Xref: utzoo news.misc:2056 soc.culture.jewish:8306
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!portal!cup.portal.com!David_W_Tamkin
From: David_W_Tamkin@cup.portal.com
Newsgroups: news.misc,soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: Racist jokes
Message-ID: <11700@cup.portal.com>
Date: 24 Nov 88 02:36:14 GMT
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Rob Robertson in <17379@agate.Berkeley.EDU>:

> Does that make Woody Allen a Jewish Uncle Tom?

Allen makes himself a Jewish Uncle Tom.  I classify him with Philip Roth.

> Does he, or does he not propogate a stereotype?

Yes, he does.

Now, the reason I didn't move this to rec.arts.movies: I'd like to put in
my two agorot on the main subject.

I'm Jewish; I'm also less than 100% fond of Templeton.  However, I think
that Gould and especially Richmond (I can't believe that he wasn't able
to figure out that Templeton was his own boss) are going way overboard.
Templeton admitted that he should have rotated that joke, and that, I
think, would have been enough.

It was a cull from rec.humor.  I thought it a weak joke when I read it
there and again when I saw it in rec.humor.funny.  There have been much
worse posted to rec.humor, and I doubt that Richmond has called for the
contributors of those postings to be have their post access yanked.

Making fun of ethnic, gender, or racial stereotypes is not the height of
comedy in my estimation, but I agree with the person who said that we on
the net are past the ages where hearing negative jokes will form our
opinions.

On the other side, though, I would like to point something out to all who
have tried to support Templeton by saying, "A black/Jew/Pole/lawyer/fnord I
know just LOVES black/Jew/Pole/lawyer/fnord jokes, tells them all the time,
and eagerly collects them."  You are comparing sharing a joke among a
limited, preconstituted group of friends to sending it out to an
unrestricted, unknown audience on the net.  That is really not applicable to
the situation at hand and including it attenuates your arguments.

David_W_Tamkin@cup.portal.com  {...}!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!david_w_tamkin
 Portal's management and other customers do not speak for me, nor I for them.