So the use of ‘be’ here indicates a continuous state. I think that’s why when they get fake money in The Wire’s first season, DeAngelo says ‘Money be green’, because he’s referring to an element of money that defines it.
Accurate!
Sigh. And this is my **naked **baby pictures.
Also, she’s not the target of the joke, the target is George Clooney and the point is that Clooney only dates women young enough to be his daughter.
To me the tweet was worse, but I don’t think the person who wrote it meant to be offensive. IMHO it was meant to be a satire on the bitchy tweets people put out about celebrities but rather ill-thought out.
I think there choosing to delete it and apologize, like the deleting of the headlines about Jerry Lin, was the right thing to do.
The problem is that if there was a meta-level joke here, nobody got it, at least nobody in the news business. I’ve been reading media accounts, and every one of them is reporting that The Onion straight up called Ms. Wallis a cunt. Without a trace of humor.
Which is incredibly annoying. It’s one thing to say a joke isn’t funny for one reason or another. Representing it as if it weren’t a joke - as if offensiveness or unfunny-ness magically changes a joke into an expression of someone’s real opinion - is simply dishonest.
Heh, if that is the same Bob Saget joke I am thinking of, the first time I heard about it I almost swallowed my tongue, I was so shocked that someone would say that. Or rather, shocked it would even occur to someone to say that.
And now it’s my baseline for if a joke is shocking. I’m not sure anything has ever met that baseline again.
I don’t know that I would say the tweet was a commentary on women. In my mind the tweet was about two things, mainly: the absurdity and offensiveness of calling a 9-year old a cunt, and the fact that many people in society and the media feel like they are entitled to make very pointed, personal, and harsh judgments of people they don’t know.
Lots of people, myself included, will say they we hate a celebrity or that that’s a horrible person when really it’s a complete stranger. I think the tweet was sort of a reductio ad absurdum. We sometimes feel entitled to hate strangers since they’re celebrities, applying that to a child celebrity highlights that it’s ridiculous.
As for why it’s not about her, well, she’s a placeholder for innocence. Moby Dick isn’t about a whale just because there’s one in the story.
I wish I would have explained it to my black board that way, before I got the boot, Snarky. Inner Stickler, don’t apologize… I was just messin with ya.
Nzinga, if someone from the Onion had organized a group of people to run up to Ms. Wallis and shout hilarious-but-hateful things at her, perhaps to satirize the idea that we live in a post-racial society, would you be cool with that, or would that cross the line?
I find it hard to believe that folks genuinely don’t have a line in this way, that any attempt at humor, no matter how hurtful to the recipient, is okay.
If you’re saying you don’t have a crossable line to the extent that no joke, no matter how awful about a particular group or event, is off-limits, that’s one thing. But in this case, the line I think they crossed is the line of making a perfectly good satirical point by saying something nasty about a kid. They thought their end was good enough that the side-effect–of hurting a kid’s feelings–was worth it.
I disagree. The chance that Wallis will learn about the tweet is high enough that a decent person ought not to make it, in my opinion. If there were no such risk, I don’t think it’d be problematic; but the risk is there, so it is.
Oh my god, I still have nightmares about that thread. To this day!
Oh my… oh my god… I um, I think you’re a girl and I don’t know you, but I’m feeling an emotion akin to love right now.
Satirizing a childish name call via Twitter is a little different from actually harassing someone in real life. Hell, even if all I ever Tweeted was “Cunt, cunt, cunt” at a certain celebrity (which isn’t funny… okay, it kind of is), that’s a whole different ball of wax than following her to dinner yelling “cunt” at her while she’s trying to order dinner. I don’t think the line crossed would be the jokes, but instead the actual moving into real life harassment.
I guess I’m just not convinced it’s really that likely that knowledge of the tweet would be particularly hurtful.
I don’t really draw a line between online harassment and “real life harassment.” I think online IS real life, and behavior online IS behavior in real life.
I don’t think this is pedantic, either: on the contrary, I think treating online behavior as less serious than in-person behavior results in people doing some ill-advised things pretty often.
Hmm…thinking some more, doing it in-person would be worse because of the undercurrent of physical danger. Is that the line you’re getting at? That is, if someone instead just called her up and shouted epithets at her, that’d be okay?
If you did think knowledge of it would be particularly hurtful, would that change your mind about the appropriateness?
I know lots of kids in this age, both boys and girls, and I see them getting pretty badly hurt by much less serious insults; yesterday I nearly had to break up a fight because one girl told another that her hair was short. I have no trouble at all believing that a nine-year-old girl would react strongly to this tweet, and would further not be able to comprehend the satirical intent of it.
Well, not everyone is as forgiving. It’s better for me to break a bad habit with someone who’s not particularly invested rather than cause a situation later on.
I read a play once where one scene was a character buried up to his neck in the floor repeating cunt over and over and that was it. I’ve always wondered what sort of notes an actor might have for that scene.
I’m having a hard time thinking about it in terms of inappropriateness since the comment has to be inappropriate to even work as a joke. So I think though that I can put it this way.
If I thought the writer should be expected to predict that the comment would traumatize the girl, then I’d think the writer would be an asshole for making the comment.
“It’s like when you tell the winner of the race ‘you ran a bit slow,’”. That’s a proposed explanation I saw somewhere, seems to be part of a sufficient explanation to me.
Right. Obviously typing mean things to someone on the internet is an action that takes place in the real world (those things just don’t float onto the web by themselves), but if someone Tweeted over and over again that I’m a cunt, I’d think that person needs to get a life. If someone followed me around screaming “cunt!” at me, I’d think that person needs to get a life, and I’d get a fucking restraining order and change my locks because that person is a dangerous psycho.
No, harassing people is not okay, and I don’t think I said that it was. I’m saying I don’t think there is a line about not being able to make jokes that include calling a child a bad word.
That’s basically what I mean by “appropriate.” The inappropriateness of it in the sense you’re using the word isn’t what bothers me; I love Louis CK’s awful routines about his children, for example, and I think A Modest Proposal is wonderful.
That, however–I really don’t think any 9-year-old I know would even begin to comprehend that explanation, especially not on an emotional level.
I admire your thick skin. I don’t expect a kid to have equally thick skin; indeed, I don’t expect it of adults, and I would think an adult who did a performance art piece based around calling you vile names would be out of line.
I get the satire, and I understand that her innocence is a vital part of it. I don’t think the satirical point was worth the potential side-effect of hurting a kid’s feelings in this way.
Right, that’s a fair point and I get it, I just don’t feel the same.
Well, my sample size for experience with kids is small.
But I seem to recall reading once that they’ve found out that kids as young as three typically understand the difference between sarcasm and non-sarcasm. Granted knowing the difference isn’t the same as fully appreciating sophisticated satire, but anyway, reading things like that suggested to me that kids get things more than is usually thought.
My own kids seem to get satire and sarcasm okay. (Interestingly it’s the older one who occasionally has to ask if I’m being serious–but when I then tell him I’m not (as someone can tell Quvenzhane that the comment isn’t serious) then he understands how to interpret my comment. Meanwhile my younger kid never has to ask–she just understands. And… that’s my sample size.)
Those critics obviously didn’t know that The Onion is one of the Holy Hipster Trinity (along with South Park and Quentin Tarantino) whose every utterance is pure blessed Truth.