quote:

A satire, a protest, then an apology

Satire is a deadly weapon.

In the hands of the semiskilled, it has a tendency to misfire. And when that happens, there's often a lot of collateral damage.

That's what the editors of Vanity Fair magazine discovered, when an ill-conceived item in the current issue's comedic advice column set off a firestorm of Latino cyber-protest so powerful that by week's end, the Conde Nast publication was in full retreat.

The exchange that launched a thousand e-mails appears deep within the magazine's February issue as part of "Vanities," a section devoted to ostensibly lighthearted amusements. Among its regular features is a fictional advice column, Ask Dame Edna, written by the Australian comedian and actor Barry Humphries, who plays his signature character -- the clueless Dame Edna Everage -- in drag. The offending letter and response go like this:

"Dear Dame Edna: I would very much like to learn a foreign language, preferably French or Italian, but every time I mention this, people tell me to learn Spanish instead. They say, 'Everyone is going to be speaking Spanish in 10 years. George W. Bush speaks Spanish.' Could this be true? Are we all going to have to speak Spanish? -- Torn Romantic, Palm Beach.

"Dear Torn: Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of 'Man of La Mancha' will take care of that. There was a poet named Garcia Lorca, but I'd leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you. As for everyone's speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you're an American, try English."

Humphries, of course, mines an old vein of particularly British humor in which xenophobic, vaguely upper-class twits are held up to ridicule by dramatizing their pathological aversion to foreign food, manners and morals. In this genre, even those parts of the Home Counties overly distant from St. James or the Lords Cricket Grounds are objects of suspicion.

It takes a skillful comic and an audience conversant with the convention to make this particular shtick play as humor.

The Vanity Fair item had neither. Shortly after the issue appeared on newsstands, Wendy Maldonado, a management consultant from Jackson Heights, N.Y., had begun circulating -- via the Internet -- a letter of protest demanding that Vanity Fair and Humphries apologize or face a boycott.

"Dame Edna could have chosen any number of amusing responses," the letter says, "however, she responded using cheap, two-dimensional stereotypes of Latinos and Latin Americans, revealing not only her racism, but also her profound ignorance of who we are." The letter noted the striking dissonance between Dame Edna's response and the same issue's cover story, a fawning profile of Mexican actress Salma Hayek, whom Vanity Fair's headline writers celebrate for drawing "on her heritage to produce and star in 'Frida,' the hit biopic about Mexico's iconic artist, Frida Kahlo."

Maldonado's letter spread across the Internet with a speed born of fat address books. "I've gotten e-mails from New Jersey to Argentina, China and Hawaii," she told reporters. "I'm now getting stuff every two seconds." By midweek, versions of the letter were circulating along all sorts of cyber networks. There were different copies signed by scores of architects, by physicians, by academics, by artists and filmmakers.

Elias Nahmias, who heads the Mexican Assn. of Filmmakers in L.A., said he received his copy from "a Chicana musician. I read it, saw the last name was a producer and I added my name. By then, I'd looked at the magazine and I couldn't believe it. One of my friends said it was a joke. I don't know whether it's a joke or not, but when I read it, I felt insulted and hurt."

On Thursday, a call to Vanity Fair's editor, Graydon Carter, was referred to a spokeswoman, who said the following "apology" would appear in the April issue along with a selection of letters:

"Vanity Fair regrets that certain remarks in our February issue by the entertainer and author Barry Humphries, in the guise of his fictional character Dame Edna, have caused offense to our readers and others. In the role of Dame Edna, Humphries practices a long comedic tradition of making statements that are tasteless, wrongheaded, or taboo with an eye toward exposing hypocrisies or prejudices. Anyone who has seen Dame Edna's over-the-top performances on TV or in the theater knows that she is an equal-opportunity distributor of insults, and her patently absurd comments about Spanish literature and Spanish speakers were offered in the spirit of outrageous comedy and were never intended to be taken to heart."

In moral theology, sin is in the intention; in journalism, it's in the execution.

Successful satire is aimed at powerful individuals or social attitudes. It is understood by its audience for what it is and it has literary merit. (Think Swift, Twain and Orwell.) Vanity Fair's item failed on all three counts: It was hurtful, bound to be misunderstood and, quite obviously, lacked literary value.

It's hard to say what Dame Edna and his/her editors know about leaf blowers, but they certainly understand now, as Californios and Floridians say in Spanglish: Hacer enojar a muchos Latinos con laptops puede ser peligroso.

(In consideration of the Palm Beach Romantic's neglected education -- must be inherited money -- that means: Ticking off a bunch of Latinos with laptops can be a dangerous thing.)

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Best thing to do is to e-mail VF and tell them that an apology to the Hispanic community is in order

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originally posted by Booklady:
[qb] Brenda writes:

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Oh, also, yes there is the possibility that someone would take it seriously, but honestly, only the stupidest readers would

Well, Brenda, I realize you are not inferring that I am stupid, but as a Hispanic and someone who is not stupid, I am offended.

First, about the readership: Vanity Fair is among the top five fashion magazines found in most public libraries. Some high schools and most colleges also carry Vanity Fair. Their readership ranges from teenagers to early thirties.

So, yes, teenagers, who are still CONCRETE thinkers, would take it at face value, that learning Spanish was undesirable because a writer in Vanity Fair said so. Concrete thinkers are not

quote:

stupidest people

they take what is said or read at face value. A 13 year old girl is at an impressionable stage in her development, and would lack the discernment to distinuish between a humourous remark by a comedian and truth.

Only an abstract thinker, like most adults, would question Edna's credentials, and laugh it off.

Second, a picture of the darling Dame Edna was not posted with the article, so that a reader could say, oh Edna's just a Nut!


( [/qb]

quote:

originally posted by Brenda:
[qb]

quote:

http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeper/cst-nws-roep05.htm

Argh! The dumb link won't open! Here is the article from one of the leading newspapers here in the US, the Chicago Sun Times. (Jer, sorry for the length, please edit at will.)


www.suntimes.com
http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeper/cst-nws-roep05.html

Check the replay, call a few 'offensive' fouls

February 5, 2003

BY RICHARD ROEPER SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST


Time now for another edition of the popular show, "Is It Offensive?" Nearly every day, we hear somebody criticizing something as being offensive, or somebody apologizing if they offended anyone, or somebody saying they're offended by the insincerity of the apology. Or something. Take a look at each of these entries. Are they offensive?

* In a popular TV commercial for K-Mart underwear, a young black man clad only in boxers dances and hops like a happy-happy bunny. Some African Americans have criticized the spot, with a Spelman College professor telling the Washington Post the ad is "just coonery," and a black author finding "elements of Sambo-ism" in it.

Is it offensive? Coming from my white guy perspective, not one bit. It's not as if Caucasians are sitting around laughing at the goofy guy in the commercial. He's by himself. He's silly. And he's funny. We don't laugh at him. We chuckle with him.

* Senior umpire Bruce Froemming was overheard calling umpiring administrator Cathy Davis "a stupid Jew bitch."

Offensive? Inarguably.

* Two basketball players have apologized for alleged slurs against Asian Americans. First, a nationally syndicated radio talk show rebroadcast remarks made by the preternaturally unfunny Shaquille O'Neal, who had a message for a young Chinese basketball sensation: "Tell Yao Ming, 'Ching-chong-yan-wah-so!' "

After an Asian columnist criticized O'Neal, some Chinese groups protested. Shaq apologized and added, "To say I'm racist against Asians is crazy. I'm an idiot prankster." You said it, Shaq!

Then, last week, a Chinese-American man claimed Gonzaga basketball player Tyler Amaya made eye contact with him outside a movie theater and said, "Ching-chong!" Amaya said the incident was a misunderstanding, but he called the man to apologize and issued mea culpas at a press conference.

Is this mocking of speech patterns offensive? Well, it's certainly infantile, and it makes one sound like an ignorant fool, but it's hardly on the level of making a racial slur. Call it borderline offensive.

*An e-mail petition is targeting Vanity Fair magazine for an entry in "Ask Dame Edna," a spoof of advice columns penned by the popular drag queen comic, aka Barry Humprhies.

The letter in question reads: "I would very much like to learn a foreign language, preferably French or Italian, but ... people tell me to learn Spanish. They say, 'Everyone is going to be speaking Spanish in 10 years' ... Could this be true? Are we all going to have to speak Spanish?"

Dame Edna's reply: "Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote ... As for everyone's speaking it, what twaddle! Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf-blower? Study French or German, where there are at least a few books worth reading, or, if you're American, try English."

Offensive? That's a big fat yes. You can say the Dame Edna character was making an attempt at humor, but it's 100 times more heavy-handed and boneheaded than Shaq's remarks. An apology is in order.

* The Lincoln (Neb.) Journal-Star has announced it will no longer use team nicknames such as "Redskins" and "Braves" and will take the "Fighting" out of "Fighting Sioux" and "Fighting Illini."

So what, they're the Needlepointing Illini now?

I'll tell you what's offensive about this deal--newspapers that bend reality to suit their PC agendas. Unless and until the Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, Illinois Fighting Illini and North Dakota Fighting Sioux change their nicknames, call 'em what they are.

*At the University of Louisville, vendors promoting a bank handed out T-shirts with a caricature of a black woman and "10 Reasons Why Beer Is Better than a Black Man."

Offensive? Without question.

*After receiving some 7,000 protest e-mails, Maxim magazine apologized for a satirical cartoon feature in its February issue that depicted Mahatma Gandhi being beaten as part of a workout routine. A few days later, MTV was apologizing for an episode of the cartoon "Clone High" that featured a cell phone-toting, heavy-boozing, hipster Gandhi clone.

To the people of India who have heard about but have not seen these parodies, this stuff is seriously offensive. Hundreds of protesters even fasted at Gandhi's memorial to protest the MTV show.

I find "Clone High USA" mildly amusing. The Maxim layout was offensive only because it was unfunny.

*Finally--last week's column about the Miller Lite "catfight" commercial garnered hundreds of responses, including dozens from readers who didn't get that I was KIDDING. (The fact that we reproduced a salacious photo from the ad three times was the first hint that I wasn't really appalled.) A number of men who mistakenly believed I was actually criticizing the ad called me "gay," a "homo" and the ever-popular "fag."

Was I offended? Hardly. Then again, would it be fair to suggest that these men are pathetic homophobes who cower behind anonymous screen names, deathly afraid of the real world? Sure!


Copyright � The Sun-Times Company [/qb]

quote:

originally posted by Booklady:
[QB] Hello Brenda,
Methinks, we are in a "Comedy of Errors" here.
:jeje:
No, I am not mad at you, Brenda! I am sorry if it sounded like I was. Hug, please! :ks: Friends?

quote:

"I actually don't like VF except for the articles"

- madrid nut, webweaver of www.multimadrid.com and keeper of the plazaCam.
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