Al Sharpton: on behalf of my people, please STFU

As the error is so widespread (perhaps second in prevalence only to the mistaken notion, which you have expertly debunked, that one can see Al Sharpton as something other than either a selfless civil rights crusader or a harmless buffoon to be universally ignored), would you mind performing a public service and defining “Uncle Tom” for us, and explain what was so inappropriate about Cardinal’s hypothetical response?

Ignorance deserves to be fought, and we have only this small assembly of pitiful arms… please lend your considerable personal armory to the cause.

[ot]The Celebrity version they’re running this season is way more entertaining than I’d dared to hope – her and Gene Simmons, great stuff.[/ot]

Try this wikipedia article - it includes both the correct definition and acknoledgement of the common (mis)usage Cardinal referred to.

Around these parts, it has become sort of a minor PC problem. We say “Pot, meet kettle,” and keep the “B” word out of it.

Whoosh or serious?

Serious. “Who you calling Black?” type of thing.

I suspect they may be pulling your leg.

Try using the phrase “punched the tar baby” to mean one who has gotten them self into a intractable situation because the are pig-headed, and see what happens.

Can you point out the latter? I did read this entry, and don’t see any reference to its improper use.

The entirety of the definition is this:

Or is your contention that “commonly used” in the final sentence means “commonly misused”? (Happily, if that’s the case you can always make the change yourself…)

Well, “misuse” was a misnomer. It’s not by definition a misusage - a person could genuinely believe that certain politcal positions are inheritly dentrimental to blacks and thus holding them would be an attempt to be accomodating to whites to the point of self sabotage. What I meant is that the term is apparently often misunderstood to refer exclusively to a political disagreement among blacks - as if one is saying “you’re disagreeing with the proper black position” rather than “you’re valuing the opinions of whites over yourself” - because it’s so commonly used in terms of political positions.

sigh

So now Golfweek Magazine has decided to renew, in the most inflammatory way possible, what was a rapidly dying story. Golfweek, I would implore you also to STFU.

And now the editor of that magazine has been fired for the “racially insensitive” cover (which, in an obviously unrelated note, required the advertisers protestations to be fully understood as racially insensitive).

It seems to me that the difference between “You’re disagreeing with the proper black position” and “You’re going along with what whitey wants to tell you” is rather small. From a person like Sharpton, the act of going against his position is pretty much defined as kowtowing to whitey.

/Golf claps