Hitchens refers to Sykes as "our Sable Sapphist"
May 19, 2009 9:11 pm ET by Media Matters staff
From Hitchens' May 18 Slate column:
There is a mildly racist comedian in England named Jim Davidson who thinks it amusing to ask what West Indians said to themselves while using the black-and-white strips of the pedestrian crossing. ("Now you see me, now you don't; now you see me, now you don't.")* In order for this to be funny in the least--and I frankly despaired of it ever achieving that critical mass so essential to the life and definition of a comedian--it would have to be just as funny if a "white" person was traversing the road in the same way.
Not laughing yet? Me neither. Well, then, why is it so "edgy" for Wanda Sykes to say that Obama gets lots of praise now, but that if he messes up, it'll be, "What's up with the half-white guy?" This can be remotely hilarious only if said by somebody nonwhite, but almost every paleface in the audience seemed to feel it their duty to rock back and forth with complicit mirth.
Still, at least that weak opening stuff was in some manner launched in Obama's direction. The rest of Sykes' time was spent vocalizing the talking points of moveon.org and Air America. If I am in a taxi and Rush Limbaugh is on the radio, I ask the driver to switch the station or switch it off altogether. Limbaugh's life, like his appeal, is a closed book to me. But I presume that he was on painkiller medication for some reason before he began to become dependent on it, and before he became an object of our adorable "war on drugs." It's not so much that it isn't very funny to mock him for his Oxycontin habit. It's that it's near-impossible to imagine our Sable Sapphist lampooning a black equivalent of Limbaugh for an addiction to, say, crack.
Previously:
The other right-wing media mogul you should worry about
Palin's book and Obama's bow: a media week to forget
Media Matters: The Palin chronicles
This is basic jokewriting 101. Some things are funny, some not. Rush and any drug is funny, Blacks and crack are not. It's a problem of connotation, really.
She was lampooning Limbaugh mostly because he is the largest target, and most forceful Obama hater out there.
And the two jokes are not the same. What's funny for a white person (or anybody) about Sykes joke about 'half-white' is that if African Americans disown him, they can blame the white part. That's funny. The Brit joke about crosswalks makes no sense either, because, as Hitchens points out, the crosswalk appearance is not singular for any particular race. Sykes' joke makes sense, the Brit one doesn't, nor does Hitchens.
Largest target...that's too funny magnolialover.
I agree, but only because it's near-impossible to think of a "black equivalent of Limbaugh": I'm unaware of any black, deaf, obese, thrice-divorced, prescription drug-addicted, Viagra-borrowing, Dominican Republic visiting conservative radio hosts.
If he's suggesting that a black lesbian comedian wouldn't mock a black celebrity with a crack addiction, he's completely nuts.
He supports harsher sentencing for every other drug offender and is against the medical use of marijuana use, yet he himself is an addict who used his hired help to buy his drugs.
Some things are funny, some are not. Oxycontin's funny, crack is not. Hitchens lacks a funny bone, obviously.
Pretty clever, Hitchens, you achromic alky.
So Hitchens is scared to make such a joke because he is white? Why is that? I laughed at her joke because it is funny and a risky take on black self-image. I think black people would joke that he is half-white if he messes up. The most biting thing about this joke is that none of us are of a pure ethnic descent. I'm a mix or all Europe and likely some African as well. Were it 1890 in New York and I was governor, I could be the subject of the same joke that if I mess up, I'm half German rather than Irish.
My point is that a first step to releasing the tension around racial sterotypes is to recognize the stereotypes, call them out and discredit them. Ww should all have the courage to do this, whether we are light or dark skinned.