California Mayor's 'Watermelon White House' email

[Peikko 1,575]

I guess it's only funny if you think somehow Barack Obama is a hick? A farmer, with no claim to the White House, or perhaps an 'uppity ***'?

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Bill's got to be old enough to know the racial implications of watermelons associated with blacks.

For anyone who is too young or is unaware...here's some history.

(Disclaimer: These offensive images were published a long time ago.)

[_Simpson_ 250]

ok I have consulted with my peeps and we have come to the conclusion that people are way to senitive when it comes to blacks and watermelons. Its a sterotype, often back in the day blacks would eat them alot because there were cheap. If theres more to it then theres no need to call me ignorant, just explain it to me, apparently I have not been around enough racist people?

That said I dont find the picture funny. This is the Bob Sagat of Pictures(now thats funny)

Edited February 25, 2009 by looking_up

[HAL 9000 96]

[one...two...tree 2,762]

ok I have consulted with my peeps and we have come to the conclusion that people are way to senitive when it comes to blacks and watermelons. Its a sterotype, often back in the day blacks would eat them alot because there were cheap. If theres more to it then theres no need to call me ignorant, just explain it me, apparently I have not been around enough racist people?

That said I dont find the picture funny. This is the Bob Sagat of Pictures(now thats funny)

...watermelon became associated with America's black slaves--and ultimately became a stereotype, most offensively as a wonderfully happy black boy in ragged clothes and straw hat eating a slice of watermelon. Witness Sandburg's Cornhusker poem cited below. It was this stereotype that Director Melvin Van Peebles exploited in his 1970 film "Watermelon Man," where a bigotted white man wakes up one morning to find himself black...and to discover all that that meant, to include running into jerks like himself.

............

"Does a famous poet eat watermelon?

Excuse me, ask me something easy.

I have seen farmhands with their faces in fried catfish on a Monday morning.

And the Japanese, two-legged like us,

The Japanese bring slices of watermelon into pictures.

The black seeds make oval polka dots on the pink meat.

Why do I always think of niggers and buck-and-wing dancing whenever I see watermelon?

Summer mornings on the docks I walk among bushel peach baskets piled ten feet high.

Summer mornings I smell new wood and the river wind along with peaches.

I listen to the steamboat whistle hong-honging, hong-honging across the town.

And once I saw a teameo straddling a street with a hayrack load of melons. "

--Carl Sandburg, "Potato Blossom Songs & Jigs, Cornhuskers, 1918

http://www.soupsong.com/fwaterme.html

[HAL 9000 96]

No matter what age one has or what place in the US one hails from... the past that had nasty racial inequalities is relatively in the recent past and ignorance is no excuse. Even foreigners to this country... as exemplified by some of our very own VJers... can understand what certain symbols mean in this country.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose is finding himself in hot water after sending out this fake photo of watermelons on President Barack Obama's White House front lawn.

Grose's email included the heading, "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

"

You find that email funny?

Yep.

[peejay 327]

Yeah...and when Hugley, Chris Rock, and Chapell make race jokes and/or skits they should be blackballed from ever working again. Anywhere! Starve them out. That will teach them some manners.

It worked for Stalin.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose is finding himself in hot water after sending out this fake photo of watermelons on President Barack Obama's White House front lawn.

Grose's email included the heading, "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

"

You find that email funny?

It is rather odd how some get upset that GWB gets called Dubya for being what he is and then the same folks laugh it up in good cheer when obvious tasteless racial epithets get tossed around jokingly.

I find that a little hypocritical. Don't you?

I laugh at "Dubya" jokes too! I think George does as well.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

What I fail to see, is any form of humour in this. Please Mr Bill, you are laughing hysterically, what do you find so humerous? Or, are you just laughing because the Mayor is being a jackass?

I can see there is a certain lassitude amongst those who feel that now's the time to let bygones be bygones and you know what, all well and good but to suggest that somehow the idea that there is anything inherently funny in Barack Obama turning the white house lawn into a watermelon patch for Easter, particularly considering that Easter is not the harvest time for watermelons if you remove the stereotypical associations that were routinely used to demean and undermine Black Americans (or whatever the nom de jour is) in order to 'keep them in their place, oh those uppity niggers' seems absurd in the extreme so I ask again, where is the joke? Why is this funny?

I didn't analyse it that much. It just stikes me as funny! I told my friend about it over the phone, and he laughed too!

Edited February 26, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[HAL 9000 96]

Yeah...and when Hugley, Chris Rock, and Chapell make race jokes and/or skits they should be blackballed from ever working again. Anywhere! Starve them out. That will teach them some manners.

It worked for Stalin.

What racially insensitive jokes would that be that be? I'd like to think back to times when African Americans had an upper hand in this country but you know what? Only an a$$hole would remember that as being real. Last I heard... they weren't using racism to get a laugh like this dumba$$ tried (and failed).

Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose is finding himself in hot water after sending out this fake photo of watermelons on President Barack Obama's White House front lawn.

Grose's email included the heading, "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

"

You find that email funny?

It is rather odd how some get upset that GWB gets called Dubya for being what he is and then the same folks laugh it up in good cheer when obvious tasteless racial epithets get tossed around jokingly.

I find that a little hypocritical. Don't you?

I laugh at "Dubya" jokes too! I think George does as well.

He probably does since apparently his friends call him that. Then I wonder why being selective with the outrage of PC in the other thread then. I suppose it has something to do with dodging the actual issue.

[Trumplestiltskin 5,791]

Bad taste of the joke aside - this does shows that public officials who represent diverse communities should really know better.

All that's missing from this thread is some idiot with the "double standards" and "well if it were a black on white thing..." lines of garbage.

[HAL 9000 96]

This just reeks of more soreloseritis to be serious. Sore losers are known to resort to pretty stupid things to get their frustrations out into 'the open.'

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Yeah...and when Hugley, Chris Rock, and Chapell make race jokes and/or skits they should be blackballed from ever working again. Anywhere! Starve them out. That will teach them some manners.

It worked for Stalin.

What racially insensitive jokes would that be that be? I'd like to think back to times when African Americans had an upper hand in this country but you know what? Only an a$$hole would remember that as being real. Last I heard... they weren't using racism to get a laugh like this dumba$$ tried (and failed).

Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose is finding himself in hot water after sending out this fake photo of watermelons on President Barack Obama's White House front lawn.

Grose's email included the heading, "No Easter Egg hunt this year."

"

You find that email funny?

It is rather odd how some get upset that GWB gets called Dubya for being what he is and then the same folks laugh it up in good cheer when obvious tasteless racial epithets get tossed around jokingly.

I find that a little hypocritical. Don't you?

I laugh at "Dubya" jokes too! I think George does as well.

He probably does since apparently his friends call him that. Then I wonder why being selective with the outrage of PC in the other thread then. I suppose it has something to do with dodging the actual issue.

What issue? Some of us laugh at any thing that strikes us as funny, or clever, without consulting the PC manual to determine if it is correct to do so.

Edited February 26, 2009 by Mister_Bill

[Dr. A ♥ O 203]

I don't really get it. I think these kinds of jokes are before my time. If I received that email I think I would understand it's supposed to be bigoted but I wouldn't really get it. In my life time, up until right now, I've never associated blacks with watermelon.