Yes, yes, Even I--the great ironist of this post-racial age--am prone to reversing the polarity on my irony detector from time to time. And so I completely missed the tongue squarely positioned in Maureen Dowd's cheek. I won't bore you with excuses. I don't think I have any. My SAT scores weren't that good. I guess this is why you don't take candy from saucy, red-headed babies.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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On the other hand, you get much respect for "reversing the polarity" /geek
didn't bother reading the original and just enjoyed what you did with it.
small comfort, i know
..i aksed her for assistance, in lyrical persistence, and she gave it to me..
The unfunny companion-piece, for me at least, to this little humbler is I was living in Connecticut when the Tawana Brawley thing went down and reading the Times every day. There was a simple news piece once about the relatively disconcerting experience of black people having their white friends ("friends"?) asking them what, really, was the deal with the whole thing.
Nice walk back, Ta-nehisi,
What was really funny to me was that despite the fact that Dowd's column was tongue-in-cheek, I found myself identifying with those white people.
Now, to be honest, I never went so far as to ask a black person if he/she was happy and how it felt. But, living here in the red state of Arizona, I haven't had very many people to celebrate with. It's been very tempting...
dude, after that bizarre fanfic shit during the primaries I think we all get a pass on figuring out what the hell Maureen is on about.
It's still an inane column. Irony should be a stiletto -- in Dowd's hands it's more like a lobster mallet.
Mmmmm, lobster.
More important to remember how insular, Atlantic Monthly blogger, the media is from the rest of us. When one makes the media the story, however necessary it is to counteract its disproportionate power to do harm, one should always count to ten before committing. One only needs to see how Sarah Palin, a soul bereft of irony, announces that her enemies are college girls in the family basement wearing pajamas to see the pitfalls. Part of the media's power is to diminish the individual via popular media culture's cult of fame--Maureen Dowd tends to be a sophisticated political gossip columnist; more significant to use media to defuse the toxicity of all that with good crazy.
Ah, first comment got caught in spam trap, so I posted second comment. Now both are posted, and what started as a harmless witticism has been overworked....
Gracchus,
Fixt...I think.
Funnily enough, I thought it was so obvious that Dowd was joking that I figured TNC was just taking the joke and running with it. It never occurred to me that he might think she was dead serious.
I feel kind of lame saying this now, but some random black guy and I (white guy) gave each other a big hug the day after the election. He was walking to his car saying "yes we did" so I responded with the same phrase. So we chatted and celebrated for a couple of minutes. It was cool.
I'm a law clerk and before a hearing I was chatting with a black attorney about the election... he said he cried.
I do live in Detroit, so it's not like I don't see black people. But still, the joy on the faces of many of the black people I saw around me the day after the election was apparent.
The whole thing was enough to make a white boy like me tear up. I'm a wuss though.
Will you be my black friend?
don't worry, gawker didn't get it either.
Thanks, T.
No man, no walking the dog here, uh-uh!
I did stand-up for a short while, and let me tell you something about humor: truth is always at the core of it. You can dress it up and make it look absurd, but it is still there, just as anger is at the core of hostility.
She saw what she saw and she wrote about it, and no making excuses because there was nothing wrong with what she observed. The white people most hilarious in their discomfort with black folks are that way because they are out of their usual comfort zone of surrounding themselves with white folks. Go to an all-white beach community in LA and you will be treated to old-fashioned eyeball racism--yeah, you know what I mean. Don't think some of these folks don't resent Barack beating Mac, either. It's Hank Aaron showing up The Babe, Jesse Owens showing up Adolph, even Max Baer showing up Max Schmelling. Those asking the questions are in the middle--wanting to be more racially diverse in their interactions, still not quite comfortable doing so.