Baby It's Cold Outside

[DeistPaladin]

Here's an interesting perspective on the song that I thought I would share. 

[Rev. Rye]

It certainly makes sense, but, let's face it, outrage is pretty much America's national pasttime now.





While, of course, in the first few minutes, it's the obvious complaining about how people get offended by anything potentially problematic, unlike the vast majority of "political correctness gone mad" rants, Mr. Enter goes out of his way (starting with his rant on "gypped") to explaining exactly why these controversies are so counterproductive.

And to do another example on that theme, let's start with this scene from The Walking Dead:



Shortly after it aired, someone put it on a t-shirt and put it on Primark shelves in the UK. Then, someone got offended at the shirt, and got it pulled. Yes, I know that there are dozens of t-shirt merchants who filled in the gap with their own variations on the theme, including the official AMC merchandise, but that's beside the point. Why was it pulled? Because it turns out there were early versions of "Eeny Meeny Miny Moe" that had the word "nigger" in place of "tiger." He would later say, “This image relates directly to the practice of assaulting black people in America … It is directly threatening of a racist assault, and if I were black and were faced by a wearer I would know just where I stood.” Of course, I should point out that, when I was a kid, NOBODY used the version with the N-word. Hell, as much shit as I know the average Black person has gone through just because of their extra melanin content, I can find no evidence of people using the version with the N-word to fuck with people of color. The closest thing I can find is people who know about the racist origins of the rhyme encountering people who don't know. It would seem safe to assume it's become detached from its origins and lost its power to offend. And now, thanks to this guy's outrage, it can regain its power to hurt people. Even though he points out that he still believes that everyone involved, from Robert Kirkman to the people who slapped it on the T-shirt, probably didn't mean any harm, the end result remains: "I want these words to be able to hurt these people again, and I want this word to have that kind of power." And, like it or not, all it ends up doing is feeding the racist power structures we're trying to fight, not only by making those who oppose it look like crybabies and killjoys, but also giving them whole new weapons to hurt people.


This is what being a leftist has become for me. Imagine going to a football game (or whatever sport of your choice that involves getting the ball into the opposite team's goal) and your preferred team keeps doing this:



And when you see your team getting the ball into their own goal over and over, scoring point after point for the other team, you find out that the other people who've come to root for your team don't understand what the problem is and why the scorekeepers are giving their points to the other team. But, hey, at least the other team at least has the courtesy of being even more despicable than you used to think, so you don't defect to their side.