As I told you last week, you know its over when NPR thinks its timely.
Years after the rest of us started appending the “That’s Racist!” gif to posts and comments — as a matter fact, I’m a once devoted user who’d actually forgotten all about it — NPR devoted a segment to the meme — and, as Jonah Goldberg informs you ( no surprise) — they managed to miss the point entirely.
Here’s Jonah Goldberg at his best (does anyone else wonder why he’s never published a “selected columns”?)
Ulaby relied heavily on Regina Bradley, who teaches African-American literature at Florida State University.
Bradley admits her students say “that’s racist” all the time:
“They were simply using it to lump discussions of race and race discourse all together. Because they were just saying because we brought up issues of race that was considered to be racist.”
OK, so apparently the reason these kids say “that’s racist” is that they’re not too bright.
(…)
But what’s the joke? We don’t find out until a 14-year-old-boy says it plainly:
“I think I or other people just sort of do it as a way of mocking people who are overly sensitive about race issues.”
Bingo!
NPR could have done the whole story in 30 seconds. But instead it spent more than five minutes trying to grapple with a wonderful yet utterly inconvenient truth for the ostentatiously liberal network:
Young people just aren’t as uptight about race as their parents, never mind their grandparents, are.
***
UPDATE: James Fulford not as thrilled.
PS: mark this date on your calendars and bookmark this post.
Because you will rarely see me type these words:
I’m not QUITE buying the “his momma says he was planning to go to college” thing; that’s standard issue “colour of crime” boilerplate.
But this is America’s bureaucratic/legalistic culture gone mad — and, yeah, I think pretty much probably just a little bit racist.
Is it that pranks involving sex dolls are supposed to be the privilege of white upper-middle-class teenage boys? “Stick to beating up white kids, n-word.”
And yes, Andrea, there are indeed “African-American sex dolls.”
I’m just learning now that there are also blow up sheep dolls, which would come in very handy at some anti-jihad rally or other…
