Annie the Chicken Queen is a racist symbol. I heard it from the horse's mouth (if the horse is Craig Brimm, blogger for the Kiss My Black Ads campaign at http://kissmyblackads.blogspot.com/2009/04/popeyes-annie-chicken-queen.html.)
Never let it be said I don't offer equal time.
The first question in the blog..." "Annie the Chicken Queen," she actually calls herself that?" I think not. I think the actress calls herself Diedrie Henry...a charming and lovely woman who's been recognized in her own right by nomination for the Ovation Awards for her role in Coming Home at the Fountain, Nov 14, 2011 · Awarded for featured acting role in a play in Ebony Repertory’s “A Raisin in the Sun,” and many others...quite a few for a career imdb.com lists at appearances in 18 guest-spots in TV shows and one movie (Beautiful Boy) http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1755731/ . BET and Ebony have mentioned her contributions to Black Entertainment...and now she's being castigated for an ad in which she's denigrated as "a new Aunt Jemima." Granted, the Aunt Jemima that inspired the name for a new self-rising pancake mix was a vaudevillian in blackface, but Aunt Jemima as we came to know her was Nancy Green, a woman born a slave who went on to become the worlds first living trademark for a corporation. She took the first steps along the road that led to Halle Berry's emotional acceptance speech as the first black woman to receive the Academy Award for Best Actress...but the Chicken Queen has been called the most hurtful title to Blacks since Chicken George (unless one factors in Leroy the Biscuit Boy or Mammy the ho-cake chef.)
How is this role for Popeye's Chicken a bad thing?
It's a bad thing because there are still people actively searching for reasons to find offense where none was intended: people who do not want resentment between races to end. People who criticize "Annie" for her "post Gone With The Wind" "gumbo" accent also criticize Dennis Haysbert.for being "too white" in his articulation, both as the President on '24' and in his ads for AllState Insurance.
Go Figure.
Silly? At least to me. I wouldn't dream of telling anyone they have no right to be hurt, but does it make sense to go looking for reasons?
My horse doesn't understand it either...but the black in my own ancestry is even less visible than the Native American, and since I was never accepted by any of them (or the Irish or the Scot)...while still not able to check "white" on the forms that still ask...I guess I have no right to any opinions at all, beyond my choice of horseflesh.
Is it racially insensitive of me to prefer paint?
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
Saturday, June 11, 2011
So who's this idiot?
Gee, another blogger. How...ordinary.
That's me. I'm an ordinary guy, slightly redneck on my worst days. A little left of center except when it comes to my wife, my guns and my friends; I don't take kindly to folks messing with any of the above.
Come to think of it, best not mess with my horse, either.
Why am I doing this? I guess because I hear too much stuff lately that just strikes me as utter drivel. Someone offered me a soapbox...what would you do?
Today (a little behind the times, like usual) I read about a murder. Two youngsters managed to climb a fence (that was rigged with alarm sensors) then walk a kilometer to a settlement, where they murdered a man, his wife and three children, including a baby. One of them said later that he'd have murdered the other two children if he'd known they were there. Why did they do this? They didn't know anyone in the house. No one there had ever met them.
But the family was Jewish. The entire venture, planned for days in advance, was with the sole purpose of killing some Jews.
Now, I live in a small town in the mountains in Arizona--the biggest excitement that usually happens here is either holiday fireworks or maybe when some other biker gang drops in to take a few shots at the local Hell's Angels. (The fireworks lasts longer and is a lot more exciting.) I don't really imagine that, all things considered, we're that different from the folks of Itamar, in the Samarian Mountains of Israel. If we don't know our neighbor's neighbor, we'll still go over with a pie and coffee, and sit with him and grieve. We'll cuss the fates, we'll pray our prayers and we'll help each other pull together and go on. I expect that the folks of Itamar are doing the same.
That's me. I'm an ordinary guy, slightly redneck on my worst days. A little left of center except when it comes to my wife, my guns and my friends; I don't take kindly to folks messing with any of the above.
Come to think of it, best not mess with my horse, either.
Why am I doing this? I guess because I hear too much stuff lately that just strikes me as utter drivel. Someone offered me a soapbox...what would you do?
Today (a little behind the times, like usual) I read about a murder. Two youngsters managed to climb a fence (that was rigged with alarm sensors) then walk a kilometer to a settlement, where they murdered a man, his wife and three children, including a baby. One of them said later that he'd have murdered the other two children if he'd known they were there. Why did they do this? They didn't know anyone in the house. No one there had ever met them.
But the family was Jewish. The entire venture, planned for days in advance, was with the sole purpose of killing some Jews.
Now, I live in a small town in the mountains in Arizona--the biggest excitement that usually happens here is either holiday fireworks or maybe when some other biker gang drops in to take a few shots at the local Hell's Angels. (The fireworks lasts longer and is a lot more exciting.) I don't really imagine that, all things considered, we're that different from the folks of Itamar, in the Samarian Mountains of Israel. If we don't know our neighbor's neighbor, we'll still go over with a pie and coffee, and sit with him and grieve. We'll cuss the fates, we'll pray our prayers and we'll help each other pull together and go on. I expect that the folks of Itamar are doing the same.
But we rest easier, over here, because we really don't think this would ever happen, and in Itamar, they live with knowing that it may well happen again, tomorrow.
I'm just an idiot with a computer; I got no answers. What I have is probably just cynicism, but I know that the other day when someone told me that Islam is a peaceful religion, that it's a lie that they want to kill every Jew in the world, and I showed him the video at http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/2042.htm, he told me I was spreading hate.
Me. Not the guy who was sitting there, smiling like someone's benevolent grandfather, saying "YOU MUST BELIEVE THAT WE WILL FIGHT, DEFEAT, AND ANNIHILATE THEM, UNTIL NOT A SINGLE JEW REMAINS ON THE FACE OF THE EARTH."
Genocide is an ugly word...but it's an uglier thing altogether to hear someone urging it so calmly, with such a kind smile on his face. It's a scary word, but it's a scarier thing, knowing that this kind of preaching is going on while my countrymen tell me that my own fears are politically incorrect...that I'm a hatemonger for trying to show the folks in my circle what's really happening behind that mask of a "religion of peace."
Fear breeds hate.,.and isn't fear what terrorism is meant to create? Maybe I'm afraid, but does that mean I'm spreading hate? Or is the hate the product of those who created the fear?
Guess I'll go sit on a log and talk to the horse for a while. She don't ask me so many hard questions.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)