I don’t know whether her head was swollen from having just been inducted into the Actors Studio by a gushing James Lipton, but something must have possessed this woman. Here’s is my own transcript, taken from DVR, of a portion of The Actors Studio with Barbra Streisand.
Lipton: Shortly after your Broadway success, with Marty at the helm, with you, you signed a record contract, with what company?
Streisand: Columbia Records. Goddard Lieberson…
Lipton [talking over her]: The great Goddard Lieberson.
Streisand: …a wonderful guy. But first, he turned me down. Didn’t he? He thought I, he didn’t know if I was black or white.
Lipton: From the sound of you…
Streisand [talking over him]: Yeah.
Lipton: …or the look of you?
Streisand: The sound of me. [laughter] Well…
She laughs, the audience joins the laughter, Lipton looks confused. She stands and turns her butt to the audience, shifting her hip to reveal, evidently, that her ass is not large enough to be mistaken as black. A hearty round of laughter and applause ensues as Streisand takes her seat. Why this was funny, much less deserving of delighted cheers of encouragement, escapes me.
Ah, friend Libertarian, got a case of the jaws with Ms. Streisand? Looking for something to be offended about? Spend too much time in dim little bars with nothing on the juke box but People Who Need People, did we?
Hmm. Would it be racist for, say, Sir Mixalot to make a joke about “skinny ass white girls”? Not that he has, specifically; just that some things are more in fun than malice, and winked at by all but the most reactionarily PC.
It seems to me.
I mean, is Karen on Will and Grace homophobic when she refers to Jack as her “girlfriend”? I don’t think so.
Wonder how closely the line between liberal and conservative Dopers who respond to this thread will follow the line between winking and outrage.
She has a bad case of noassatall. She was showing that her ass wasn’t big enough to be black. And the whole audience got it. If this were Ann Coulter swinging her ass on Fox and Friends to show the absurdity of confusing her as black by sight, would it still be just for fun?
Context is not irrelevant, Lib; you can’t just plug the situation into another setting and pretend it proves your point.
Ann Coulter is a nutso whackjob who works very, very hard to support a political agenda that wants to limit the rights of minorities, like blacks. Ann Coulter would come into the discussion with a pre-existing impression, to many, that she IS a racist. Her statements would of course be judged according to her history.
Streisand, too, has been public enough about her political opinions that many people would be comfortable assuming–for example–that she’s probably not racist.
I’m not saying it’s right, I’m just saying you can’t pretend that context is utterly irrelevant. (Think of several different contexts, for example, wherein the phrase “Hey, Nigger!” could suggest vastly different levels of racism.)
“Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatum” — “Do not multiply entities beyond necessity”, or in other words, “When in doubt, do without.” In the theory of knowledge, it means that among theories that equally explain the facts, always choose the simplest.
OK, I guess I wasn’t whooshed. That leaves only one other alternative…
I don’t suppose there’s any chance, any hope at all, that she’ll change political persuasions? Offhand, I can’t think of anyone else I’d more rather be a Republican. Well, maybe Al Sharpton. Pretty close call.
Well if it’s not right, lissener, then what is it? Exactly?
I saw that part of the interview and I was shocked. :eek: What Barbra did is unthinkable to any southern woman I know or work with! I’d take a poll of my fellow black co-worker women, but I wouldn’t want such an insulting remark brought to their attention just to prove my point to y’all.
Who is Dave Chappelle, monstro? We’ve never heard of him. You should start a thread on him since you know of him.
Tacky? Silly? Goofy? Not funny? There are a lot of choices before “racially offensive OMG!!!”
Note that lissener didn’t say it was “not right” either. He was deliberately vague.
Chappelle is a comedian with his own show. Why would I pit him when I’m not genuinely bothered by his act? That would be trollish, would it not?
For the record, this black woman has no problem with people who dare to suggest that black women have booties larger than average. Out of all the things in the world that you can attribute to black women, this is not only the mildest generalization, but it’s probably one of the most accurate.*
Yentel is just hatin’, anyway. She wishes she was black so she could get to sing with Ja-Rule and do a rump-shake video.
*says the black woman who has a backside so flat it’s practically concave.
