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Joe Malchow
and Mark Steyn take note of the new Looney Tunes compilation DVD which
includes a can't-avoid segment from Whoopi Goldberg warning about the
un-PC content in the included cartoons. Whoopi says: "Unfortunately at
that time racial and ethnic differences were caricatured in ways that
may have embarrassed and even hurt people of color, women and ethnic
groups. … These jokes were wrong then, and they're wrong today."
An … interesting precedent is thus established. (I, for one, demand that any DVD with Lillian Hellman-associated content include a brief intro from Bruce Willis pointing out that she was a Stalinist liar.)
Both Joe and Mark take the obvious cheap shot that the old cartoons are (also) actually funny, in woeful contrast to Whoopi Goldberg. But let me say Whoopi was pretty funny in Ghost as the unforgettable Oda Mae Brown; she won the Oscar that year, and that's relatively rare for a comic performance. Who knows, she may be funny again someday.
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There are things you can say at a college that will get you fired,
as Greenville (SC) Technical College (ex-)associate Vice President for
Student Services Renee Holcombe discovered recently. Apparently she was speaking
to employees
about using the college's buses to transport schoolchildren who were
evacuated to Greenville SC after Hurricane Katrina. She referred to
this as "sending the big yellow boxes to the Palmetto Center to pick up
the yard apes."
Apparently "yard apes" can be viewed as an ethnic slur (see here), but that's a far from universal usage (see here or here). Of course, some folks knew there was bigotry afoot; this blogger, for example, deemed the usage "Racism at it's [sic] highest form."
Ms. Holcombe was apparently forced to resign, but is now suing to get her job back.
![[The Blogger and His Dog]](/ps/images/me_with_barney.jpg)
