a morning meara:
meara, I envy you your difficult decision this morning. It was 39 degrees out when I woke up, sigh.
I didn't watch the Oscars, was over at a friend's house. Did Billy Crystal really perform in blackface?
I saw some reporting on the shooting in the kitchen here. It's so awful.
A friend of mine who did a PhD in criminology at Oxford says that one of the best ways to prevent this sort of thing is to stop publicizing it. In particular, to not report the names of the killers.
It makes some sense to me, but it also would be very hard to implement, because the press wouldn't want to hide that information.
Also, in this respect, I told someone Consuela's story of job-gone-wrong and he was horrified.
::sigh:: Yeah. They got the contract awarded, so I'm working full-time this week and there won't be a break in my (contractor-provided) benefits. But I'm still pissed off.
School shootings are always scary. It's now being reported that one of the students has died.
Did Billy Crystal really perform in blackface?
He did blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., in his opening clip segment pre-filmed thingie.
I was wondering who the hell that was and if I was supposed to recognize him (the actor, not Sammy).
He did blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., in his opening clip segment pre-filmed thingie.
Uh, no. FAIL.
Did not watch the Oscars and now I'm super glad I didn't! Watched Warehouse 13 on Netflix On Demand instead.
He did blackface as Sammy Davis Jr., in his opening clip segment pre-filmed thingie.
Really? WTF?
I didn't even know it was Oscar time. I may have been getting BIND to work on a virtual server at the time or doing taxes (much better refund that I was thinking it would be, I double checked and tripled checked it and it looked right, not that I was really expecting TurboTax to make a mistake)
There was no reason that sketch needed Sammy Davis Jr, or why a white guy had to play him if he was actually intrinsic (Billy was already in the scene), and the makeup didn't make him look more like SDJ, just less like Billy.
He's not a good enough comedian/actor to get past the baggage, so why take it on?
I don't have a zero tolerance policy on blackface, but I do think it should be carefully considered first. Because it will continue to have baggage for years, and there's nothing any individual can do to take that away. So you have to be able to shoulder it.
Yeah, I saw some jokes ahead of time about how bad it would be if he were in blackface for something about The Help... but no, they just decided to throw in some unrelated blackface! That's OK, then.
The whole thing was so weird and random. By the time I'd figured out that yes, that WAS Billy Crystal in blackface, I was almost too confused to be offended. I just have no idea what any of it added to the scene, or what the joke was supposed to be. (Like, was Justin Bieber originally supposed to be played by Eddie Murphy or something? I DON'T GET IT.)
I thought the "Our next movie is Gone With The Wind" / "Will there be monkeys in it?" exchange was much worse, in light of coming about three seconds after The Help won an Oscar.
On the whole, not a great night for avoiding racism on tv.
In totally unrelated news, I just ate some really spicy Thai noodles for lunch and this is the first time all day I haven't been freezing to my bones. Maybe I can get my doctor to write me a prescription.
