October 19, 2017

If you were relying on the "hipster racism" fad 10 years ago...

... prepare to get raked over the coals of social media now.

"Actor David Cross’ excuse for ‘racist’ joke to Asian American actress raises eyebrows" (Twitchy):
“Arrested Development” actor-comedian David Cross recently found himself in hot ham water after Asian American actress Charlyne Yi shared an uncomfortable memory with her Twitter followers:
Charlyne Yi ✔ @charlyne_yi
I think about the first time I met David Cross ten years ago & he made fun of my pants (that were tattered because I was poor). Dumbfounded I stared at him speechless and he said to me "what's a matter? You don't speak English?? Ching-chong-ching-chong".
She must hate him to dredge that up out of context now. You can read the tweets that followed and Cross's effort to explain. It happened in Shreveport, and I must have been referencing Shreveport by doing a Southern redneck racist character, not my actual self.

I did enjoy the "hot ham water" link.

And if you've forgotten about "hipster racism," here's the Wikipedia article on the subject:
Hipster racism, is engaging in behaviors traditionally regarded as racist and defending them as being performed ironically or satirically.... Van Kerckhove used the term hipster racism in an article, "The 10 biggest race and pop culture trends of 2006" [PDF]...
See? 2006. Cross was on trend when he performed what I believed was hipster racism 10 years ago. Is David Cross a hipster? I actually googled that. I found a 2015 interview in which he deplored hipsters:
There’s this smug elitism to it; this cultural elitism. The whole thing is, You’re perpetuating this. This thing you report to hate and you think is such a bad example of our culture, that exists because people like you talk about it with detached irony, yet you’re still supporting its very existence.

48 comments:

Bay Area Guy said...

Cough, cough, Whoopi Goldberg with Ted Danson in blackface, cough, cough.

chuck said...

> Is David Cross a hipster?

A more relevant question is, "Is David Cross funny".

tcrosse said...

A more relevant question is, "Is David Cross funny".
To ask the question is to answer it.

rhhardin said...

Yi is Korean, ching chong is Chinese.

rhhardin said...

I mean, listen to the North Korean newsbabe. No ching chonging there.

Expat(ish) said...

I am reminded of Sec/State Schultz's answer when asked what he was hoping for as an outcome of the Iran/Iraq war.. "Casualties."

Someone pass the popcorn.

-XC

Will Cate said...

He was also in trouble for some "insensitive" standup material around that time.

bleh said...

Oh, who gives a shit about any of this?

rhhardin said...

How English sounds to non-English speakers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY

Drago said...

“like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children"

rcocean said...

Yes, the old "I'm so not a racist, so I can pretend to be racist, to make fun of racism" trick.

Liberals love to do that - especially on the internet.

The problem is: Your confident personal belief that you're "So not a racist" is not shared by anyone else. And talking about how you can't be a racist because you're a liberal doesn't work either.

Lyle said...

Ms. Yi thinks KKK is pronounced Trump. She says so in her twitters. Attacking Cross is just a bigot attacking another bigot.

Darrell said...

He should be sentenced to 240 hours of watching Rosie O'Donnell.

sparrow said...

Comedy is frequently used to cover hate.

rcocean said...

"He should be sentenced to 240 hours of watching Rosie O'Donnell."

Or make it even worse. Force him to watch the Rosie O'Donnell sex tape.

Darrell said...

Tattered pants were in style ten years ago. And they cost considerably more than brand new jeans, unadulterated.

mccullough said...

Irony is the shackles of youth

buwaya said...

Bigots on top of bigots on top of bigots...

There is just so much material these days for a rococo confection of hypocrisies a la Tom Wolfe. Too bad Wolfe is too old for this stuff anymore. A younger Wolfe would be going mad with all this.

Events are their own literature now. No need for satirists, no need for playwrights. The cast of characters, the absurd situations, the turns of fortune are all written and produced by the greatest playwright of all. We are privileged to be the audience.
The price of admission is likely to be collected later though, and it may be steep.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

No one has EVER admitted being a hipster. Leftists today, hipsters or not, aren't into irony, satire, or humor of any kind. They are completely sincere, and unforgivingly, autistically literal.

YoungHegelian said...

David Cross should be put away for thinking Charlyne Yi looks Chinese. Or Korean, even though apparently her father has some bit of Korean. What she looks is Filipino.

But.....Ya know Western Civ. has come to an impasse when comics can be crude & rude to each other in a private setting. What sort of asshole comic wears her heart on her sleeve like that? Isn't trading insults among co,mics a lot like football players smacking into each other? It just comes with the territory.

What a bunch of pussies these people are!

YoungHegelian said...

Ooops,

"can be rude" should be "can't be rude"

BN said...

"Too bad Wolfe is too old for this stuff anymore."

"Back to Blood", 2012.

Bay Area Guy said...

In the normal world, (i.e., the world before Leftism began to take root and flower), yes, you made a few jokes, yes, you poked at each other's ethnicity (you dumb Guinea! you drunk Irish bastard!)

But very few people flipped out. Once the leftwing grievance committees started forming, and once Jesse Jackson learned to pounce and shake down the corporate world for any mis-step, it all changed.

So, the dictionary is a big thick book, but now there's a big thick book of all the words, phrases and ideas you cannot say or express -- or you get ostracized and forced to make groveling apologies.

So, under my rules, Yes, hipster racism would be goofy, but tolerated.

Under the rules imposed by the Left, we must stamp it out, preferably if a Republican is doing it.



Fernandinande said...

What "hipster" (and beatnik) mean to me:
"mad mad mad world Sylvester dance"

The Vault Dweller said...

Hmm... I think calling it Hipster Racism is unfair. Hipsters in my mind were more categorized by people who were striving to always find the hidden, special, unique, authentic experience. They are the people who would love to brag about how they know this special little hole in the wall restaurant that serves 'the real' Ethiopian food, but it only works if you know what to ask for that is off the menu. It is a similar motivation to why some people like certain luxury products or services. To some people the high price of a luxury product is a good quality of the product in itself. It means that not many people can get the product, which lets the purchaser of the product believe that they are part of special, select group of people that get that experience. This is the emotional itch that Hipsters are scratching when brag about their little hole in the wall restaurant.

I think what people called Hipster racism, was just some people acknowledging that some racist humor can actually be funny but it had become completely taboo to engage in it, so they pretended like they were acting as another type of person to avoid the censure. I don't know if Lisa Lampenelli still does performances, but Mel Brooks has commented that Blazing Saddles could not be made today. And both can be pretty funny.

holdfast said...

So Mel Brooks is a Hipster Nazi? Or is it Will Ferrell who's the Hipster Nazi?

I guess good ol' fashioned satire is too old-school.

Mary Beth said...

"Hipster racism" sounds like another term for projection. Was his Shreveport Southern redneck racist character supposed to be white? I'm asking because the demographics for Shreveport show a higher black population than white.

n.n said...

Hipster racism falls under the diversity umbrella, but those hipster doofuses are serious, with a straight face, no less.

Henry said...

that were tattered because I was poor

I believe David Cross made a racist joke.

I don't believe that she was wearing tattered jeans because she was poor.

Henry said...

I don't get why the distressed denim fad, 10 years ago, never went away.

Gahrie said...

Cross is one of those assholes always complaining that no one takes him seriously, and when they do his response is "Can't you take a joke?".

Henry said...

Forget the Distressed Look: Fraying Hems Are Fall’s Best Denim Trend

Bad call, Vogue. (2014)

Big Mike said...

Who is David Cross, and for that matter, should I know who Charlyne Yo is?

MadisonMan said...

There are times when silence is best. That's what David Cross should be doing now: keeping silent. The Beacon Of Outrage (BOO) will move on to someone else soon enough.

John Nowak said...

Is it wrong of me to think Cross is a witless ass, even if he isn't racist?

Dixie_Sugarbaker said...

"I'm not racist. I'm just pretending to be racist by stereotyping an entire region of white people, which is totes cool!"

Laslo Spatula said...

David Cross used to be funny. Then he became more and more political and funny didn't matter as much. When a comedian decides comedy is not the first function of his performance, well...

Anyway, back from the day:


[On airport pornography] I've never seen anybody purchase them, but apparently people are. They wouldn't carry them just for aesthetic purposes. They're not trying to impress people with their porn collection, you know. So, it's just a matter of economics...Apparently enough people are goin' in there goin' 'Oh, whoa... All right! The worlds filthiest ball-draining cum-mag! Right on! This ought to make the flight a little more tolerable. Alright. Oh shit! Ha Ha! Page 35: Puckering virgin assholes - alright I gotta get it. Hope nobody is sitting next to me on the plane, because they're in for a rude awakening. Cause I'm gonna be spankin' it!' Ah, it's weird. I'm not knocking porn, I love porn... but when I go to the airport I don't have to buy those magazines, because I have this thing called will power. And I utilize it so that I don't have to whip my dick out in public. I can wait five hours. At least until I'm in the cab on my way home.


So at the CES, there was a guy selling off this porno called Fuck My Dirty Shithole: The Movie. I bet you're thinking exactly what I was thinking … how did they make that book into a movie?


I am Laslo.

Bea said...

2015 is when hating hipsters was on trend.
Hating racism and misogyny is on trend now!

I love the fact that his wife is Amber Tamblyn who accused James Woods of hitting on her when she was 15 - which he probably did, probably didn't mean much with it, just like her husband with this lady.

What goes around comes around!
This is the phase when the liberals eat each other while everyone else watches.

fivewheels said...

According to the Internet Adult Film Database, "Fuck My Dirty Shit Hole" is the full title of the 1997 classic. Does he only do jokes based on racism or lies?

HoodlumDoodlum said...

It helps to know that Cross is married to actress Amber Tamblyn and that she's very active on Twitter supporting women accusing men of harassment and assault--she recently accused James Woods of hitting on/harassing her when she was underage. So Cross and his wife have been vocal #Me Too supporters and it's in that context (cross being outspokenly Leftist) that this accusation of Cross being offensively racist comes out.

Mr. Show is one of the funniest sketch comedies ever. Cross has a character Ronnie Dobbs that's a standard white trash redneck, and made a movie Run Ronnie Run using that character. Like lots of successful comedians from the south he spends a lot of time...shitting on the south in cheap ways. he's a pretty standard lefty asshole on Twitter. For that reason alone i think it's good that he gets a taste of his own medicine.

I can't really feel hate for the guy, though, considering how important his comedy was to my formative years. Even his early stand up is pretty solid. I think I had as a sig line in an old forum "fore I die, I'm gon’ fuck me a fish."

Eh. Maybe lefty entertainers will learn the downside of unleashing the PC mobs and be less willing to do it themselves in the future. I mean, probably not, but one can hope.

Big Mike said...

You k ow, eleven years ago Asian-Americans were honorary second class white people for purposes of race-based putdowns. All that striving, all that studying, all that struggle to get ahead, who'd they think they were, y'know?

So ching chong it was. Kind of like laughing about Polack jokes or sleepy Mexicans in sombreros. Then Latinos pushed back and people whose names ended in "ski" pushed back and now Asian-Americans are pushing back.

@Hoodlum, you reference white trash rednecks. Think of Trump as white trash rednecks pushing back.

Gabriel said...

@buwaya:The cast of characters, the absurd situations, the turns of fortune are all written and produced by the greatest playwright of all. We are privileged to be the audience.
The price of admission is likely to be collected later though, and it may be steep.


"For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard,
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard,
For frantic boast and foolish word—
Thy mercy on Thy People, Lord! "

Ralph L said...

Is it still on trend to say "on trend," or are we back to "trendy?"

Wince said...

I did enjoy the "hot ham water" link.

"How hot and wet do you like it?"

Saint Croix said...

I think about the first time I met David Cross ten years ago & he made fun of my pants (that were tattered because I was poor).

I call bullshit on her "I was poor" explanation for her pants. It's like she's accusing him of going around mocking the homeless. You can afford pants without holes in them, actress girl. I have been living in this country for 50 years. I have volunteered in homeless shelter. I have been in public schools, in private schools, in art schools, in law school, in various workplaces, in gas stations and barber shops and grocery stores. The assumption that everyone makes in our society--unless the context is completely different--is that holes in the clothes is a fashion choice, not an economic distress signal.

When I was in law school I had a polo with a hole in it. One of my law professors teased me about it and stuck her finger in the hole. I still have several jeans with holes in them, and at least one or two shirts. I may or may not be a fashion disaster, but if I start crying that people are making fun of me because I can't afford normal clothes, may the Lord send a thunderclap to warn me about my hypocrisy.

Fashion choice, not poverty. 1000 to 1. And I know what it's like to be a struggling artist. Been there, done that. You can afford pants without holes in them.

Saint Croix said...

Dumbfounded I stared at him speechless

When I was in art school I was teasing a Cuban about that damn beret he was wearing. And he said, a little defensive, "well, at least I don't have a hole in my shirt."

10 minutes later, I'm listening to my professor, and I'm grinning like a madman. And my professor stops his lecture and says, "okay, I have to ask, Carmichael, what's so funny?"

"I was thinking about my shirt."

And I look back at the Cuban with the beret and a couple of girls and we all start cracking up.

Saint Croix said...

The point is, when somebody teases you, tease them back. Have a sense of humor. It leaves a happy memory.

"what's a matter? You don't speak English??

That's probably where he went into his hipster racist routine. He's trying to flirt with her (badly), start a conversation, get people laughing. If they were in the middle of a conversation, and she was speaking English, he might have thought that was funny. It's an invitation to her to have a conversation. Say something! Among other things, he's pretending to be an Italian immigrant ("what's a matter?") who is speaking English badly. That may or may not be funny. But why suffer in silence, let it fester for 10 years, and then serve your vengeance cold on twitter? "Today's the day I destroy David Cross for making fun of my pants."

Jason said...

Shout out to blogger Jane Hamsher,formerly of Firedoglake, who in 2006, thinking it would help Ned Lamont's Senate campaign, photoshopped and published pic of Joe Lieberman in blackface!

Liberals are constantly projecting their own insane bigotry and racism on normal people.