Wednesday, February 13, 2013
58 comments:
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Gratuitous Displays of Extraneous Knowledge Offered Not To Shed Light Or Enhance the Discussion, But For The Primary Purpose Of Giving An Impression Of Superiority are obnoxiously SELF-AGGRANDIZING, and therefore, Subject to Removal at the Discretion of the Censor-in-Residence.
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on the other hand http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZLLTxo6Th8
ReplyDeleteThe Magic Negro?
ReplyDeleteAin't Wikipedia grand?
ReplyDeleteI do love the music of Stephen Foster? Just sayin'.
ReplyDelete"All the world am sad and dreary."
ReplyDeleteLast night the arrogant King Barack offered us the same old Crap-Sandwich that he did last time around and the time before that. It was very predictable, blame the Republicans for his failure(s), Class Warfare, the usual demonizing of the opposition party, making excuses for his lame way of handling the radical Islamist's .... then Blame Bush.
ReplyDeleteThat should tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about Obozo
If you look up failure in the dictionary you'll find a picture of Barack Hussein Obozo.
Sure he was very big on promise's once again, only he never to us how he's going to any of these things with a 16 Trillion Deficit.So the bottom line is that he was lying through his teeth... as usual. How about the the cost of his programs?
I hope that the Slugs who voted for this Failure are satisfied now.
A guy in black face!
ReplyDeleteHow clever. Keep it classy, FT.
Well, he is black isn't he, or is he Green?
DeleteSo the day after the president's SOTU address, the only thing you can come up with is a bunch of white guys in black face?
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, those good ole days when Negroes were forced to the back of the bus or tortured and hanged, whichever the nice white folks chose for them.
And your disclaimer is this:
honi soit qui mal y pense!
My response:
Res ipsa loquitur!
The post is as subtle as a lynching.
I love Al Jolson , that's more than I can say for Barrack Obozo!
ReplyDelete"That should tell you EVERYTHING you need to know about Obozo."
ReplyDeleteThis is what Radical Redneck has left at my blog several times [often using my blognym as a link].
That should tell you EVERYTHING anyone needs to know about RR.
He did that? My oh my so naughty !
DeleteMs. Shaw! I had no idea you were such a vicious anti-Semite. To denigrate the historic cultural achievements of Al Jolson is to spit in the face of all American Jewry.
ReplyDeleteShame in you! Shame! Shame! SHAME!
I'm shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED -- almost to the point of nausea.
The intensity of my fury at your startling display of unfairness and gratuitous contempt for a great American Icon, who Alas! is longer here to defend himself, may cause me to faint dead away.
Had I the power I would strongly recommend having you locked in a padded cell for an indeterminate period of time where you would have to listen to Jolson's classic rendition of MAMMY 'round the clock without ceasing, until a proper degree of appreciation for this American Original's remarkable artistry is instilled in you.
You didn't? Everyone else knew!
DeletePs Al Jolson was a. Good American , that's more than I can say for the Marxist in Chief
Canardo, if you knew even a tenth of what you pretend to know, you would have realized a long time ago, that I am the very personification of "class."
ReplyDelete" ... the only thing you can come up with is a bunch of white guys in black face?
ReplyDeleteAfter mulling it over and wracking my brain for many tortured hours, Jolson's historic video was far and away the kindest, gentlest, most tasteful response I could make to President Obama's miasmatic utterance.
Everything else that ran through my fevered brain was unprintable.
Ditto, Ditto, and Ditto!
Delete"res ipsa loquitur?"
ReplyDeleteHardly! The truth might be better served if we say, "A person is best known by the inferences she draws." ;-)
It is no insult to Johnson to observe that (one of) his forms is today (much) more offensive than it was when he was performing. These things happen. Pretend not to understand it if you wish, but you don't fool me.
ReplyDeleteTo denigrate the historic cultural achievements of Al Jolson is to spit in the face of all American Jewry.
ReplyDelete------
Please stop.
Jolson was a freaking hack and "The Jazz Singer" was bad, bad melodrama.
His minstrelsy was lousy. Go get an Uncle Dave Macon or Clarence Ashley disc for examples of how it's done.
Al Jlson ever tried to play the medicine shows he'd have been run out of town.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Deleteerror: johnson => jolson
ReplyDeleteActus non facit reum,
ReplyDeletenisi mens sit rea.
from Wikipedia:
ReplyDeleteHe enjoyed performing in blackface makeup, a theatrical convention since the mid 19th century. With his unique and dynamic style of singing black music, such as jazz and blues, he was later credited with single-handedly introducing African-American music to white audiences.[1] As early as 1911 he became known for fighting against anti-black discrimination on Broadway. Jolson's well-known theatrics and his promotion of equality on Broadway helped pave the way for many black performers, playwrights, and songwriters, including Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, and Ethel Waters.
Actus Reus? Perhaps.
Mens Reus? Nope.
Al Jolson. Was one Great American.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thought, Thersites, that one must be a sincere -- conscious -- deliberate practitioner of ill will and malfeasance in order to qualify as evil.
ReplyDeleteProbably correct, but then we must consider all the dreadful things we've done to one another in all innocence. As an inveterate pragmatist, I tend to believe that RESULTS are ALL that COUNT.
Thank you for the material on Jolson, but of course, it will do nothing to alter the opinions of our "progressive" friends who have in actual fact created a new RELIGION based on taking OFFENSE as a means of acquiring political power.
I long ago dubbed this phenomenon OFFENDISM -- an apt, though hardly ingenious appellation.
I, myself, have taken GREAT offense at this presumptuous, self-righteous attempt to SHAME, EMBARRASS or otherwise THREATEN others into submission and capitulation.
Offendism, the Mother of course, of Political Correctness is in actual fact a particularly nasty form of BULLYING.
I hasten to add that holding this supremely hypocritical tactic in contempt -- as I most certainly do -- is NOT tantamount to an all-out embrace of the Ku Klux Klan, Skinheads or any neo-Nazi group.
I am in fact a genuine RADICAL. I have made it a practice most of my conscious life to DEFY any and ALL forms of ORTHODOXY.
The "Reds" of today -- for want of a better term (they keep changing their moniker to further promote and maintain the atmosphere of chaos in which they thrive) -- have bitched, whined, badgered, bullied and sued their way to Ascendancy. Leftist ideology -- like it or not -- has become the NEW ORTHODOXY -- the NEW ESTABLISHMENT.
Like all established power blocs the left is ABUSING its power, which means they must be RESISTED, DEFIED, DEFANGED, CASTRATED and eventually NEUTRALIZED.
The process of continually striving to supplant one form of despotism with another is as old as Time and as constant and ubiquitous as the action of the Tides.
That was a really good video of a
ReplyDeleteMinstrel show. Al Jolson must have been a great performer, unlike the jackass rapper we see all over the airwaves these days.
As for the black face, this was what was done in those dats., so what's the problem ?
He was loved by all and from that video, I can see why.
Thanks for posting it.
Progressives=Political Correctness. Another day same Crap.
ReplyDeleteI guess it's ok to insult and make fun of people as long as they are republicans, but don't dare to do it to a black!
Al Jolson was HUGELY popular no matter what Ducky thinks of him in 'his time'. Anonymous is right.. so what? It was DONE and it was accepted in those days.
ReplyDeleteIt seems stupid to me since there were so many black entertainers in the day who'd have sung and danced or whatever the audience wanted at least as charmingly as Jolson did.
I'm not getting the connection between Obama's speech and this video....??
More Jolson please, how about Mammy, and Old Black Joe!
ReplyDeleteThanks
I agree with what Z said
ReplyDeleteSo what ? Stop. With the PC. Crap already
"Mammy, my little mammy,
ReplyDeleteMy heartstrings are tangled around Alabamy."
Sort of the "We Shall Overcome" of its era.
31 comments?
ReplyDeleteInteresting as most music videos rarely garner many comments.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkyvstNrkHo
ReplyDeleteGone and forgotten.
"I'm not getting the connection between Obama's speech and this video....??"
ReplyDeleteZ, Mr. Free Thinke himself said that video of Jolson was the "kindest" one he could find to counter President Obama's speech. IOW, Mr. Free Thinke himself admits that the reason he used the black-face Jolson video was to heap insult on our black president, because whether or not black-face entertainment was popular a century ago has no bearing on how people, especially African-Americans, view it today.
It used to be "entertaining" to depict African-Americans as "steppin' fetchit" obsequious servants in the early days of motion pictures. And we know what Shakespeare, and other writers, thought of Jews. Ever see how the make-up department made Alec Guinness into Fagin in the movie Oliver Twist?
Ask any Jewish person how much they like the characters Fagin and Shylock, and how they're portrayed in fiction. Or perhaps we could just all agree that when anyone describes an Irishman in a novel or movies, we should make him out to be a good-for-nothing drunken sot?
Some people call it being politically correct; others call it respecting the wishes of how cultural groups wish to be depicted in entertainment venues.
All stereo types are dumb and used most of the time to denigrate one cultural group or another.
Mr. Free Thinke's and his friends' protestations are pretty transparent.
PS. I read a bio of Jolson a long time ago that did not, to say the least, show him in a very flattering light. He was insecure, vain, and not very nice to his fellow entertainers. At least that's what I remember reading about him.
ReplyDeleteIt seems stupid to me since there were so many black entertainers in the day who'd have sung and danced or whatever the audience wanted at least as charmingly as Jolson did.
ReplyDelete-------
z, the Harlem Renaissance was in full swing.
Duke Ellington, Bessie Smith, Fats Waller, Jelly Roll Morton, Louis Armstrong ... they were shufflin' like Jolson?
I'm not getting the connection between Obama's speech and this video....??
ReplyDelete--------
There is an element in America which has a virulent hatred for Obama for one primary reason ...
Ms. Shaw! Ms. Shaw! Ms. Shaw!
ReplyDeleteYou disappoint me. Must you be so PROTOTYPICAL? So DOCTRINAIRE? So tediously PREDICTABLE?
You remind me of Ninotchka before she found romance in Paris.
Please read -- and try to DIGEST -- what I posted at 3:41 PM.
Self-praise may stink, but what I said there -- unappetizing and indigestible as you are sure to find it -- is frankly superb analysis.
The criticism is not aimed at you, personally, but at the corrosive, wasting psychological disorder with which you and Ducky -- and far too many others -- have been infected.
There's so much about you I find admirable and enchanting, but not when it comes to politics. ;-)
Al Jolson was Jewish. In the politically-correct world you ardently embrace that means that ANY SINGLE WORD said against him for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER is considered positive proof of (GASP!) anti-Semitism -- just as you could not help but insist my posting this quaint, utterly harmless relic constitutes PROOF that I have deliberately insulted, demeaned and degraded President Obama.
I have no need to do that, Ms. Shaw, the president does a marvelous job of it, himself, every time he opens his loud, mendacious, miasmatic mouth.
So, at least be true to your own religion. According to your system of belief a jab at Jolson is a jab at ALL Jews.
Absurd?
You'd better believe it.
This world will not be destroyed by nuclear holocaust, nor by an unstoppable virus. Instead its continued existence is threatened by TERMINAL EARNESTNESS.
Oh, and Jez, the link you supplied at the top of these remarks provides a stunningly clear example of everything that has gone wrong in Western Civilization.
ReplyDeleteI have always found miserable cacophonous caterwauling of that ilk deeply OFFENSIVE. ;-)
Gotta love the "irony" of it. :)
ReplyDeleteIt's a good thing God is love, isn't it, FT? If not we'd have all been killed long ago. What a thread! People just do not understand each other all. It's too bad.
ReplyDeleteHelen Highwater
West End Blues -- Louis Armstrong's Hot Five
ReplyDeleteMood Indigo -- Duke Ellington Orchestra
Black and Blue -- Sidney Bechet
Mammy -- Al Jolson
Ain't Misbehavin' -- Fats Waller
One of these thing is not like the others
Not like the others
Not like the others
Can you guess which thing is
Not like the others ...
"Al Jolson was Jewish. In the politically-correct world you ardently embrace that means that ANY SINGLE WORD said against him for ANY REASON WHATSOEVER is considered positive proof of (GASP!) anti-Semitism -- just as you could not help but insist my posting this quaint, utterly harmless relic constitutes PROOF that I have deliberately insulted, demeaned and degraded President Obama."
ReplyDeleteIt is what it is, Mr. FT. You posted it, not me.
Your willfully WARPED interpretation is NOT what it is at all, Ms. Shaw.
ReplyDeleteI am fond of you, despite your deeply offensive embrace of liberalism ;-), but I will never allow you -- or anyone else -- to define me, and get away with attributing motives to me I never had.
I am astonished, by the way, that a person of your obvious intelligence and good breeding would mention having two Jewish grandchildren in the context of THIS rather whimsical discussion. Dropping that in when it is totally irrelevant to anything we're trying to deal with strikes me as inane -- and even though I disagree with you passionately on many significant issues and freely admit I've been playing with you a bit here today, I would NEVER consider you inane.
Now it's my turn to say, "Please stop." ;-)
Be of good cheer! Life is much too important to be taken so seriously.
Tomorrow is Valentine's Day. I wish you and everyone else nothing but love, long life and good health.
Peace.
FreeThinke
"All up and down de whole creation
ReplyDeleteSadly I roam,
Still longing for de old plantation,
And for de old folks at home."
---------
I like the bit about the poor darkie longing for the plantation.
I can understand why a white guy in black face might be more comfortable with the line.
Oh wow, you get a bonus at the end of the clip.
ReplyDeleteHappy darkies picking cotton. You've out done yourself, FT.
Only the most easily insulted would find this offensive.
Really? James Brown is an example of "everything that has gone wrong in Western Civilization?" Remember that the clip you posted makes explicit reference to slavery and racial prejudice. The clip I replied with has a good beat. Are you sure you haven't got it backwards?
ReplyDeleteCacophonous, maybe but not so much as eg. Charles Ives. (which I enjoyed and have remembered despite lack of comment at the time -- you should not assume that number of comments is proportional to depth of appreciation. I'll wager your Ives post was far more important toe many people than this one.)
Caterwauling, fine. It's notable that James Brown's most influential contributions were made in the years after his voice was shot -- think of him more as a band leader than a singer.
But miserable, not a chance. This is dance music, and any warm-blooded creature would be made happier for hearing it. As opposed to the spectacle of men in blackface, which would make any compassionate person sad for being reminded of the unfortunate turns of recent history. No denigration Jolson intended.
Jolson was loved by the African American community. on fact he evn helped a lot of black people get into show business
ReplyDeleteblack-face was considered sympathetic to and complimentary of black people since their suffering was real. He didm't wear blackface as a joke. Blackface wasn't thought of as racist at the time. Al Jolson was a wonderful entertainer and for those who do not know, his family were Russian Jews. His black face came from the old Music Hall tradition of the late 19th and early 20th century. Why do people try to make an issue out of something that does not exist. . Al spent his life entertaing and, toward the end of it, entertained US soldiers overseas. Something that Me. Obama would never do except for a photo-op. Just pointing out the discrepancies. As the day follows the night, Obama will lie, cheat and stop at nothing to achieve what he wants to. Just pointing out the discrepancies.
But the pitiful,pathetic, Progressives like Shaw will never come to that realization.
I fully agree with most of what Shaw Kenawe said, Al Jolson was a racist, make no doubt about it.. I am well aware of the history of plantations and slavery.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid only the ignorant would believe that Al Jolson opened up Negro music to a wider white audience ... it just isn't historically correct, and just another excuse for racism. I don't like racism., or bigotry intolerance from any viewpoint. And that is why I can’t understand Shaw Kenawe’s tolerance for a certain anti-Semite who constantly posts and comments on her blog.
Very simply put, Racism, stinks from whichever sewer it emerges from and that includes Black-Faced singers such as Al Jolson, so stop making him out to be some kind of a “Hero” He was a racist like the resy of thoes Black-Faced idiots. Just like the soroy of Little Black Sambo, and the Amos and Andy show. .
Minstrel music came into being through 'White' entertainers mocking Negros and Negro music, tap dancing etc..
Minstrel shows developed after the Civil War and remained popular into the early 1900s. Minstrelsy was born out of bigotry. In these shows, white men blackened their faces with burnt cork to lampoon Negroes, performing songs and skits that sentimentalized the nightmare of slave life on Southern plantations. Blacks were shown as naive buffoons who sang and danced the days away, gobbling "chitlins," stealing the occasional watermelon, and expressing their inexplicable love for "ol' massuh."
If it wasn't bigotry then how come the Ku Klux Klan came into being?
That's why the sight of White men blacking up and assuming mock southern slave accents is so revolting.
If you study the history of the Southern States and you will understand the significance of Martin Luther King and his "I have a dream" speech.
In the older films they didn’t allow a kiss between a black person and a white person on screen, let alone in bed together, it was totally and socially unacceptable which is another way of saying "politically correct" for the time.
My point is Non-white people have come a long way in the last hundred years, trying to make it as if it was not the fault of White actors or singers like Jolson is pure nonsense.
"I am astonished, by the way, that a person of your obvious intelligence and good breeding would mention having two Jewish grandchildren in the context of THIS rather whimsical discussion."
ReplyDeleteShaw is just using a variant of the old "but some of my closest friends are black!"
Really? James Brown is an example of "everything that has gone wrong in Western Civilization?"
ReplyDelete-----
"Live at the Apollo" is one of the all time great albums.
Blackface / Whiteface, or whatever, there is a ugly comparison between Al Jolson and Barack Obama. Al Jolson was a great and patriotic American, I don’t know if I can say the same for Barack Obama. Does this clown have no shame? “The Dear Leader” who has zero love and respect for the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is not a Martin Luther King by any shape of the imagination. And as for Michelle Obama, she is really only catering to a certain crowd when she teaches “them” how to eat, how to shop, how to anything” We all know she has no intention of teaching us “white folks” anything , why? because we already know how to eat, how to shop and how to do everything. Her intent and the president is to only speak to
ReplyDelete“our people” meaning the “Blacks” . We “white folks” are not included in that group and never have been.
And in Obama’s ridiculous State of the Union address, he said that all of his new programs “Would not effect the deficit one dime” ahem, well haw the hell are all these things going to be paid for? 70 thousand bridges? Thousands of roads? A 9 dollar minimum wage? And that’s not going to effect the unemployment rate? Is he freaken for real? Well them what the hell lets tax the dammed rich people again, what the hell. Oh year right, Obama offered plenty of big goals that all sound so wonderful, gun control, higher minimum wage, deficit reduction, immigration reform, climate change. Is this guy living in a fantasy world?
When you raise the minimum wage, guess what happens? Employers who can’t make it now will either go out of business or pay people off the books, or worse yet hire ILLEGAL’S!
How is he going to pay for these things without raising deficit, or raising taxes? Answer, he can’t!
And why hasn't Obama answered all those vital questions about Benghazi?
There are two reasons,
1. Because Obama is sympathetic to the Arab Spring, does not want to offend new Islamic governments.
2. Obama knew that a fail rescue would have serious repercussions to his re-election.
Ducky, you simply don't get it; no big film producer was going to take a chance on a major film with ANY of those black talents. Yes, there were a couple of black films, but not many.
ReplyDeleteIn that sense, Jolson did sort of break the color barrier for black talent. Sick, but true.
I still don't get the connection between Obama's speech and this video.
With deepest apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II:
ReplyDeleteIt's a very ancient saying
But a true and honest thought
That when you become a blogster
By your colleagues you'll be taught.
As a blogster I've been learning;
Please forgive me if I boast,
But I've now become an expert
On the subject I like most:
Getting to know you
Getting to now all about you
Hoping to like you
Knowing that most won't like me
Getting to know you
Putting it my way but nicely
Few are precisely
What they should be.
Getting to know you
Getting to feel free and easy
When I am with you
Setting my traps in your way
Haven't you noticed
Nothing at all makes me queasy,
Because of all the ways
That each one of you
Bares his soul for review
Every day.
~ Erist Einspiegeler
The trap was obvious ft (i don't believe for a moment that you are genuinely confused by why blackface minstrels became taboo). What next, deny the holocaust so that you can gather reactions? Or would that be tasteless? (you who are so proud of your taste :/)
ReplyDeleteOne of the first things the know-it-all "psychologists" who write self-improvement books tell us is to avoid addressing one another as "you." No matter the intent the effect is either presumptuous, rude or accusatory. It's best to subscribe to that rule, unless the parties involved know each other on an intimate terms.
ReplyDeleteThat said, outside the confines of polite social gatherings -- such as afternoon tea, cocktail parties, dinner parties, garden parties, theatre parties, etc., where it's unwise and impolite to discuss "serious" topics -- I do not believe in taboos.
Also I refuse to allow myself to be defined or to be put on the defensive by anyone.
Also, as I never tire of quoting. "You learn more about Peter from what he says about Paul than you learn about Paul."
Tendency today to "think evil" as much -- and as often -- as possible is lamentable in the extreme.
ReplyDeleteIt's the result, of course, of decades of heavy Cultural Marxist influence.
Charm, romance, wit, humor, merriment, have all-but disappeared. The deadly dull doctrines and morbid fear of possible ostracism resulting from the success of Cultural Marxism's virulent and insidious campaign against Jesus Christ and Western Civilization in general are every bit as evil as the oppression Mediaeval Catholicism's hideous abuse and willful misunderstanding of Christ's Holy Word imposed on Europe and the British Isles in that generally benighted era.
"I am unalterably opposed to any form of tyranny over the Mind of Man."
~ Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
In order to resist tyranny, however, we must first be aware of how and why we are being tyrannized. The absence of violent coercion does not prove a lack of tyranny. We seem not yet to have learned that in sufficient numbers.
"The people have always some champion whom they set over them and nurse into greatness . . . This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs. When he first appears, he is a Protector . . . In the early days of his power he is full of smiles. . . When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies . . . and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other in order that the people may require a leader. . . Has he not also another object . . . that they may be impoverished by taxes and thus compelled to devote themselves to their daily wants and [be] therefore less likely to conspire against him?"
~ Plato (427-347 B. C.)
Beware of "Champions," of "Protectors," of "Saviors," of "Orthodoxies," -- of all those who dare presume to know what is best for YOU.