Jimmy Kimmel, seriously

Kimmel from last Thursday (h/t to Autumn at the Blend):



What do we expect from the former co-host of The Man Show?

Seriously, this guy needs to wake up and get himself an education. Not only does he make fun of trans women gratuitously, he also implies that they should be killed because they're not really women. Wow. As After Elton's Mike Jensen said: "Perhaps Gwen Araujuo's mom should pay Kimmel a visit."

But not only did Kimmel mess up here, ABC did. I mean, he didn't just photoshop, print, and mount those pics, stuff them in a briefcase and secretly carry them on-stage only to whip them out on camera to Mickey's horror. No. A producer hired by ABC had the idea of getting those pics, a techie who works for ABC photoshopped them and printed them, a lackey on ABC's payroll mounted them, another stage-hand that works for ABC put them on his desk, that first producer worked with Kimmel to get his comments prepared while a writer, hired by ABC, read at least parts of Romijn's book and thought of the ax comment. And each of these people thought that it was fine to belittle and threaten transwomen. Makes ya think.

So while GLAAD is looking for Kimmel and his staff to apologize, all of us need to just remember that ABC hired them all because it liked their brand of humor. But I wouldn't hold my breath for corporate ABC to say anything about this.

Knock it off, Chuck Knipp

I found this video on YouTube after a Jasmyne Cannick post prompted me to search there. (I was going to embed but the freeze-frame happens on an ugly scene, I really don't want that up here, so you're going to have to follow the link).

If you haven't seen this Shirley Q. Liquor act, it's done by Chuck Knipp, a white gay man who dresses up as a straight Black woman (in blackface). This character is an "ignunt" "happy-go-lucky mother of 19 children" who, according to Knipp, "is not afraid to embrace every cultural stereotype and subvert them for her own purpose". Knipp portrays her as an irresponsible, incoherent alcoholic, and if you look through the rest of the YouTube library of Shirley Q. Liquor, there's a whole lot of grossness involved. Read a good article about the performance by Keith Boykin.

I seriously hope Knipp isn't ignunt enough himself to think that he's doing any sort of favor to the Black or the gay communities. As a gay man he should understand thing or two about context. When such a performance is done (in fact, when any performance is done), every joke, every line, every word is itself a symbol designed to bring certain images to the audience's mind. This applies to simple words like "banana" making people think of the fruit (or a penis, I guess) to the symbol of blackface making people think of those old Vaudeville acts that used it to demean Black people. It applies to Eddie Murphy's homophobic "comedy" in order to justify every negative stereotype of gay people out there to Knipp telling jokes that sound like pages out of the Republican's old Southern Strategy.

Moral of the story is that Knipp is bringing more baggage into his act than he chooses to acknowledge. While it's theoretically possible that it could be funny to speak poorly, wear bad make-up, or make tired jokes about waking up late, when done by a white man performing in blackface, its subtext is white supremacy. Keith Boykin says:

If the results are to be believed, just 4 percent think the site needs "less offensive" humor. That may tell you a lot about Knipp's audience.

And this isn't helping out the pervasive stereotype that gay people are rich, white, elitist racists, either, which is probably why the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force is against the performance as well. It's not to hard to see the effect of something like this on the ability of voters, judges, and Congress members to buy into silly arguments about how gays are too rich to need equality, too snooty to condescend to give back.

Take a minute to sign the petition against Knipp's performance.

Malkin to Rosie: "Can't we just get along? And can't your people just die?"

Michelle "PC Chief of Police" Malkin takes aim at Rosie "Founder, Leader, and Center of Leftist Politics" O'Donnell's Chinese performance on The "We Would Watch It If The Price is Right Weren't So Much More Entertaining" View. Watch the clip here:



While she's no Michael Richards, "The Female Robin Williams" even managed to offend us. Then again, we're pretty easily offended.

Malkin, on the other hand, comes away a winner by showing that a raisin of humanity lives in her cold, cold heart with a good college try at a Critical Race Theory style narrative:

I knew exactly what the third-graders who used to say the same things to me on the playground intended to do. Moronic mockery is a universal language.

(That was the longest quotation we could get before she enveloped those feelings in the darkness of her soul and descended back to petty insults. But at least she tried.)

Now while it's generally impossible to question Malkin's motives, fair-and-balanced-ness calls us to remember that she just plain doesn't like the gays.

We're going to have that chorus stuck in our heads all day...

This seems completely legit, but apparently the best reason that the Libertarians can come up with to vote for them is to "try something new". Really, they ran on an argument that equally applied to the Greens, Socialists, Communists, Legalize Marijuana people, Constitution Party, and, hell, the Democrats.

But do watch. They put a lot of work into using every Powerpoint transition in one three-minute Lil' Nuke video.