R.B. brought to my attention a rather small controversy-that-wasn’t, and at first I wasn’t going to post about it. Partly because it’s political and I try to avoid that on this site, where I mention politics maybe a few times a year when it comes up in news related to comics. Partly because I like Chris Muir’s “Day by Day”, even linking it on the site. Mostly, because I’d read the strip in question and I’m surprised at the hullabaloo; in context, the strip is perhaps a little on-the-nose obvious, but it’s hardly worth the foofaraw that has resulted. However, ultimately I decided to discuss this in terms of what it means for comics and self-censorship, and how political correctness can get in the way of satire.

If the mere mention of racial politics bugs you, skip this one.

We all know by now about Hillary Clinton’s “blaccent”… i.e., her wooden, scripted attempts at evoking a drawl she clearly doesn’t have in order to try to fit in when speaking to black audiences. Most notable was her adopting it when quoting an old spiritual.

More surprising, after the backlash raised when that hit YouTube, is that she continued to do it. Addressing another heavily black audience, she talked in dialect again about what she’s going to see when she gets into the Oval Office and lifts up the carpet. (A Clinton kidding about messy carpets in the Oval Office? Is she being paid off by the Comedy Writers Guild of America to supply them with easy jokes?) Worst of all, she said, “You know, what is it about us always having to clean up after people?” Is she kidding? It’s bad enough to assume your minority audience is familiar with janitorial work, but I doubt Hillary’s touched a broom in decades unless it was as a mode of transport.

(All right, that was uncalled for. I know. But I earned it after letting the Oval Office carpet thing slide by.)

In any case, it is in this CONTEXT that Chris Muir did the following cartoon. Two characters, Damon and Sam, discuss Hillary’s accent problems, and in the final panel we see Hillary now wearing blackface and talking even worse. Note: Hillary (the character in the strip) has done this herself as an exaggeration of how ham-handed the real Hillary is at trying to adopt black slang and affectations in order to fit in. She is a poser. She’s a bigger poser than Henchman 24. She is as much black as she was a lifelong Yankee fan on the first day into her Senate campaign in New York.

Granted, there’s a general tendency for American whites, if immersed in another culture, to begin speaking that way…and it can even be unintentional, much the way I start being a Brit as soon as I’m talking with my friend Rob. (George Carlin once noted how all the Irish redheads in his neighborhood would hang out with the black guys and soon be speaking like them, but there wasn’t a single black guy who started speaking Irish.) But with Hillary, this isn’t what’s happening. You just know that her speech actually has an italicized note to begin shucking and jiving at a certain point. I’m not even sure what’s more offensive: her resorting to such a craven grab at a connection with the audience, or that she does so when she is clearly so bad at it. I mean, I’d be just as appalled if she were slick at doing it, but why aren’t her team members giving her feedback? Perhaps it’s a “despite the handlers” thing, much the way George W. Bush has to have had someone point out the proper way to pronounce “nuclear” years ago and he shrugged it off, making his own decision to say it the way he’s always said it.

Now, let’s talk about blackface, and why I think Muir’s use of it was not only legitimate but spot-on here. Blackface is ineffective. Few American citizens of African descent are actually colored #000000 on the color chart. Of the small subset that are dark as pitch, they certainly don’t have an inch of area around the mouth and eyes that are colored #FFFFFF (or unpainted, or bright red lips, or whatever the variant of the blackface minstrel makeup). It’s not like blackface is some brilliant disguise that will allow a white person to walk through Cabrini Green and fit in. Blackface and a “sho’ nuff” drawl is ineffective as a method of connecting with the black community.

You know what’s also ineffective at fitting in with the black community? Hillary Clinton.

Nevertheless, blackface even as an insightful joke isn’t flying in some quarters. Captain’s Quarters, for one. And Right Wing Nut House, Heading Right, Queen of All Evil, Blue Crab Boulevard…and those are just a few of the rightwing blogs! You can imagine what the left’s reaction has been to this! From there, Newsarama and the Comics Journal have covered the brouhaha. You’ve got to love the Comics Journal’s fair practices here, showing only the third panel of the strip and labeling anyone making a free speech defense an “apologist”. And blogger Jon Swift‘s merciless tearing apart of “Day By Day” hardly reads as an apology!

Partly, the reaction on the right is because of fears of being labeled hypocritical if they don’t criticize Muir, since the right has castigated those who photoshop blackface onto Joe Lieberman, Michael Steele, Wolf Blitzer and others and have usually done so with a blanket claim that blackface is beyond the pale.

Frankly, I don’t think this is that big a deal for a couple reasons. The biggest reason is, Muir didn’t do it to be either cruel or offensive, but to make a point about Hillary’s arguable racial ineptitude. (I say arguable just because the audience she’s talking to at the time doesn’t seem to mind being played, judging by the applause.) This may strike people as situational ethics; I regard it as using one’s judgment. Race is a touchy thing, and there will always be people who disagree about where to draw the line. Two big idiots, Don Imus and Michael Richards, recently found out that you can not only go too far but you can go WAY too far. but while I believe in consideration of other’s feelings, I greatly dislike the walling off of entire subjects under the guise of political correctness.

I’m hardly the kind of person who revels in unrestrained free speech by hurling expletives, insulting other races and hanging up perverted artwork. I wish everyone in the world exercised a great deal more self-restraint. I’m just saying that there’s a difference between permissable and “should be done constantly without reason”.

Let’s take an obvious example: I don’t believe in using the N-word. Outside of logical discussions of the word itself or quoting another person, I don’t say it and haven’t since I was 12 and was told what the word really meant. (My teacher informed me that I should find a different word to rhyme with “bigger” in a poem.) And no, if the word is so horrendously bad that a white person saying it may destroy his life, I don’t think anyone should be saying it. But I can easily think of a dozen films, TV shows and other works that are hilarious for intentionally using it. Jackie Chan in “Rush Hour”, Dave Chappelle posing as a blind klansman who doesn’t know he’s black, “Shawn of the Dead,” South Park’s recent episode “With Apologies to Jesse Jackson”, etc.

Many people want to take the N-word, blackface, klansmen, the Confederate battle flag, burning crosses, swastikas, Nazis and other things that may be offensive and put them in a “do not use” section simply because they might offend somebody. One of the English princes…I don’t remember or care which one… found out at a Halloween party that you can’t dress up as a Nazi now. Frankly, in the context of dressing up as a monster, I think he didn’t cross any lines. It’s all about context; all of the above elements have been used in great works, from “O Brother Where Art Thou” to The Dukes of Hazzard, and they worked because people were smart enough to discern what’s offensive and what is not.

I worry about declaring concepts verboten because of what it might preclude. An issue of Shooting Star Comics Anthology featured a short story about a klansman superhero…not as the main character, of course, but as the crucial element of the story. A black senator has his life saved by a racist superhero and ponders what debt he owes to a bigot who regards him as sub-human. A very interesting story, but one that could easily have been read the wrong way if summarized as “Shooting Star has a new comic out with a KKK superhero!” We need to start living in a world of grown-ups where we all have brains and can make obvious discernments rather than causing hullabaloos where there really isn’t controversy.

Before it came to mean “racial prejudice”, the term discriminate meant the ability to tell one thing from another. The ability to tell your fork from your spoon, your Paxton from your Pullman, your Rosencrantz from your Guildenstern…and in this case, your hate from your pointed criticism.

* (Well, here it is, five days later! Took me long enough. What can I say, I wanted to take my time on this post and do it right. Sorry for the delay.)