Welcome to another edition of This Week in Racism. I’ll be ranking news stories on a scale of 1 to RACIST, with “1” being the least racist and “RACIST” being the most racist.
– A Red Lobster in Franklin, Tennessee, suspended an African American employee for posting a photo on Facebook of a receipt she received during the course of her work. This is apparently in violation of the seafood chain’s policy against employees taking pictures of customer receipts.
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The receipt in question, seen above, indicated that the employee received no tip, but was offered a fabulous parting gift of racism. A spokesperson for Red Lobster said that while the employee, Tori Christina Jenkins, has been suspended, she hasn’t missed a single day of work yet. I guess Red Lobster suspensions work similarly to Major League Baseball suspensions for steroid use. They’ll get around to the whole “actually being suspended” part later.
Until the crack investigative team at Red Lobster gets to the bottom of this incident, this has to be classified as an alleged case of racism, but it certainly is a case of some crustacean chomper being a bad tipper. Regardless of the veracity of her claim, this case seems like good fodder for my upcoming web comic, “The Niggardly White Supremacist,” coming soon to my GeoCities page. RACIST (MAYBE?)
– The New York City Democratic mayoral primary campaign (and with it dick-pic king Anthony Weiner’s political career) is mercifully over. Underdog candidate Bill de Blasio emerged the winner in a hard-fought, tabloid-friendly race to succeed current mayor and real-life Scrooge McDuck, Michael Bloomberg.
Despite the Independent, conservative Bloomberg having no dog in the Democratic contest, he saw fit to take a break from swimming in his mountain of gold coins and chastising his nephews, Huey, Dewey, and Louie, to accuse de Blasio, whose wife is black, of being a racist a few days before the election.
Bloomberg told New York magazine, “I mean he’s making an appeal using his family to gain support. I think it’s pretty obvious to anyone watching what he’s been doing. I do not think he himself is racist. It’s comparable to me pointing out I’m Jewish in attracting the Jewish vote.” If your name is Michael Bloomberg, you probably don’t have to point out you’re Jewish to many people.
Merriam-Webster defines racism as “poor treatment of or violence against people because of their race,” or, “the belief that some races of people are better than others.” Identity politics, pandering, and opportunism? Sure. Racism? Absolutely not. Maybe Mayor Bloomberg would be better served stopping and frisking a sociology professor. NOT RACIST, JUST STUPID
– Television host Julie Chen shocked practically no one when she admitted she was forced to get surgery to eliminate her “Asian eyes” in order to advance in the TV news industry. On CBS’s The Talk, Chen revealed she was passed up for a fill-in anchor slot by her boss at a Dayton, Ohio, television station because she had eyes that made her look “disinterested and bored.” Also, it was pointed out to her that Dayton didn’t have a particularly large Asian community, so it was unlikely viewers would be able to relate to her. Upon receiving advice from her agent, she proceeded to undergo the surgery. From there, Chen became a hugely successful news anchor and television host.
If you’re curious to my personal feelings about this story, here’s the ladies of The Talk to explain it to you through their always expressive faces:
First of all, like this screenshot of Sara Gilbert, I am very concerned that racism is so prevalent in American media.
But I’m also casually indifferent to Julie’s plight, considering she chose not to take a stand, and made countless millions of dollars from her decision to drastically alter her appearance. Who does casually indifferent better than Sharon Osbourne?
In conclusion: hell nah, girl, that shit is fuckin’ RACIST
– As someone who prides himself on finding the most racist rhetoric on Twitter, I hate to admit that Business Insider Chief Technology Officer Pax Dickinson’s work has, up until now, flown under my prodigious hate-dar. The Valleywag blog reported that Dickinson was recently fired for posting a few choice words on such relevant pop-culture topics as Mel Gibson’s 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ and Kobe Bryant’s alleged rape of a hotel employee in Colorado in 2003.
Some say Dickinson is a misogynist. Some say he’s a racist. Dickinson claims he was making jokes. Specifically, the Passion tweet was in reference to Mel Gibson’s infamous voicemail tirade at his estranged wife. I understand that it’s a joke and got the reference immediately. I happen to listen to those voicemails every night to fall asleep, so I can recite them from memory. Pretty much everything on Dickinson’s Twitter page is unfunny and in bad taste, but the tweets are not racist. Let’s leave Pax Dickinson alone. He has enough to worry about, considering he goes through life with the name “Pax.” Let’s move on from this and look forward to more of Pax Dickinson’s topical material about Paris Hilton’s sex tape, Lou Bega’s “Mambo Number Five,” and Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s divorce. 6
The Most Racist Tweets of the Week:
Last Week in Racism: Apparently if You Make a “Ghetto Tracker” App, People Will Get Really Angry
