Jesse Handy |
The National Review (a right-wing piece of !@#* - I mean, a conservative magazine) printed a cartoon with caricatures of Clinton, his wife Hillary, and Vice President Gore. The trio was drawn with what some consider stereotypical Asian features, e.g., slanted eyes and buck teeth. As you can imagine, this offended several Asian-Americans who organized and demanded a formal apology.
While channel-surfing over Spring Break, I saw the head of one such Asian-American group and a spokesman from the National Review on the Today show. The National Review spokesman, in his infinite Harvard-educated arrogance, said Asians weren't offended by the cartoon, and there would be no apology, formal or otherwise. He went on to say that, in fact, he was offended that the Asian representative and her group dared to be offended and, instead, he and the National Review should receive an apology.
It was at this point that I began to wish I could create one of those beer-commercial moments by tapping the top of my TV with a beer, combining two shows into one. In this case, the interview and one of the old Monty Python 16-ton-weight-dropping sketches would have been wonderful together. I wished for a split-second Ike Turner or someone would have come from offstage and given the guy a circa-1973 blaxploitation-film-variety pimp slap. I wondered how a man could get to be so old and educated and still be so stupid.
I'm certain the offended group of Asians in question will apologize shortly after I and a group of African-Americans apologize to the Ku Klux Klan and United Klans of America for all of the name-calling, beatings, lynchings, rapes and general terrorism we've forced them to commit against people of color.
Let's not stop there. Let's see if we can ask Native Americans to apologize to big sports teams like the Redskins, Chiefs, Braves and Indians for their being maligned by the offended few. Let's get Holocaust survivors to apologize to surviving Nazis.
True, not every Asian-American was offended by the caricature in question, but you seriously have to question the brain trust at the National Review for demanding an apology from those who were.
If you still can't see what the big deal is, imagine if the Review ran a cartoon of Clinton with a big afro and thick lips. Wouldn't you expect African-Americans to be offended? We as a society shouldn't be hypersensitive to political correctness. But, at the same time, we shouldn't be insensitive to one another.
National magazines should always be conscious of the fact that, despite their target demographics, they will be seen by the nation as a whole. But what should we expect from a magazine published by William F. Buckley who, during the integration of Central High School in 1950s Little Rock, defended those who set upon 13 black teenagers who just wanted to go to school?
The same William F. Buckley vilified Martin Luther King Jr. before and after his death April 4, 1968.
He's the same William F. Buckley who, along with columnist Pat Buchanan, came up with a list of borderline slanderous reasons why MLK's birthday should not have been made a national holiday in the early '80s.
Of course, I am referring to the same National Review that canonized Ronald Reagan for giving tax breaks to really rich guys, gutting - sorry - cutting funding to education, selling us out economically to the Japanese and crushing labor unions.
This is, of course, the same National Review that never said a kind word about the late, great Associate Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, but can't seem to run out of bad things to say about the man who would replace him: Clarence Thomas (or as I've referred to him in the past: "Uncle" Clarence Thomas).
The world and, yes, this nation, are getting smaller. And, as Bob Dylan told us so many years ago, "The times, they are a-changin.'"
Do yourself a favor. Change with the times or become a dinosaur and get a job as a spokesman for the National Review. Ignorance is bliss, after all. Why not get paid for it?
Handy is a senior RTV major waiting for an apology from those he's offended.