I love Chris Muir’s laconic take on the days events seen through the eyes of two young, hip couples in his Day by Day cartoons.
But today’s installment may have crossed a line of good taste. I know many of you will disagree with me, but you decide.
Many of you will recall when we conservatives came down hard on Jane Hamsher of Firedog Lake for her photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman in minstrel make up. It is an unnecessary, hurtful reminder of days past when black people were thought not good enough to share the stage with white people. And to make matters worse, the Minstrel Show itself portrayed blacks in the most nauseatingly, submissive, subservient ways imaginable.
Ever wonder why the black stereotype is so ingrained in American culture? You can thank the wild popularity of the Minstrel shows. For most of the 19th century, these variety shows toured the small towns, big cities, and rural hamlets with whites dressed up in black face and performing song, dance, and skits in a bastardization of how African Americans lived. Watermelon eating, the slow shuffling gait, laziness, the myth that all blacks can dance, and a cloying kind of paternalism that exists down to this day, represented by Hillary Clinton and other liberal Democrats, were staples of Minstrel shows – even later when blacks themselves began to perform in them! Black actors were actually forced to wear black face themselves as part of the “tradition.”
Minstrel shows were often the only “contact” small town and rural white America had with African American culture. The fact that the way that culture was portrayed was so insensitive and depraved is why you rarely see films today that show song and dance numbers with actors in black face. Such numbers were staples of early Hollywood musicals as were rancid portrayals of blacks in general.
One of the more beloved holiday movies of all time, Holiday Inn, which starred Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, with a nice turn by Cesar Romero as Astaire’s conniving agent has not been seen on over the air TV for many years due to a black face number. There is just something so embarrassing about watching white people acting out black stereotypes that one wants to turn away or change the channel. It is a painful reminder of how things used to be in America – a shameful legacy that to this day we are trying to overcome.
Muir makes a living going to the edge. That’s what good cartoonists do. But putting anyone in black face cannot be seen as anything except out of bounds for decent society. We conservatives said as much following Jane Hamsher’s extraordinary Lieberman slur. And we should say the same about Mr. Muir and his idea of humor.
Okay…have at me in the comments.
UPDATE
Just Barking Mad gets it right with regards to Hillary and the Dems attitude toward race:
The question is whether this is the famous Clinton Chameleon ability or the more subtle racism of seeing people, as Muir’s Damon says, as a group and not as individuals. I don’t think that Ms. Clinton is a racist like the Kluxers of old (did someone say Robert Byrd?) but she is the new racist, the kind that sees blocs of voters as targets to be pandered to, instead of individuals. Hence her speaking to an audience like it was full of Aunt Jemimas and Steppin Fetchits.
I don’t want to put words in Mr. JBM’s mouth but it appears that he is justifying Muir’s use of black face to highlight this pandering to the group (and by extension, recognizing stereotypes) by Hillary. (A point made by long time commenter BD in the comments.)
Okay, I’ll buy that. But is there another way – a less hurtful, more sensitive way – it could have been done? My argument is not that Muir’s context was off it is that black face as a negative cultural icon is always wrong – as much as showing a burning cross.
UPDATE II
I have been called a “misogynist” and “sexist” by Jon Swift and TBogg for using the old Saturday Night Live comeback by Dan Akroyd to Jane Curtain during their “Point/Counterpoint” skits where Akroyd (impersonating the old conservative Richmond Times Dispatch columnist James Kirkpatrick whose 60 Minutes segment with liberal columnist Shana Alexander was being parodied) would begin his response to Curtain’s reasoned argument with “Jane, you ignorant slut.”
I don’t know how old either of those two gentlemen are, (although I heard a rumor that TBogg may be up for his learners permit any day now), but I apologize if the cultural reference was a little dated. Of course I don’t know if Hamsher is a slut or not. However, “ignorant” fits her to a tee as most reasonable people would agree.
7:10 am
Gotta disagree with you! Shrillary brought it on herself, with her phony ‘suthrun’ accent, and her plantation remark, followed by ‘you know what I mean’.
She has been shamelessly pandering, trying to be more black than Obama, more racist than Sharpton or Calypso Louis.
Not over the line – directly on point!
7:44 am
[...] As I point out in my blog post, there is more than political correctness at stake here. The Minstrel Show – which is where black face comes from – did more than any other American institution to spread the black stereotypes we’re so familiar with today. [...]
7:47 am
Coincidentally, I was reading Captain’s Quarters just before surfing over here, and I had the same wincing reaction. Clearly, Hillary is wide open to mockery for her bogus African-American accent. The blackface,however, was a bit much for me.
7:55 am
I dunno; there is context here. Was Hamsher attacking Lieberman for pandering to black voters (well, no).
Was Hamsher attacking Lieberman for trying to “talk southern / black” (Hillary’s she’s so bad at it you really can’t tell ….) to black audiences?
I could be wrong, but I thought Hamsher was attacking Lieberman as a lackey for the President on the war.
Muir’s point is different: Hillary’s pandering to race (black) instead of “Americans” by adopting “fake southern accents, plantation talk” and asking “is Hillary trying to be black?”
The last panel his answer – Hillary the smarmy is pandering to skin color (presumably because she thinks all blacks think alike) instead of trying to win the votes of Americans.
8:01 am
I agree with BD & Ol’ Jim; It’s not Muir that jumped the Shark but sHillary.
8:19 am
[...] Rick Moran asks: Did Day By Day just jump the shark? [...]
8:44 am
Hillary, as with most Dems does not believe in individuals, but groups, and in this case, pandering to blacks as a voting block. She believes government should decide what is best for you and everyone else. A good illustration of this thinking was displayed in a speech she gave following Exxon’s announced record profits in Feb, ‘07:
“I want to take those profits and put them into an alternative energy fund that will begin to fund alternative smart energy alternatives that will actually begin to move us toward the direction of independence.” She wants to take profits from a private corp, and spend them the way she thinks best.
If/when she gets the White House, get ready for much more Gov’t, less private/individual control of your money and life.
8:56 am
Day By Day: Crossing A Line?...
Today’s panel of Day by Day uses blackface on Hillary Clinton to make a political point about her pandering to the African-American community by changing the cant and accent of her speech to sound more “black”. Rick Moran of Right…...
9:06 am
I thought Muir was on point, but I’m sure the left will take umbrage. So what? We have all sorts of double standards in the media. One apologist for Rosie O’Donnell said her use of f word and her grabbing of crotch while telling Donald Trump to eat her was ok because it was before a private group (awardees included women still in teens). Speaking of Rosie’s “firing” by ABC, I think people have it bass-ackwards. Disney offered her 10 mil a year for 3 years and she only wanted to commit to one year. So just where will she end up spewing her venom and seeking to boost sHrillary for President. And is there some kind of mass psychosis out there? Many women I know adore Rosie and Hillary on the same order they worshipped Bubba. I recall one of NOW’s hags stating publicly she would love to give Bubba a bj herself as such strong men have strong appetites. Anyone else would have been pilloried for the boss/young underling sexual trysts.
Perhaps a compromise slate of Hillary and Obama would retain the bloc black voting? It does seem the far left prefers the Breckgirl though. One would hope that moveon.org and soros don’t actually manage to pull it off.
9:15 am
I haven’t heard the Blacks complaining that Hilary is pandering. Could they like that dwang?!coming from whitey?
9:18 am
[...] Today’s panel of Day by Day uses blackface on Hillary Clinton to make a political point about her pandering to the African-American community by changing the cant and accent of her speech to sound more “black”. Rick Moran of Right Wing Nut House criticized Chris Muir on his own blog and on Heading Right this morning: Considering how we conservatives trashed Jane (â€you ignorant slutâ€) Hamsher for photoshopping Lieberman in black face, shouldn’t we police our own and give Mr. Muir a few well chosen jabs for his insensitivity? [...]
9:23 am
Perhaps “jumped the shark” is not the correct term here?
Its usage is commonly in reference to a “moment” in a media narrative (i.e., TV show) that shows it no longer has relevance or is importance.
cf: Fonzie’s jumping the shark episode of “Happy Days” which was a desperate ratings grabber, indicative of the beginning of the show’s decline.
Here it seems you mean Day by Day may have gone too far.
It is probably one of the more controversial moments of the strip, but it is a strip on the rise instead of declining from greatness.
9:45 am
Good point Marlowe although I’ll never be able to read Muir again without thinking about it.
9:54 am
The comic was stupid. Offensive in its dumbness, but no more so than any other edition of Muir’s creepy adolescent strips.
Anyways, he should’ve known not to commit the cardinal sin of conservativism: he mentioned race.
11:41 am
“I haven’t heard the Blacks complaining that Hilary is pandering. Could they like that dwang?!coming from whitey?”
So true. I used to work around some former Black Panthers and ex-militant black activists. They didn’t like me because I wouldn’t pander to them by trying to prove that I was “down with the cause” by using the “correct” slang or spewing the “correct” pc language. They did, however, love whites who mimicked them and tried to act like righteous brothers. Somehow this is seem as solidarity with the cause.
11:44 am
” I’ll never be able to read Muir again without thinking about it.”......considering the mockery and perversion that the left has made out of racial tensions for so many years, this might not be an unfortunate circumstance.
1:11 pm
Wow! A Conservative who acknowledges that slavery has a long-term and current negative impact on African-Americans. I thought the party line was there are no slaves today and no slave owners so no one is owed an apology or reparations for slavery.
Rick Moran is a conservative that is not afraid to move away from right-wing PC thought when morally motivated to do so and is to be commended for it.
1:39 pm
Day By Day’s Chris Muir Gives Hillary a Blackface…
Chris Muir, the cartoonist who draws Day By Day, thought it was a terribly unfair double standard that only liberals get to use blackface so he decided to do something about it….
2:07 pm
Most days It’s a Good Thing…
Rick Moran with an interesting take on today’s Day by Day cartoon.
Many of you will recall when we conservatives came down hard on Jane Hamsher of Firedog Lake for her photoshopped picture of Joe Lieberman in minstrel make up. It is an unnecess…
2:24 pm
Indeed. I think Muir is saying that Hillary put the blackface on herself. I think so as well. She was pandering in the most shameful way. The link I have to La Shawn Barber’s comments on Hillary are important for the discussion.
That being said it was tasteless. But Lenny Bruce showed us that sometimes it takes tasteless humor to get the point across. I also think that Chris Muir is going to pay a price for this.
2:43 pm
Gotta disagree…my first thought upon reading your post was the current situation in Germany, where all images of the swastika are banned, even in textbooks, etc. Declaring an image to be beyond the bounds of good taste, or banning it altogether, is dangerous, and the first step towards its falling down the memory hole.
As a cartoonist myself, I think Muir’s use of the blackface image is spot on. Hillary was behaving like she WAS in a minstrel show.
Context is everything…his usage was the perfect visual shorthand to CONDEMN her behavior. Implied in the cartoon is a criticism of the minstrel show tradition. Saying a cartoonist shouldn’t draw a particular image is the same thing as saying that a writer (such as yourself) shouldn’t be allowed to mention a particular idea or concept.
How then if I declared that you shouldn’t type the words ‘minstrel show’, context be damned, because I was offended by it?
(Love your blog, by the way…It’s a shame I waited until I disagreed with you to comment
3:15 pm
[...] Rick Moran believes that Chris Muir’s cartoon, featuring Hillary Clinton in black face, crosses the line. What do you all think? Does this cartoon cross the line, or is it a joke and, as such, perhaps excusable? [...]
3:36 pm
[...] Here is an example of a conservative who at least makes a decent attempt to be reasonable. I am not sure if the cartoon was over the line… but he raises a good point. Why should conservatives bash Jane Hamsher for her photoshopped picture of Lieberman, and then turn around and to exactly the same thing to Hillary? [...]
5:56 pm
“Declaring an image to be beyond the bounds of good taste, or banning it altogether, is dangerous, and the first step towards its falling down the memory hole.”
Have to disagree with you there, Clint. The banning part, sure… but to just declare an image beyond the bounds of good taste… well, that’s everyone’s right.
I could declare a picture of you to be beyond the bounds of good taste if I wanted.
That’d just be my opinion, but there’s no slippery slope unless I actually manage to get it pulled off of a forum.
The right to free speech doesn’t encompass a right to not be criticised.
6:45 pm
I actually do like Chris Muir’s cartoon quite a bit, but I agree with Rick Moran in this case. Because I agree that Hillary’s chameleon-ghetto-language is shameful and disgraceful, I’d like to write off the cartoon as witty satire. But, unfortunately, I have too many liberal friends and family not to see the parallel. Just as we believe (rightly!) that Hillary’s fo’real accent is pandering for votes, so too do my friends believe that Michael Steele’s views are simply an affectation to pander for votes, as well as an insult to blacks all over America. I think they’re dead wrong, but that’s what political discourse is about—and we’re the side that dislikes double standards. Throw in the horrid history of the minstrel show, and I have to abandon my “this is spot-on political humor” in favor of condemning the blackface. I plan to continue reading Chris Muir, but I’m not sorry that he’s catching some heat for this.
10:29 pm
[...] The other day, Hillary Clinton made a fool of herself while at the same time showing a complete contempt for her audience. She did so by altering her accent to sound more "Southern" while addressing black audiences. This is pandering. Today, Chris Muir, the author of the Day by Day Cartoon strip that appears on a lot of conservative web sites, responded. By making a fool of himself. [...]
6:21 am
I beg to differ, Rick. We all need to “lighten” up!
8:52 am
Ann C.: Maybe “The Blacksâ„¢” don’t really care one way or the other.
You are rightly criticizing Hillary Clinton for apparently having a worldview that we blacks are all stupid and practice groupthink. Then you let loose with your musings on how “The Blacksâ„¢” aren’t complaining. Then some other moron posts that her experience with “The Blacksâ„¢” is that they were a bunch of Black Panther and types with really bad English who require white people to speak similar bad English.(Incidentally, Angela Davis, H. Rap Brown, Bobby Seale, and Huey Newton were all extremely eloquent, each having an impeccable command of the English language).
I think that a couple of you people have a lot more in common with Hillary Clinton than you realize. You all have the same crappy worldview of “The Blacksâ„¢”.
I thought Hillary was kind of silly and embarassing, and I think that this cartoon is making exactly that point. She was silly and embarassing. I am always taken aback by any display of blackface because it was one of the finest tools in solidifying stereotypes of blacks that has ever been invented. But its use in this column was meant to make a clever statement. Period.
I guarantee you that we will see white people from both parties arhythmically tapping their feet and clapping their hands to gospel in churches filled with “The Blacksâ„¢” all through this campaign. That will be equally as painful to watch. But “The Blacksâ„¢” won’t hold it against them.
8:59 am
i harte to say this, rick, but coming to the conservative republican community and expecting them to be sensitive to issues of racism is probably too much to ask. macaca!
9:44 am
this post hits the nail squarely on the head and should be an example to bloggers left, right & center of how to gracefully and purposefully disagree with one’s own side
9:55 am
I just wanted to say, it’s refreshing to see someone on the right who’s not a flamingly ignorant hypocrite. Too bad the same can’t be said of most of your readers. As far as this particular cartoon, it reminds me of Imus. It isn’t funny, it never had been, so who really cares in the end?
12:25 pm
This is really a pretty straight forward question regardless of whether we’re talking about Joe or Hillary. To whit: is the use of historical racist caricatures legitimate and acceptable in our political discourse? I’d say no.
Of course the devil, as always, is in the details. Applying this principle will always be contentious because the question of what constitutes racism in a given instance can be open to debate.
This caveat clearly doesn’t apply to minstrel show imagery in the hands of white folks. This tradition in American popular culture has always been overtly racist in that it was a means of reducing black people to comedic cyphers for the amusement of white audiences.
Moreover, the point in both Hamsher and Muir’s examples is more than a little obsured by the racial context. Black face isn’t about pandering to the group being caricatured, it’s about pandering to the bigotry directed towards the group being caricatured.
Somehow, I don’t think that was either Hamsher or Muir’s intent in using black face but it is the caricature’s content. The argument for “context” actually works against both of them unless we actually ignore any context other than subjectve political bias.
I would add that I’m opposed to banning or otherwise suppressing any historical examples of such racism (re: Holiday Inn). Closing our eyes to the sins of our history is the most direct route to repeating them.
2:38 pm
“But is there another way – a less hurtful, more sensitive way – it could have been done?”
What are you, some kind of pansy frenchman faggot liberal?
/good article
2:42 pm
I actually saw a cartoon that had Hillary walking away holding up a mirror. The image in the mirror was of a black Hillary – not black face.
I forget what the caption was but you get the idea.
And what’s wrong with being a “pansy frenchman faggot liberal?” Some of my best friends are pansy frenchman faggot liberals and I’ll have words with anyone who disses them!
11:50 am
Hillary’s revolting habit of adopting a Southern accent when she’s in the South, or a black accent and black jargon when she is addressing blacks, is proof to me that she thinks Southerners and blacks are too stupid to realize that she’s pandering to them. The blackface may have been (unintentionally) insensitive, but it certainly made a valid point.
10:10 am
Minstrel shows were for white audiences. I’m certain he could find a way to make a strip focusing on her changing accents but this one makes no actual logical sense.
No one would ever attempt to get a black audience to accept you by wearing black face. That would achieve the opposite effect to the extreme.
10:36 am
Seems unlikely that this cartoon has jumped the shark as it is far too limp to so much as nudge a guppy. Reviewing the last 20 days or so of the cartoon (since I’d never heard of it—is it distributed anywhere outside of the cartoonist’s blog?) shows it to be unfunny, flat, and pointless. Pretty typical RW humor, in other words.
Muir showing Hillary in blackface? Who cares?
11:38 am
Hillary does not need to pander. But I’m against her because she backed the war.
7:47 pm
Steve, Hamsher is so much smarter than you are, it’s ridiculous. You’re not smart enough to realize how stupid you are.