you and the history of things you've written on Letsrun. i'm disappointed in whites, not prejudiced against them. it's ok to condemn racism

i claim no moral superiority - i'm part of the problem in many ways and don't expect to be treated fairly for it[/quote]

Your tone in you last reply was much more amenable to dialog. I take back what I said about you being beyond hope. Sorry.

I'm too am disappointed that people did horrible things in the past. I don't care what color they were. Why should their skin color convey a special disappointment on my part. That's the way a person obsessed with race would think.

I never lynched a black man. I never voted for, or enforced a law that subjugated black people. Why should I have anything to be ashamed of? If I am supposed to feel ashamed for things other people did, why don't I also feel ashamed for all the war atrocities committed by the vikings, or Genghis Khan? They were humans. I'm a human. Why shouldn't I feel guilty for their sins? If I take a 23andMe test and find that I'm 42% related to Vikings, should I feel a special guilt for the Viking's sins and not for Genghis Khan?

You saying you are part of the problem is the most disingenuous thing you could possible say. If you were really part of the problem, it would be because you ARE racist. And if you WERE really racist, then you wouldn't think its a problem.

You say you are fine with not being treated fairly, presumable due to your race. If this happens, it would be racism, and yet you claim to be against racism. What you say makes no sense. Think it through.

Stand up for the true principle of non-racism, regardless of how it makes you appear to others. Don't make any fake confessions of guilt. You know, and I know, that you don't feel guilty for anything you didn't do. And if you do feel guilty for things you didn't do, you need to rethink your motivations, and ask yourself who you are trying to impress.

Words meaning is based on their context. They don't have power in and of themselves. The have power based on how they are used. Hitler used a bunch of German words to say horrible things. Does the whole German language carry the stigma of Nazism? That's an absurd idea. Just the same, saying that "nigg#r," regardless of its context, carries some special power, is equally absurd.

Please remember, the whole debate started over whether a white person could use "nigg#r" in a joke or other non-racist context. If a white person used that word for a sake of a joke meant to insult black people, it wouldn't be a joke. Nobody would laugh, because that's not funny. Whenever a comedian in the last 30 years uses it, it is to point out some irony, or to point out the absurdity of racism. That is what I'm defending.

I'm not defending the idea that a white person should call a black person that word for the sake of insulting them. Of course, that is a horrible thing to say. As every insult is a horrible thing to say. I'm arguing against the extreme censorship of that word in other contexts. Like the context of reading a Mark Twain novel. Or quoting what someone else said, without having to resort to saying "N-word," as if everyone doesn't hear "N-word," and simultaneously think "nigg#r" as their brain deciphers what they just heard. It is in these contexts, where the speaker has no intention of insulting a persons race, but is conveying some other meaning, that it is ridiculous to condemn simply saying the word.

Regarding children, there's a reason to not use offensive words around them because some people consider them offensive, and you want to teach your children how to get along in life. Around adults, its ridiculous to not say "f#ck" when that is exactly what you mean. I assume on this message board that I'm having a conversation with fellow adults. I'm trying to help them to stop acting like children.

round and round wrote:

Blazing Saddles was racist. If you can't recognize that then you probably never will.

y.

You do know that Richard Pryor one of the screenplay writers, correct?

I’ve got a show for you brah wrote:

Not my reel name wrote:

Was watching animal house last night on HBO and it hit me that the movie itself could probably not be made today. It would trigger too many libs and calls for boycotting in a Democratic Society would contradict itself once again.

Same goes for Blazing Saddles, Airplane! and even The Jerk. All American Classics that could not be made today all thanks to the PC crowd.

Agree, snowflakes always be complaining about some weak-a$$ PC shat! You should heck out the show “Who is America” on HBO. Super funny and totally not PC. Only snowflakes get offended by that show.

Meh, the show doesn’t offend me at all. But, it’s really not that funny unfortunately. The only character / skits I’ve found funny are the Israel / Mossad guy skits. I do like Sascha though—Borat still cracks me up. So, overall, your point is well taken. He does some really un-PC stuff that likely offends many a snowflake.

Not my reel name wrote:

round and round wrote:

Blazing Saddles was racist. If you can't recognize that then you probably never will.

y.

You do know that Richard Pryor one of the screenplay writers, correct?

Blazing Saddles is a satire of racism. In the opening scenes the white guards were portrayed as idiots. The song chosen by the black workers was professional in performance while the white guards danced like morons to Camptown Races. After the chief guard told Cleavon Little, after leaving him in the quicksand, to put his shovel to good use, he logically hit him in the head with it.

Throughout the move the Little character was the smartest guy in the room. Gene Wilders' character referred to the city residents as morons. And the invading gang of mostly white thugs were delayed by having to find enough dimes to get through the toll barrier.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Not my reel name wrote:

You do know that Richard Pryor one of the screenplay writers, correct?

Blazing Saddles is a satire of racism. In the opening scenes the white guards were portrayed as idiots. The song chosen by the black workers was professional in performance while the white guards danced like morons to Camptown Races. After the chief guard told Cleavon Little, after leaving him in the quicksand, to put his shovel to good use, he logically hit him in the head with it.

Throughout the move the Little character was the smartest guy in the room. Gene Wilders' character referred to the city residents as morons. And the invading gang of mostly white thugs were delayed by having to find enough dimes to get through the toll barrier.

No, no. Someone somewhere in that movie said nigg*r. The whole movie is racist. Context doesn't matter. It doesn't matter what the intention of one of the black screen writers for that movie was. The audience gets to grab a hold of one word and condemn the whole movie. Words have magical power, don't ya know? The speaker's intention is nothing. All that matters is that the listener can claim someone somewhere is offended, and exert power over the speaker. Understand a speakers intention is no longer a virtue. The only virtue that matters is the virtue of being offended for yourself or on behalf of someone else. After all, the virtue of offense requires absolutely no character, or thought, or effort. And that's how we like our virtues nowadays-worthless and empty.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

No, it is not a word to be used by non-blacks. It is a word of hate that relates to Jim Crow laws and lynchings. Have you seen the picture of Emmit Till? I'm sure the people who murdered him called him that before they killed him.

That some blacks use the word doesn't change anything.

A lot of nonsense is written about slavery USA style, I recall Muhammad Ali’s answer when in Africa to fight Foreman, and asked what he thought about the place, replied “I’m glad my grandpappy caught that boat.”

Having read Frederick Law Olmsted’s account of travelling through the slave states in 1853-61, I came to the conclusion I would have preferred to be a slave in America at that time than living in the dreadful conditions the average working class in England were toiling under at that similar period in our history.

Are you aware for instance, that slave owners refused to let their black slaves work on the real dangerous undertakings, considering them too valuable?

Irish ‘slaves we easily replaceable.

For instance, In 1832, in the Second Municipality, sometimes called the American Sector, an area upriver from Canal St., the arduous task of digging the New OrleansNavigation Canal, later known as the New Basin Canal, began.

“Paddies” slipped into the swamp to dig with pick and shovel the mosquito-infested ditch that would be the new 60-ft. wide 6.07 mile long shipping canal. There was no dynamite, nothing but wheel-barrows with which they’d haul the sludge out of the ditch on inclined planks. And there was no way for them to drain the relentless seepage but with pumps invented by Archimedes in 287 B.C.

The builders of the city's New Basin Canal expressed a preference for Irish over slave labor for the reason that a dead Irishman could be replaced in minutes at no cost, while a dead slave resulted in the loss of more than one thousand dollars.

Laboring in hip-deep water, the Irish immigrant diggers, who had little resistance to yellow fever, malaria, and cholera, died in inestimable numbers. Six years after construction began, when the canal opened for traffic in 1838, hundreds if not thousands of Irish laborers would never see their homes again. It was the worst single disaster to befall the Irish in their
entire history in the USA.

good Lord, shut up and crawl back into your hole you uneducated mutt.

ok subgenius, if slavery was actually better than being an average working class citizen, then why weren't the working class escaping to the south to sign up to become slaves?

Why didn't all the freed slaves turn back around and return to the south to sign back up for slavery once they found out how bad it was being free? (oh I'm sure you will have an anecdotal example or two of an isolated incident at the ready, but how does that weigh against the hundreds of thousands that fled and never came back)

Slavery, just like a bad job, except you can't quit and the boss can beat you and rape your family anytime they want.

slavery apologists are a disgusting embarrassment to this country.

don't mind HRH, he's just the local admitted white-supremacist of the board. We actually have dozens.

I'm a second-rate comedian, but if I could use racial slurs in my act, I'd be hilarious.

I'm not really sure what people mean by political correctness these days. It's like people what a license to say whatever low quality, generalist, stereotypical, un-nuanced thought that comes to their mind and not suffer criticism or the consequences of what they said. You can't just make generalized statements about a group and apply those to an individual and not expext to get called out for it.

Also, Blazing Saddles is full of racist stereotypes. But it's satire, that's the point. The white people in the movie act like idiots and black sheriff is the smartest guy in the room. If anything, i walked away from that movie thinking poorly of people espousing racist garbage, admiring a black man that kept his cool in the face of utter nonsense, and appreciating satire. It may not be possible to make that movie because of the fear of offending too many people, but the movie viewing audience these days also does not appreciate good satire and it would have trouble selling enough tickets. The modern movie viewers needs to have their comedies be completely obvious without layers in order to get in the theatre.

I will continue to watch Blazing Saddles, the Producers, History of the World Part 1 and other films from this racist era.

helpinghands wrote:

Ask one of your black friends if/why it is different if a black person uses the word vs a white person.

Checking in on your homework assignment.

Not my reel name wrote:

I don't think genius creative types are ever going to be attracted to the right wing.

n

Creative types are not always genius. Problem is, you guys keep telling yourself that. Then explain this, why can't Hollywood come up with a new idea for a movie that is not predictable? Or why do they have to rip off other countries movies? Or, why do they have to keep doing remakes? Or why do they have to keep making sequels over the same stupid stuff about Spiderman, Batman or any take off there of?

Is that your genius?[/quote]

Maybe a better question is why idiots like you keep paying to see that crap. If other movies made serious money Hollywood would be cranking them out.