I Love Apple Pie…
Barry Max
First Kelly Tilghman.
Now This.
I have the sinking feeling that examples of a noose like the one above on display on the cover of Golfweek speaks volumes.
It is a barometer.
It measures where black people rate in the cult of public conscience. No one has to say nigger, jigaboo, sambo or anything else anymore. We have been beaten into submission. To the point where we use the words with love . But of course we take the ‘r’ out of nigger and replace the e with an ‘a’.
Which confines the very limited appropriate usage to the black community. Unless, of course you have a familiarity with the ever changing ‘black vernacular’ and you can convincingly slip it in without catching a mouthshot.
Or black eye.
Most white people I know that I have heard use the term nigger towards a black person in a non-negative (is that possible?) way are actually testing their own status. I have had several aqcuaintances or would-be friends that have thrown in the n-bomb to see where I was at.
For a white person to able to say ‘nigga’ safely in room full of brothas means he has already proven his love for all things black.
Or he is simply checking if his ghetto pass can be revoked.
It can.
It’s all about context.
Back to Golfweek.
The whole cover with the noose should have been the golf community’s apology for the embarrassing insensitive remarks. They could have spun it in such an effective way. They got the attention with the provocative symbol on the cover, all they had to do was follow up with some substance. Instead they printed the usual fluff that is in demand nowadays.
Golfweek blew a perfect opportunity to start a cathartic discussion on race and hatred within the anglicized golf community.
Instead they minimize or overlook the very real possibility of offending a huge segment of society. Many with family members still alive that have shared stories and witnessed, first hand accounts that define the bloody, sadistic history of America in ‘Tha good ol days’.As you can see.
They didn’t always use a noose.
Kelly knew what she said was wrong. She also knows about five black people watch the Golf Channel regularly. I also understand that she is a college grad from the south. That is exactly why I am not buying her bullshit story about not knowing. She forgot she was on-air. She got to relaxed and waxed poetic to get a laugh just like she does in the country club to endear herself with the stately gentlemen puffing cigars and oogling in her company.
But forget Kelly she is already old news.
Somebody needs to ask the editor.
How on Earth did you come up with this?
Can’t wriggle free?How do they do it?
The same way he comes up with stuff
Golfweek claimed they wanted to educate. I can just see the editorial board having a spirited discussion over the subject.
Sometimes the best way to get rid of a boss you don’t like is to co-sign their idiotic decisions. Make sure there is no official record of your agreement.
And Voila!!!
Now you can have the job.
The most disturbing aspect of this particular set of events is how many Americans black and white do not have a firm grasp on our history. I have heard so many insensitive and ignorant responses to the suspension of Kelly Tilghman and the firing of the Golfweek editor.
I am convinced no one has a monopoly on stupidity. It is equally distributed among all races genders and orientations.
Maybe it’s indifference?
Or
I do not expect anyone to apologize or make excuses for the tragic history we share.
But I do expect a little reverence- respect.
Why is he a villian?
He is harmless. Besides, if he didn’t speak up no one would.
I don’t know. I just don’t know.
Jonestown 
So, then, please explain to me how is it that I’ve been ahead of everybody on Tilghman, the Protocol Of Lynching, and seeing the whole Al Sharpton, yet there’s some perception that I’m particularly a racist because I dislike a rather conservative Black candidate for President and support a somewhat conservative White woman, because my candidate of choice, an extremely progressive Serbian-American of White skin, is not a viable candidate?
BarryMax, have my comments on this stuff all over Blogovia been different from yours here?
Have I ever used the word “nigger” gratiutiously?
Do I understand about ghetto-passes? Did I not come up with the term “Shtetl-Psss”? I can make all the rude Jewish jokes I care to on my blog or on any comments I leave anywhere. But good manners dictate that I never step into anyone else’s shit.
So…in the spirit of Apple Pie. Here’s today’s laff. Two old friends, Moishe and Murray, meet on the corner of Delancey and Allen. Moishe says “oy gevalt, Murray, I heard what happened. Vey ist mir. I feel so bad for you, Murray. How can I help you and your family? I heard the terrible, terrible news that your factory in Brooklyn burned down. What can I say?”
Murray responds: “Shh, Moish. Shtum, shtum. That’s supposed to happen next week.”
I used the same provocative imagery(black eye) as the Golfweek editor. it was a contectual trick. that could have been a clip from Mixed Martial Arts Greatest Knockouts.
The point is context context mixed with respect. There is protocol that exist that demands respect for all genders races, orientations. And most of us, despite our personal feelings, adhere to it. A testament to evolution. Kelso you have raised my eyebrows but you have never actually pissed me off I consider correspondence with you more valuable than a subway token(snicker) Way more valuable.
I have learned a lot in the short time i have been here.
Plus
I finally learned how to upload photos…i got excited.
I had no problem with the photo. I wrote on the HELLIONS that if after R2 of the 2005 British Open, Kelly Tilghman said “the other golfers should just toss skip Kendall into an oven,” and then have GolfWeek put a picture of Dachau on the cover with a “balanced-to-favorable” approach to Tilghman’s fuckup, I’d want to tear the first White Christian I saw into pieces but I’d restrain myself for my sake, the sake of my family and for the good of society. Moreover, I made the point how impressed I was at Black America’s incredible tolerance and patience.
I agree with you completely, and, yes, thank you very much by the way for NOTICING before that I was ahead of the pack on this without any reference to “race”.
Likewise, I’ve learned a bunch from you and you haven’t ever pissed me off either. I do think we waste time arguing about Obama and Clinton but as he’s been a thorn in my paw since “the speech” and very few seem willing to write what they think, it’s a bit of an obsession of mine and I don’t mind your opposition. Barack Obama, I think, is the only “racial” issue upon which we disagree. Or may ever disagree. For various reasons too numerous and personal to get into here.
I don’t know about you but I happen to despise the phrase “political correctness” because it was a phrase the left invented to laugh at itself which was appropriated by the right and turned into the right’s forensic sword and shield. Like you, though, in both the post and your follow-up to my comment, I think good manners are very important. I also don’t think that good manners are incompatible with extremely vigorous polemics.
I think it was Clarence Thomas’s use of the phrase “high-tech lynching” which got me started on a study of the subject given as I’ve said before my unfamiliarity with the word in all its meaning. My conclusions as you know are: Clarence Thomas was a full of shit as a Christmas goose and his use of the phrase was wholly inappropriate; Kelly Tilghman and GolfWeek have betrayed an ignorance that must be explored further publicly. I don’t want to see these people punished. I want them to EXPLAIN THEMSELVES.
I think part of the reason situations like this are dismissed as “Political Correctness,” is because as a whole the white race simply cannot identify.
Never in history has the white race (As a monolith) been subjected to genocide, therefore the idea among many whites is simply “Get Over It.”
How about instead of making a Jewish joke she said, “I hope some terrorists hijack his flight home?”
And then Golfweek could have a picture of a plane crashing into the Empire State Building on its cover.
As a monolith, no, but the history of Europe is littered with such things from Ancient Greece and Rome through The Balkans War. The latter slams home the lesson that NOBODY “just gets over it,” although occasionally there’s progress as in the European Union, modern South Africa and Northern Ireland.
White America’s just weird is all. They are going to have to pick up some empathy in a hurry because lean times are coming and one can never know who’s an enemy or who’s a friend based upon skin color or accent.
Kelso, I think your last comment sums it up nicely. Since there is no history here, no appreciation of it, no understanding of it, the unseen layers beneath the surface, white America puts so little thought, has no grasp of context, for these issues. Thus, ‘get over it.’ Everyone is The Other because We Are Special. Well no, you’re one of many countries with some good shit and some bad shit. But you have no sense of history and context.
Randal that was my point.
For instance,young black men would not throw around the n-word if they really appreciated the history behind the word.
I do not want to generalize because I knew the history I just did not appreciate it,like everyone else.
I admit, I still slip and use it. Less and less.
It is really interesting how we can point the finger at Madrassas in the Muslim World for indoctrinating ignorance and hate.
I do not see much of a difference in my/our indoctrination in school here.
I always thought America was the greatest country on earth. I started to study history and listen in sociology.
The World is a big place.
A little empathy can go a long way toward making things better.
I hate golf. It’s like watching paint dry. The biggest danger we face from the golf magazine is that it might bore us to death.
Okay, all joking aside. That is a dumb idea for a cover and just plain insensitive. Maybe deliberately? I mean, could they really be so stupid?
Kelly should remember that gender discrimination is still a part of the country club golf world.
Remember Casey Martin? God, that pissed me off, too.
Yeah, I know it’s wrong, but I have a distaste for golf itself, and I can’t help it. There’s just too much ickiness surrounding it, too much discrimination and cluelessness and…blech. Hates it.
This is one of the best posts on race that I’ve read recently. Kelso kind of already made my point… but if she had said basically the same thing only about a Jewish player with a reference to ovens or concentration camps, I don’t think that GolfWeek would have put a picture of Dachau on the cover. I don’t put it past them to come up wit the idea, but I do think that the Holocaust tends to be untouchable territory in mainstream media. Maybe not. I just don’t understand why there’s so little sensitivity to the genocidal experiences of blacks in America as compared to the Jewish Holocaust. As a half-Polish Jew myself, I would have the same reaction as Kelso and I would hope that I would restrain myself. I’m of the opinion that you can’t rank things like this. Sure there are layers of oppression. But genocide is genocide, whether it comes in the form of a hanging rope, a machete, a shotgun, or a gas chamber. Why would the editor at GolfWeek think that this image, combined with what I’m sure he thought to be clever puns about “slipping up” and “wriggling free,” is acceptable? Particularly considering the tradition of racism in the sport of golf and the exclusive clubs associated with it. Disgusting.
Why is it okay, for example, that the Cleveland Indians continue to use a caricature of American Indians as their mascot?
Imagine if Atlanta (A predominately “black” city) changed from the “Atlanta Braves” to the “Georgia Crackers” and chose some toothless, incestuous, sheet wearing fuckwad as their new mascot.
You think Southern whites would be offended?
That’s an idea for a new hat post.
Suzi_ Thank you. I immediately thought of the Holocaust as a comparison. I thought what if she joked about gas chambers?
I immediately realized that the responsibility of respect for these issues lies with the people who were victims.
We need to,lead the way.
We need to honor the dates of massacres and mass killings. Make it clear, slavery was bad…real bad but the terror really started when the Federal Government abandoned black people in the south.
I m trying to say Jewish survivors made an emphatic an constant plea to never forget. I have made my own plea. A lot of what I have learned- the gory details- I learned after I was 25.
I talked to old folks at church.My greatgrandfather before he died. Anyone over seventy who wanted to share an experience.
I have done the same on the other side of the cultural divide. Candid honest accounts. Real apologies.
I paid attention in History but we only skimmed the surface of the slavery/race issue. In history class was given gory details of the Holocaust, as a result, I had a built in reverence and would never make the kind of mistake Kelly Tilghman made. In fact I never joke about human misery- in front of people at least.
The same attention details should be paid regarding reconstruction and the violent climate of the Jim Crow
south. The real story needs to told.
Once again it is not about ‘I am sorry’. Its about ‘I would never do some shit like that’
I cannot believe crowds gathered for that.
Hell on earth.
Fairlane: I love the idea of the “Georgia Crackers” and I don’t know if you knew how ironic you were being. Various baseball concentrate their scounting in certain geographical areas or with a certain philosophy, e.g., the Dodgers and “Indians” specialize in the Domenican Republic, the Astros specialize in Venezuela, the Pirates once had a direct pipeline of pitching talent from Veracruz and Southern Mexico in general, the A’s like NCAA players with big stats who might not physcially fit the type of players that the scouts like. Well, yes, Fairlane. The Braves have their own zone of interest. They mostly draft White players from Georgia or Florida high schools.
In a way, though, there had been a significant change in the way American White Christians have begun to understand their world and they don’t like it. As an urban Jew from a mixed neighborhood I always knew that Jews didn’t aspire to be Gentiles, Blacks didn’t aspire to be White, and Puerto Ricans didn’t want to wash the Puerto Rico out of themselves. Quite the contrary. Writing as a Jew having grown up with Puerto Ricans I know how disdainful we are of the goyim when we’re out of earshot, and I can only imagine the same is true of Blacks. Up until fairly recently, MARRYING OUTSIDE THE TRIBE was considered weird and the White Christian was at the bottom of the family pecking order, not the boss by any means. And none of that has been incompatible with wanting professional and financial success.
What really scalds Rush Limbaugh’s nuts is that for a good long while White Christian Americans have been “minstrelized” in a way in that maybe since Lenny Bruce and certainly since Richard Pryor, White America came to realize that not only did Blacks, Jews, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, etc., not consider White Christias to be superior, but also White Christians came to be figures of ridicule in certain genres. How many movies have a White character physically inept, verbally inartful, overly fearful, with just barely latent racist tendencies vis-a-vis Black characers? How many have a White chaacter who is humorless, sexless, uneducated, unsophisticated and easily duped vis-a-vis Jewish characters? How many have a White character disdainful, xenophobic and dismissive — “innocents abroad” in their own country, if you will — vis-a-vis Latin characters? The answer is A LOT.
Something changed on 9/11, of course. And this is why a long time ago I commented at D-CUP’s that the final battle of the American Civil War was not Gettysburg nor Atlanta. The final battle was in Lower Manhattan on 9/11 and THE SOUTH WON. For a very brief period, that started with Ari Fleischer’s (there’s a culture traitor, alight!) comment that Irony Is Dead And People Are Going To Have To Watch What They Say, that the stereotype of the White Buffoon was no longer appropriate and we “hyphens” were subordinate once again.
Of all of the many horrible things Thomas Friedman (another traitor) has written the worst was in the op-ed pieces days just after 9/11. He issued a blanket statement Blacks have to get with program, and love America or leave it. Friedman, did not tolerate any dissent. There was no longer to be any White villains or buffoons in movies. Nothing to challenge the White nameless man’s meed to feel superior. And certainly NO MORE OJ SIMPSON SKEPTICISM OR CHEERING.
The cowboy was once again to be the hero. So it was (“LET’S ROLL”) for a little while anyway.
Things have come back slightly from the (easier) arts and entertainment side, due in no small measure to the aforementioned Nas, plus Eminem, Green Day, Ice Cube, Bill Maher, Mos Def and whole bunch of others who bet big time careers against the 9/11 jive.
On to peace, social justice and the economy……….
Dave: “…In fact I never joke about human misery- in front of people at least.
The same attention details should be paid regarding reconstruction and the violent climate of the Jim Crow
south. The real story needs to told.
Once again it is not about ‘I am sorry’. Its about ‘I would never do some shit like that’
I cannot believe crowds gathered for that.
Hell on earth…”
Using a quaint locution, right on!
I’ve written many times before, we are on the same page 99.99% of the time except for that ONE little thing! I’m very supportive of the PRD here and for that reason (forgetting all my witticisms) it’s not really philosophical nor a matter of style, WE NEED HER DOWN HERE AS PRESIDENT UP HERE. But that’s just old business. New business as pertaining to this particular post is the “Hymietown” crack of 1983. I probably wrote this somewhere else, but that didn’t offend me in the slightest. I thought it was a pretty funny crack on Jackson’s part. His defense of himself was what offended me: the Holocaust is past history and Jews are just another kind of oppressive White to him (Jeez, why did he have Gerry Austin running his campaigns then?) and the big deal was America’s Black holocaust, etc. I thought, “fuck him…James Chaney was destined to run into trouble in Philadelphia, MS, of course, because of his skin color and activism, but Andy Goodman and Michael Schwerner needn’t have bothered coming down from NYC to die. They could have remained ‘oppressors’ p there.” But, all in all, better Jackson said that and we had the discussion and we’re past it.
This golf crap, trivial as it seems, also demands a vigorous argument. I agree with you.
Hymietown…I remember. I chuckle but I feel guilty. Jesse was basically emotional. He was frustrated. His Anglo buddies couldn’t get certain Jews to budge on a few issues so he considered new York a Jewish town.
We have learned so much from that. The Anti Defamation League posterized him for that and whenever a political discussion brews around Jackson the suicidal statement is repeated over and over again. He would take it back if he could.
All the while, not one single Ashky- whatcha callit has lost over five minutes of sleep over anything Jackson does or says but they keep a watchful eye on him.
For Fun.
Not for fun, my friend. For business. One may say a lot of good and bad things about Jesse. One thing no one can say is that he is a bad investor or businessman. He’s a brilliant investor and businessman. He started taking an interest in Coca-Cola when Goizueta became CEO at one of those Black/Brown leadership things. And wasted no time buying a number of bottling franchises. I think that was also one of Warren Buffett’s first big scores but on a % basis Jackson did better.
That’s but one of the great investment decisions in his life. THE RAINBOW COALITION and OPERATION PUSH ran into all sorts of legal problems for whatever reason or no reason at all, but as cases in brand management they were masterpieces. I’m not trying to say that I think Jackson’s corporatist or a sell-out or anything like that. My view on him as an Ashkenaz-Kikey (!) is that he’s a rich, smart guy who bent the rules occasionally as most rich, smart guys do. And as a organizing and financial supporter of the progressive cause, he’s been a net plus. No, I never lost any sleep over him. I wish I had gotten to know him (for the investment tips if nothing else!).
Whether MLK, Jr., would have been proud of him is a question of “how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” I’ll leave that to West, Gates, et. al., to study.
I’ll say this. I have found myself in agreement with Jesse Jackson far more often than I’ve myself in agreement with the ADL.
Now, that you’ve told me some of the history behind the crack, I understand it’s context. I wasn’t offended to begin with. Just as I wasn’t offended by James Baker III’s even nastier crack “fuck the Jews; they don’t vote for us, anyway.” I knew the context. He had been trying desperately to do what Clinton did with tragic results ultimately — getting Israel and the PLO — together, and was getting more resistance from the Israel side. Both remarks we’re goofy and certainly not fodder for newspaper interviews but, I understand. I think that given some reflection time, Jackson could have come up with some better defense of his gracelessness than the pile of shit he served up because none of his actions ever demonstrated that he believed that crap.
fuck