Digging deeper.
Michael Moore posted a blurb on his blog which I can only assume is meant to explain his/Bill Maher’s comment that he voted for the black guy and got the white guy, but which fails miserably on that count:
I was asked about Obama and how I felt about the job he’s doing. Here’s the transcript:
ME: I think I’m like a lot of people who voted for him. First of all, I’m disappointed that the other party — he came in holding an olive branch, and they just whacked it out of his hand, and he keeps holding the olive branch, and they keep whacking it out of his hand. And I think that’s great that he came in that way. But after the 5th or 10th or 20th time of whacking it out of his hand, he should have just said, Look, I’m so sorry you don’t want government to function. But I was elected with 10 million more votes than the other guy, by an overwhelming margin, and therefore this is the way we’re going to do it, I’m so sorry.
CO-HOST JOY BEHAR: So why do you think he doesn’t behave that way? Is it that angry black man thing that he’s afraid of projecting?
ME: Wow, well, I’m not a shrink, so I don’t know.
BEHAR: That was an issue during the campaign … that if you get angry and you’re a black guy in this country, people turn on you for that.
CO-HOST BARBARA WALTERS: When you read his book and you read his mother’s book, she talks about how she trained him not to react and to stay calm.
To lighten things up I decided to repeat a Bill Maher joke (something Bill said recently about how he voted for the “black half” of Obama, and got the “white half.”) Note to self: Tell your own jokes. Don’t try to quote the material of trained professionals. I’ll let Bill continue on in his own words when he made his point on his show:
BILL MAHER: Isn’t Obama’s big problem that he does everything half-assed? Maybe it’s because he’s only half black … If he was fully black, I’m telling you, he would be a better president. There’s a white man inside him holding him back because everything is half-assed. The stimulus was half-assed, healthcare is half-assed …
I tried to explain on The View that Bill was a comedian — but then I remembered you can’t really explain comedy. Satire has been around for a long time. Jonathan Swift, in the 18th century, wrote a famous essay about how the Irish should solve their famine problem: Eat their babies. Of course, he didn’t actually mean that. Quite the contrary — he was attacking the policies of the British government that were allowing the Irish to starve to death. There were many that didn’t understand he was employing humor to make a political point. It’s the sort of thing you either get or you don’t. If you take Maher literally, it sounds crass. But he’s being crass to make the larger point: There are a lot of white people who hate Obama because he’s black, and he has endured their hatred to the point of even having to prove he was born. Here. The history of black America — and this is at the core of Maher’s joke — is this: Oppressor=white. Why Obama has chosen to continue Bush’s wars and take positions as bad or worse than his predecessor’s (delaying new EPA pollution standards that could save up to 12,000 lives per year is the most recent example) has baffled many, including Bill Maher and me. Why appease the white Republicans who hate you? Let’s not forget, McCain won the white vote (57% of all white men, 53% of white women) and the ONLY white demographic that Obama won was among 18-29 year olds. (Allow me to point out again that, because the Democrats have been the party of Civil Rights for the past half-century, this has cost them the white male vote in nearly every election. The Dems who’ve made it to the White House have done it while LOSING the white male vote in their elections, with the exception of John F. Kennedy in ’60 and Lyndon Johnson in ’64).
Jokes, and certainly satire, exist to point out society’s foibles and to give people a chance to laugh at the things they’re uncomfortable about and to laugh at those who are abusing their position of power. I don’t think that Bill Maher thinks that just because Obama is black (or “half-black”) that means Obama’s going to “kick ass” or be more sensitive to the plight of the oppressed. You need go no further than Clarence Thomas’s seat on the Supreme Court to see just how naïve a thought like that would be.
Moore’s attempted explanation is utterly nonsensical. His attempt to deem it “satire” is silly. The explanation that “you either get it or you don’t” is obnoxious.
Moore’s explanation does underscore that his comments were not malicious (and I never said they were, nor did I say Mr. Moore is A Racist, but rather that he said Racist Shit), but it does not address the underlying problem with the comment, and that is that “being fully black” has some meaning separate and apart from being “fully white” or “half-black.”
And, given that he was referencing Bill Maher’s repeated comments that Maher wanted a gangster president, one who is more Suge Knight than Wayne Brady, Mr. Moore’s response ultimately falls flat on its face.
Here’s what Moore should have said:
I was asked about Obama and how I felt about the job he’s doing. Here’s the transcript:
~snip~
I tried to explain on The View that Bill was a comedian — but then I remembered you can’t really explain comedy. Satire has been around for a long time. Jonathan Swift, in the 18th century, wrote a famous essay about how the Irish should solve their famine problem: Eat their babies. Of course, he didn’t actually mean that. Quite the contrary — he was attacking the policies of the British government that were allowing the Irish to starve to death. There were many that didn’t understand he was employing humor to make a political point. It’s the sort of thing you either get or you don’t. If you take Maher literally, it sounds crass. But he’s being crass to make the larger point: There are a lot of white people who hate Obama because he’s black, and he has endured their hatred to the point of even having to prove he was born. Here. The history of black America — and this is at the core of Maher’s joke — is this: Oppressor=white. Why Obama has chosen to continue Bush’s wars and take positions as bad or worse than his predecessor’s (delaying new EPA pollution standards that could save up to 12,000 lives per year is the most recent example) has baffled many, including Bill Maher and me. Why appease the white Republicans who hate you? Let’s not forget, McCain won the white vote (57% of all white men, 53% of white women) and the ONLY white demographic that Obama won was among 18-29 year olds. (Allow me to point out again that, because the Democrats have been the party of Civil Rights for the past half-century, this has cost them the white male vote in nearly every election. The Dems who’ve made it to the White House have done it while LOSING the white male vote in their elections, with the exception of John F. Kennedy in ’60 and Lyndon Johnson in ’64).
Jokes, and certainly satire, exist to point out society’s foibles and to give people a chance to laugh at the things they’re uncomfortable about and to laugh at those who are abusing their position of power. I don’t think that Bill Maher thinks that just because Obama is black (or “half-black”) that means Obama’s going to “kick ass” or be more sensitive to the plight of the oppressed. You need go no further than Clarence Thomas’s seat on the Supreme Court to see just how naïve a thought like that would be.What I said was offensive to President Obama, black people, and mixed-race people. I shouldn’t have said it and I apologize.
See how much easier that is?
There’s still time to apologize, Mr. Moore.
[cross-posted at Angry Black Lady Chronicles]What Michael Moore said in response and what he should have said in response.Post + Comments (221)