The World is not Black & White
And it's OK to not have strong opinions about that...
So first you’re born and then as soon as possible your parents start misinforming you about how the World works.
You’re the Best Baby in the Whole, Wide World, you can be absolutely anything you want to be, the United States is always right and anyone who believes in Jesus is going to Heaven and anyone who doesn’t (because they had the bad luck to be born in the wrong country which practices the wrong religion) is going straight to Hell.
Some of us cling to this simplistic version of Life as long as we can and get really pissed off when somebody else introduces ideas that complicate the way we were taught to view the World.
Which is why some people lose their damn minds when you mention Critical Race Theory, which is simply admitting race has something to do with our history and laws and you can kinda see why White people would rather not talk about it.
And just in case you’ve forgotten or never knew, in the middle of the last century the big concern was any teacher mentioning Socialism or economic inequality because we didn’t want people thinking about those subjects either.
But if you go ahead and think about them anyway, it’s pretty interesting because Critical Race Theory and Socialism are supposed to be Really Bad Ideas, but the people who oppose even talking about them seem to think these Really Bad Ideas are so seductive and attractive just hearing about them will make 3rd Graders want to join the Communist Chapter of the Black Panthers.
While we’re at it, here’s an article that says nobody is actually teaching Critical Race Theory in classes K-through-12 which means it’s just another Conservative Boogeyman being used to scare people into behaving and donating generously to the GOP:
And here’s an article that says a “form” of it is being taught:
BTW: Making it illegal to teach that racism is embedded in our laws would seem to confirm that it is, a point made in one of the two following articles and you’ll have to read both of them to find out which one because right now I can’t remember:
https://www.edweek.org/leadership/what-is-critical-race-theory-and-why-is-it-under-attack/2021/05
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/07/02/why-are-states-banning-critical-race-theory/
So what were we talking about before Critical Race Theory derailed my train of thought?
Right…growing up and starting to question the version of events you’ve been taught and learning to see a Black & White World in Shades of Grey and we’ll now pause while all the women who read those books and watched those movies get those thoughts out of their heads because as we all know “good girls” don’t want to get blindfolded and spanked unless the blindfolding and spanking is done by a handsome billionaire and then it’s just good, clean fun.
(Moving on, assuming you’re done fantasizing.)
One of the reasons I love Elmore Leonard’s books was his willingness to admit the World was not Black & White and in the first Leonard book I read – The Switch – a gang of bad guys kidnaps a rich guy’s wife on the same day he files for divorce and one of the kidnappers falls in love with the kidnapee, both of which complicate the shit out of the plot and if I just ruined the book for you, all I can say is The Switch was published in 1978 so you’ve had 44 years to read it and there was also a movie that came out in 2013 so I kinda think you had your chance and blew it.
Leonard once said even criminals talk about baseball, which is a good thing to remember and any movie or book is more interesting when the Good Guy does something slightly shady or the Bad Guy gets off a good joke.
Simple rules for complex situations
For the past week I’ve watched people try to apply simple rules to a complex situation and while I could be talking about Russia and their Ukraine invasion, I’m actually talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock which Tiffany Haddish thought was “beautiful” because Will protected a Black Woman.
But Baruch College professor, Shelly Eversley (and Google Images indicates she’s also a Black woman) thought it was sexist and misogynistic and here’s what she had to say about it:
“‘My wife’ – get my wife’s name out of your mouth – is a logic of property ownership. In the history of racial slavery and violence against Black women, we can certainly see all the ways in which Black women in particular have been treated as property. For Black men to do it does not make it any better than when white people do it.”
“Jada Pinkett is not a damsel in distress. The idea that somehow Will Smith should be applauded for treating her as if she doesn’t have a voice or doesn’t have her own agency is also a problem.”
OK, so it turns out the urge to “protect women” can have bad origins so if you’re male and your wife gets insulted, the politically correct thing to do would be turning to her and saying, “Honey, what do you plan to do about that?” because you wouldn’t want to be a sexist and see just how well that goes over.
If you jump to her defense, you’re a misogynist; if you don’t jump to her defense, you’re a spineless weasel.
Nothing is as simple as it appears (or at least that’s how it appears and if we were both smoking weed, right now you’d be saying, “Dude, you just blew my mind!”) so let’s keep looking at simplistic things people have been saying about the Smith-Rock Incident, like:
“Violence never solved anything.”
To the contrary: violence stopped an insane dick (I’m talking about Hitler because due to recent events “insane dick” doesn’t really narrow it down) from taking over the world and putting people he didn’t like in ovens, so I think you gotta give violence a big round of applause for that. What’s next?
It’s not OK to insult women.
Sure it is.
If you listen to stand-up comedians, they’ve been insulting all kinds of people since the first caveman – or possibly cavewoman – got up in front of the communal fire and said, “This how Grok walk” and then did a funny walk which got a big laugh and eventually led to Henny Youngman saying: “Take my wife…please.”
Comedians like Alan King, Richard Pryor, Rodney Dangerfield, Don Rickles, Jeff Foxworthy and Bill Burr have been doing jokes about women forever and if you think that’s sexist and misogynistic you need to get on Netflix and look up some female comedians like Ali Wong and Amy Schumer or Sarah Silverman and watch women give men a well-deserved kick in the ass.
Laughing at ourselves is one of the healthiest things we can do, but it all goes sideways when someone decides they have Comedic Diplomatic Immunity and Dave Chappelle shouldn’t tell jokes involving transgenders.
Well, you definitely shouldn’t make fun of someone’s disability.
Here’s a Saturday Night Live sketch from 1982 and it’s Eddie Murphy imitating Stevie Wonder and Joe Piscopo imitating Frank Sinatra and the politically-incorrect train wreck that results when they try to sing a song together:
And just in case you’re worried about Stevie’s feelings, here he is with Eddie and Stevie seems to be having a pretty good time:
So if a disabled person is in on the joke, maybe it’s OK, but now we’re getting into exceptions to the rule and makes my point, which if I’m not mistaken was “things are complicated” and simplistic rules might not apply because the minute someone throws one out there, you can think of an exception.
In conclusion: it’s OK not to have one
Back when I still worked on the Kansas City Star editorial page, we’d discuss a wide range of topics and I often said I didn’t know enough about the subject to have an opinion, a response which was really underappreciated because our job was to have opinions whether we knew what the hell we were talking about or not.
And if you look at social media, it’s clear a lot of people feel the same way: everybody has to have an opinion and it needs to be a strong opinion to get people’s attention which often leads to simplistic conclusions about complex subjects.
If you look at my cartoons (and I have to) I often feel I’m saying something pretty obvious in what I hope is an entertaining way and here’s an example which, when you boil it down, is pointing out that things haven’t gone as smoothly as Russia might hope:
If you go back and look at what I initially wrote about the Oscar slap, I reached three conclusions:
1. Maybe they need a boxing ring for next year’s Academy Awards.
2. You shouldn’t assault comedians.
3. And if you can’t follow Rule 2, don’t assault a comedian in front of a camera.
And I surrounded those conclusions with stories about J.D. Salinger, Bob Uecker, Bruce Lee, Monica Lewinsky, the possibly pornographic TV series B.J. and the Bear, Joan Rivers, Jason Momoa, Bryce Harper, Baseball’s Unwritten Rules, Madonna, Warren Beatty, Tom Hanks, my imaginary title as Sexiest Man Alive, 2022, Keith Olbermann and my all-too-real title as “The Worst Person in the World” which fortunately had a 24-hour expiration date, after which I went right back to being “Just-a-Run-of-the-Mill Asshole.”
So today’s obvious conclusions are:
1. Things are often more complicated than we want to believe.
2. Which means you can’t apply simple rules to complex situations.
3. And your parents were Big Fat Liars.
(I still haven’t told my kids the truth about Santa Claus.)
The World is not Black & White and pretending it is doesn’t change a thing except your odds of being wrong.
Outstanding! Great read.
Excellent. As a teenager I admired my classmates who could see things in black and white, and felt I was somehow intellectually deficient.
After a couple more years I could see where the deficiency lay.
I really appreciate your thoughts and the work you put in to writing these letters.
Jim Gramprie