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You are here: Home / A Complete Lack of Self-Awareness

A Complete Lack of Self-Awareness

by John Cole|  January 21, 20096:54 pm| 40 Comments

This post is in: Assholes, Clown Shoes, I Read These Morons So You Don't Have To

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Lisa Schiffren, in February of last year, wondering if the miscegenation that led to the birth of B-Rock the Islamic Shock Super Husssein Allah Obama was in fact a communist plot:

Obama and I are roughly the same age. I grew up in liberal circles in New York City — a place to which people who wished to rebel against their upbringings had gravitated for generations. And yet, all of my mixed race, black/white classmates throughout my youth, some of whom I am still in contact with, were the product of very culturally specific unions. They were always the offspring of a white mother, (in my circles, she was usually Jewish, but elsewhere not necessarily) and usually a highly educated black father. And how had these two come together at a time when it was neither natural nor easy for such relationships to flourish? Always through politics. No, not the young Republicans. Usually the Communist Youth League. Or maybe a different arm of the CPUSA. But, for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics.

***

Time for some investigative journalism about the Obama family’s background, now that his chances of being president have increased so much.

But that was then, and my how things change in a year. Just a moment ago, as I was reading the newest comedy stylings from my favorite improv troupe, “the Corner,” and I noticed this gem from Lisa:

Was the Reverend Lowery’s little race rhyme racist? I don’t know. I personally found it more than a little jarring—because of where I had previously heard a version of same. During various water shortages in California in the 1970s signs appeared in public bathrooms with the conservationist suggestion: “If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow.” Yes: yuck, gross, ick. Flushing toilets always seemed like a reasonable use of water to me. I understand that there is some cultural debate about this. Actually, the original jingle was a personal favorite of former California Governor Jerry Brown—an early ‘conservationist.’

It just never stops. Openly musing that the birth of someone of mixed race is a plot of the commies is perfectly acceptable for Ms. Schiffren, but apparently our delicate flower gets the vapors from a harmless quip by a civil rights legend.

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Reader Interactions

40Comments

  1. 1.

    The Moar You Know

    January 21, 2009 at 7:00 pm

    Will no one rid me of these meddlesome wingtards?

  2. 2.

    Mike

    January 21, 2009 at 7:03 pm

    Flushing toilets always seemed like a reasonable use of water to me. I understand that there is some cultural debate about this.

    Practical steps to address the fact that there isn’t enough water to go around gives her the vapors too.

  3. 3.

    slag

    January 21, 2009 at 7:06 pm

    You should have seen Tucker Carlson’s whine about it on WaPo today. It must be hard out here for a rich bowtie-wearing white boy.

  4. 4.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    January 21, 2009 at 7:09 pm

    @slag:

    You should have seen Tucker Carlson’s whine about it on WaPo today. It must be hard out here for a rich bowtie-wearing white boy.

    Shorter Tucker: It’s hard out here for a primp.

    Ms. Schiffern is generally good for a few yucks no matter the subject. Every comic troupe needs it’s airhead lightweight.

  5. 5.

    Josh Hueco

    January 21, 2009 at 7:13 pm

    Stuff like this makes me wish I could sign up for racial reassignment surgery.

  6. 6.

    slag

    January 21, 2009 at 7:16 pm

    @The Grand Panjandrum: OK. That was hilarious.

    "It’s hard out here for a priss" also works.

  7. 7.

    dm

    January 21, 2009 at 7:18 pm

    She probably doesn’t know the song lyrics (from Big Bill Broonzy’s "Black, brown & white") that the Rev. Lowery was alluding to in his rhyme, and how his allusion is making it clear how far we’ve come, even if there’s still room for improvement.

    I thought conservatives were big on "Cultural Literacy"?

  8. 8.

    HeartlandLiberal

    January 21, 2009 at 7:21 pm

    People such as Lisa reveal only the following:

    1. They have no Black friends
    2. They have never spent any time interacting with people from the American Black community and reading their culture.
    3. They have never read one single damned book or article about the language and culture of Black Americans, and the literary and folk writings and sayings that characterized the Black experience.
    4. Never attended a service at a Black church.

    This is what Rev. Lowery (from my home town, Birmingham, Alabama, by the way, which I left in 1969 after college) was drawing on. And doing it poetically and with the rhythm and cadence and fervor of a Black minister.

    I am NOT surprised that I have to explain this to the remaining deadbeat 20% of wingnut racist idiots we seem to have remaining in America.

    They have never been, as one Black friend told me once, been "caught driving while Black".

  9. 9.

    TheFountainHead

    January 21, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Shorter Lisa: Frankly, I’m not sure I like the tone of these uppity Negroes!

  10. 10.

    Incertus

    January 21, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Well, that’s a lot dumber than the other objections I’ve heard. When Schiffren goes deep, she doesn’t stop until she’s out of the arena.

  11. 11.

    bago

    January 21, 2009 at 7:27 pm

    Well, I guess that means that Schiffren has been listening to some Slipknot. People = shit, indeed.

  12. 12.

    jenniebee

    January 21, 2009 at 7:40 pm

    Did she actually just admit that she free-associates brown people with shit and yellow people with piss?

    That explains a lot, actually.

  13. 13.

    theturtlemoves

    January 21, 2009 at 7:46 pm

    You mean Mello Yello is actually piss? I drank tons of that crap as a kid. What the hell is in Mountain Dew, then? Scratch that, I don’t want to know.

  14. 14.

    Civilized Crank

    January 21, 2009 at 7:53 pm

    And here I thought Schiffren’s line had to do with Acid….

  15. 15.

    Mnemosyne

    January 21, 2009 at 8:07 pm

    There were a lot of "outraged" people on Washington Monthly yesterday. It started to remind me of the whole outcry over that official using the word "niggardly," in that people didn’t understand the word, flipped out, and then couldn’t back down even though they looked like idiots. (In fact, they probably couldn’t back down because they looked like idiots and didn’t want to draw even more attention to their idiocy by admitting they were wrong.)

    Please, wingnuts, keep pushing the meme that Rev. Lowery (and by extension Obama) hates white people. Because that worked out so well with Rev. Wright.

  16. 16.

    gwangung

    January 21, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    People such as Lisa reveal only the following:
    1. They have no Black friends
    2. They have never spent any time interacting with people from the American Black community and reading their culture.
    3. They have never read one single damned book or article about the language and culture of Black Americans, and the literary and folk writings and sayings that characterized the Black experience.
    4. Never attended a service at a Black church.
    This is what Rev. Lowery (from my home town, Birmingham, Alabama, by the way, which I left in 1969 after college) was drawing on. And doing it poetically and with the rhythm and cadence and fervor of a Black minister.
    I am NOT surprised that I have to explain this to the remaining deadbeat 20% of wingnut racist idiots we seem to have remaining in America.

    Reminds me of the flap when Charles Barkley quipped, "I hate white people."

    Endless rants about reverse racism and how blacks were benefitting from a double standard.

    Obviously not basketball fans. And NEVER met Barkley’s wife. (Hint: She’s not black).

    Typical wingnut ignorance.

  17. 17.

    former capitalist

    January 21, 2009 at 8:13 pm

    "A connection to explicit Communist politics" ?Explicit,like, uh, p0rn?

    Really, the CPUSA must have tossed her out on her ass.

  18. 18.

    Incertus

    January 21, 2009 at 8:18 pm

    @Mnemosyne: There were a bunch over at Ta-Nehisi Coates’s place as well, some of them people who I never would have imagined that kind of, well, over-sensitivity from.

  19. 19.

    HumboldtBlue

    January 21, 2009 at 8:22 pm

    Well, Schiffren has probably never had a good fisting either, as this FOX news affiliate talking head explains, is a damned good thing …

  20. 20.

    WyldPirate

    January 21, 2009 at 8:23 pm

    I was watching Morning Joe this AM and the crew of all white folks on at the time (Mika B,; Scabborough, Joe Klein, Buchanan) were all tut-tutting the Lowery prayer re: the "white do what’s right" bit.

    Lot’s of white folks are just damned fools. They think 350 years of brutal repression just evaporates in 40 years.

    …and they are seriously irony impaired for being unable to connect the historicity of Obama’s inauguration, the not-so-distant (and still present) treatment of minorities in the US with the fulfillment of the basic ideals of our Founding Fathers (who recognized the disconnect for "freedom" and "pursuit of happiness") on which the US was founded.

    Perhaps we simply need smarter talking heads and "journalists".

  21. 21.

    mellowjohn

    January 21, 2009 at 8:24 pm

    i think i first heard the "if you’re black, get back; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re white, you’re alright" rhyme from a black clarinet player who marched next to me in the northern illinois university (go huskies!) marching band… about 50 years ago.

  22. 22.

    AkaDad

    January 21, 2009 at 8:27 pm

    What the hell is in Mountain Dew, then?

    Bear piss.

  23. 23.

    Tsulagi

    January 21, 2009 at 8:28 pm

    The mind of a wingnut; it is a mysterious place.

    Kinda curious what her brilliant racial divining would tell her if one of my kids ran for prez. On my dad’s side of the family, I have German and Cherokee. Mom is Cajun and French Creole, which alone just brings in a whole gumbo of race. My two kids’ mother is Hispanic.

    If one of the kids ran as an R, no doubt she’d be glowing talking Big Tent. If running as a D, I’m guessing she’d be seeing both commies and Nazis dancing in her head who came here illegally.

  24. 24.

    bemused

    January 21, 2009 at 8:29 pm

    Clearly she’s not a fan of Big Bill Broonzy.

  25. 25.

    Interrobang

    January 21, 2009 at 8:30 pm

    I’d heard that rhyme too, in the context of something I was reading about "paper bag parties." I caught the reference immediately, and I’m willing to bet (being Canadian, with two of my grandparents born in Scotland) that I’m whiter than Lisa Schiffren. I also didn’t grow up immersed in the toxic cesspool known as race relations in the US, so it’d be understandable if I didn’t get it, but I did. She needs to, uh, get out less and get her nose in some books more.

  26. 26.

    blogenfreude

    January 21, 2009 at 8:35 pm

    John – you’ve forgotten – Pammycakes already proved that Malcolm X is Barry’s father.

  27. 27.

    Ecks

    January 21, 2009 at 8:44 pm

    So in ALL of those cases of miscegenation, the father was highly educated, JUST like Barack’s father, who was… oh my. So chicky fluffhead pundit didn’t do ANY research at ALL? Tut tut. In my day the wingnuts were smarter. And they walked to school uphill both ways too.

    FTR, this Canadian didn’t get the reference either, though I sure wondered if it was one – it sounded like it might be.

    Here it is though: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ZLw5ahxm-Q

  28. 28.

    Nutella

    January 21, 2009 at 9:05 pm

    I don’t know if that ‘jingle’ was a favorite of Jerry Brown’s or not, but I doubt if it was his Dad’s favorite. When Ronald Reagan ran against Pat Brown for governor of California in the 60’s (and won), his motto was ‘If it’s Brown, flush it.’

  29. 29.

    gex

    January 21, 2009 at 10:00 pm

    @WyldPirate:

    I was watching Morning Joe this AM and the crew of all white folks on at the time (Mika B,; Scabborough, Joe Klein, Buchanan) were all tut-tutting the Lowery prayer re: the "white do what’s right" bit.

    When the owner of the company I work at sent around one of those "real Americans" emails, I had to tell him a couple things: 1) Just because you have never discriminated against a black person doesn’t mean discrimination doesn’t exist. 2) Just because you assume I’ve never been discriminated against doesn’t mean discrimination doesn’t exist. 3) Instead of being mad at black people for making you feel bad about discrimination, maybe you should be mad at your forbears for leaving you this toxic legacy. It’s not like black people chose to be treated by white people the way they did.

  30. 30.

    jrosen

    January 21, 2009 at 10:57 pm

    I didn’t know where it came from, but the jingle that Rev. Lowery used at the end of his invocation has been around a long time. I remember hearing it in a movie from the 50’s…what I can’t remember…about "passing". The order of the colors was reversed, with black coming last as some older man tries to persuade a younger person to "know his place". Anybody out there remember it too?

  31. 31.

    gwangung

    January 21, 2009 at 11:08 pm

    Instead of a complete lack of self-awareness, shouldn’t we say that these twits have a complete lack of cultural literacy in anything outside of white upper class existence?

  32. 32.

    Montysano

    January 21, 2009 at 11:40 pm

    @HeartlandLiberal:

    This is what Rev. Lowery (from my home town, Birmingham, Alabama, by the way, which I left in 1969 after college) was drawing on.

    Actually, Rev. Lowery is a native of Huntsville, Alabama, my place of residence for the last 30 years. I’ve been gobsmacked today by the "Lowery’s racism" meme. It’s sad/pathetic that the wingnut outrage junkies are deaf to such loveliness as this:

    Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.

  33. 33.

    jack fate

    January 22, 2009 at 12:36 am

    It’s pure, uncut "retard" on steroids.

  34. 34.

    Steeplejack

    January 22, 2009 at 12:42 am

    @The Moar You Know: "Will no one rid me of these meddlesome wingtards?"

    Nice Shakespeare reference. "Titus Andronicus," Act II, Scene 3, right?

  35. 35.

    Crawford Kilian

    January 22, 2009 at 12:45 am

    Long ago, when an ex-actor named Ronald Reagan was running for governor against incumbent Pat Brown, I saw bumper stickers all over the Bay Area: "If it’s Brown, flush it." It wasn’t a favorite saying of Brown–it was a crude but effective Republican attack on a good man and an effective politician.

  36. 36.

    harlana pepper

    January 22, 2009 at 6:56 am

    Flushing toilets always seemed like a reasonable use of water to me. I understand that there is some cultural debate about this.

    Um, what?

  37. 37.

    drunken hausfrau

    January 22, 2009 at 7:14 am

    What Jenniebee said.

    Says a lot about her "thinking" that she equates the reverand’s rhyme with the toilet one.

    I think flushing wingnuts is a reasonable use of water. What say you?

  38. 38.

    cleek

    January 22, 2009 at 7:54 am

    Actually, the original jingle was a personal favorite of former California Governor Jerry Brown—an early ‘conservationist.’

    what do the apostrophes around "conservationist" mean ? she clearly knows how to use double-qoutes, since she used them when quoting the (yuck, gross, ick) jingle (ed: grow the fuck up, Schiffren). are they supposed to be scare-single-quotes – only half as scary as normal scare-quotes ?

  39. 39.

    Randy Paul

    January 22, 2009 at 1:55 pm

    During various water shortages in California in the 1970s signs appeared in public bathrooms with the conservationist suggestion: “If it’s brown, flush it down. If it’s yellow, let it mellow.” Yes: yuck, gross, ick. Flushing toilets always seemed like a reasonable use of water to me.

    I happened to be going to college in San Francisco at the time and it wasn’t merely a water shortage, it was a two year drought during which we received about 1/7 of the average rainfall for that period. Rationing was taking place, flow restrictors were put on the water supplies of those who were non-compliant.

    On the other hand, considering how thoroughly full of shit Ms. Schiffren is, perhaps she does hae a point in her last sentence.

  40. 40.

    Glen

    January 22, 2009 at 7:25 pm

    Wow. Just wow.

    Now that she’s taken a (surreptitious) swipe at Loving v. Virginia, what’s next? An equally surreptitious launch at Brown v. Board of Education? Then there’s that pre-but-still-communistic Constitutional amendment back in the 1860s.

    Shorter Lisa Schiffren: I have nothing against colored people. I think everyone should own one.

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