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cactoblasta
Join Date 04/2004
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The American Deep South has no irony

The danger of intolerance

February 13, 2007 5:25:51 PM from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Check this video out and tell me it isn't so: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6MJVzXbqRU Bloody Rednecks. Top Gear is one of the best shows on TV; how dare they attack?
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cactoblasta
SanChonino
Join Date 12/2005
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Reply #1 February 13, 2007 6:04:20 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Top Gear is a great show. But do you honestly think those rednecks give a damn? Try again.

Great link, though. Brought back horrible memories of Easy Rider.
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cactoblasta
MasonM
Join Date 01/2004
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Reply #2 February 13, 2007 6:12:37 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
What a put on bunch of crap. Nothing like a little politically motivated stereotyping to produce a crappy tv show huh?

Made a big point of mentioning Christianity, Bush, and Republicans to ensure they were included in the negative stereotyping.

The woman at the gas station asked them if they were 'gays'. If she really were some ultra-redneck she would not have used PC-speak. She would have called them fags or queers, she certainly wouldn't have used the word gays.

The whole thing is just a bunch of garbage in the name of television for idiots who eat that crap up. I've lived in the deep South all of my life and can tell you that little piece of garbage was just one long unrealistic stereotype. May as well have been an episode of South Park, except of course South Park would be more funny.
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bakerstreet
Join Date 03/2001
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Reply #3 February 13, 2007 7:24:37 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
It's bullshit.

You see one, maybe two people antagonizing them, and it appeared to be the business owner who didn't want to have them sitting there with the bullshit on their cars. The crap with the pointing the camera at the ground, going to "radio", etc., is smoke and mirrors.

The piece of shit that did the article about it online talks about his cultured "california" Americans... well, I could suggest a few spots he could ride through LA or Oakland after *I* had painted a few things on his cars. I would be willing to bet his assailants, and you can bet your ass there would be assailants, would traditionally vote Democrat.

Go into a popular bar in England and proclaim that soccer is for fags. Go to the a few spots in the pinnicle of American liberal culture, New York, and, well, just LOOK at someone the wrong way. I can suggest some places I have been in Atlanta where just showing up WHITE causes as much fear and loathing as what was written on these cars.

The fact is, I could take you to places in the mountains in TN where they literally WOULD have needed to be afraid. I can do the same, though, in many urban centers where Bush hating Dems cash there checks at the "no questions asked" storefront "banks". These people should lose their jobs for this kind of hack job, or be forced to go back and squeal like pigs.
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cactoblasta
MasonM
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Reply #4 February 13, 2007 7:29:35 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Go into a popular bar in England and proclaim that soccer is for fags.


Nah, you'd have to say it's for poofs. If ya said fags they'd just light up a smoke.
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cactoblasta
bakerstreet
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Reply #5 February 13, 2007 7:37:18 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
It makes me mad "and then the rednecks arrived". If you look closely at the people in the back of that truck there were women and kids. Those people hadn't been called there, it was a store, they were probably going for ice cream.

I don't believe a single damn rock was ever really thrown. They don't show it. I've seen correspondents sit under fire and get film. It's too damned convenient that they couldn't get an ounce of anything on tape.

The idiots at Digg are all up in arms about it, railing about the south and the confederate flag and crap. They are nazis, just trendy, socially accepted nazis, ignorantly condemning other cultures. They need to pack their crap and see to the dental cares of their own inbred nations.
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cactoblasta
bakerstreet
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Reply #6 February 13, 2007 7:37:28 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Yes, it pisses me off.
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cactoblasta
Dr Guy
Join Date 09/2004
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Reply #7 February 13, 2007 8:18:14 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
What a put on bunch of crap.


nuff said.
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cactoblasta
bakerstreet
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Reply #8 February 13, 2007 8:26:38 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
nm... I'm done. I removed my article. Taking the high road...
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cactoblasta
MasonM
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Reply #9 February 13, 2007 8:32:13 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Just Euro-dweeb morons pandering to idiots like those on Digg.
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cactoblasta
bakerstreet
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Reply #10 February 13, 2007 8:34:59 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
nm
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bakerstreet
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Reply #11 February 13, 2007 8:43:51 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
nm again.
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #12 February 13, 2007 10:31:11 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
So you guys don't think the video was even a little funny? Come on, Top Gear gets its jokes from taking advantage of the stereotypes about car fanatics, chavs and foreigners.

I didn't see the article on Digg; the site is of no interest to me. I got sent the link by a mate.

In any event you should really watch an entire episode first before so giving them the Eurodweeb label. It's hilarious. This is just a skit that pokes fun at you. There are others, and anyway, if you can't laugh at yourself who can you laugh at?
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bakerstreet
Join Date 03/2001
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Reply #13 February 13, 2007 11:22:24 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
What was funny about it, what part? Did you read the blog? Is that part of the skit? I'm sitting here trying to find something comical in it.

There, I watched it again. Were the guy's reactions supposed to be funny? I'm sure its refreshing for hateful people to have someone they can be hateful about without being seen as hateful. It would be like me going to France and brandishing a gun in a mall, and then saying "See, look, French people are cowards" as they run away.

They can comment on America all they want. They can write long blogs, editorialize, whatever. What they did here goes beyond "freedom fries" and becomes something worse. Ask yourself how it would have been taken had they done the same thing, except referencing urban America, filmed the mob, and then commented about how terrible those awful people in the projects are.

No, this will be seen as funny because it is self-congratulatory to demean my culture. It makes people feel smart. Good for them. I just wouldn't suggest they walk up to me and try it, or the no doubt massive amounts they paid to adjust their British smile might have been for naught.
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MasonM
Join Date 01/2004
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Reply #14 February 13, 2007 11:37:53 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I have a very good sense of humor and can easily and readily laugh at myself with no problem at all. I really tried to find something resembling humor in this and it simply wasn't there. This wasn't funny in any way. It's an obvious pile of garbage intended to insult and denigrate people based upon a stereotype.
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #15 February 13, 2007 11:51:39 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
What was funny about it, what part? Did you read the blog? Is that part of the skit? I'm sitting here trying to find something comical in it.


What blog? Can you give me a link? Top Gear is a TV show made by the BBC. It's been going for years and years. They do roadtests of sportscars and have a regular segment where they make minor celebrities race around a track in 'a reasonably priced car'.

I haven't a clue what you're talking about Baker.


No, this will be seen as funny because it is self-congratulatory to demean my culture. It makes people feel smart. Good for them. I just wouldn't suggest they walk up to me and try it, or the no doubt massive amounts they paid to adjust their British smile might have been for naught.


You've never laughed at someone with a mullet, a fightin' attitude and an intolerance towards gays and NASCAR-haters? What DO you laugh at?
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #16 February 13, 2007 11:53:45 PM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I have a very good sense of humor and can easily and readily laugh at myself with no problem at all. I really tried to find something resembling humor in this and it simply wasn't there. This wasn't funny in any way. It's an obvious pile of garbage intended to insult and denigrate people based upon a stereotype.


Which is by definition funny, especially when the stereotype is lived up to. Stereotypes exaggerate life, which is why they're such an integral part of comedy. It's by pushing life to its extremes that you find its absurdity.

Maybe you don't think that happened there, but watch a different episode. I can guarantee you that you will laugh out loud at least a few times. When they're not criticising your countrymen I'm sure you'll find them genuinely funny.

As for saying they're anti-American the guy with the curly hair considers the Ford GT something-or-other the finest production sports car with a tolerable price tag. That's hardly Committee for the Study of Anti-American Attitudes material is it?
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cactoblasta
MasonM
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Reply #17 February 14, 2007 12:10:52 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I've seen a lot of stereotype based humor and quite enjoyed it, even when directed at myself. This simply wasn't funny. Maybe some folks might find it funny. I would imagine they would be the urban, Northern, or non-Americans, who actually believe these stereotypes to be true and like to have that nice, superior feeling. I'm a very good judge of humor and this wasn't it.
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cactoblasta
dynamaso
Join Date 09/2004
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Reply #18 February 14, 2007 12:25:43 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
I love Top Gear. It is one of the best shows on television, let alone a show for car geeks (I'm one, BTW). Unfortunately, I can't activate the link because I'm on my work computer. I will have a look when I get home and comment then.

Can hardly wait to see what all the fuss is about...
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bakerstreet
Join Date 03/2001
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Reply #19 February 14, 2007 12:38:49 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums

link



"That bit in our American Holiday Video where we were attacked by the rednecks in the Alabama petrol station: I realise now that I should have seen it coming.

We'd been warned by some American modernists - i.e. Californians - that the southerners wouldn't take kindly to any of our light mockery of the things they hold dear - Bush, heterosexuality, NASCAR, Country and Western, short hair...

But I never really believed they would take it quite that badly.

But then, earlier that day I had stopped at another petrol station and looked at the selection of T-shirts on sale to the locals. One proclaimed 'God, pick-ups and beer' with a picture of a Dodge like Hammond's on it. Another sported some legend about the right to bear arms.

And yet another depicted the Confederate flag and a picture of, er, General Stonewall Jackson. I think this may have been a vital clue to the mentality of the hicks.

Wasn't Jackson a general from the civil war? And didn't he die from complications resulting from the amputation of his arm after he was inadvertently shot by his own men?

And, more importantly, wasn't all this rather a long time ago? And what's with the confederate flag? Do they still lament the abolition of slavery or something?

It's been pointed out to me that the old flag, rather than standing for a discredited set of social and political values, is now just a fanciful graphic.

The Dukes of Hazzard, after all, had one on the roof of their car, and no one thought it was in any way distasteful. It was just the good ol' boys from the South being sentimental about their roots.

And that seemed like a fair comment. I like a sense of history as much as anyone. But then something else occured to me.

I've never met anyone in Europe wearing a swastika T-shirt.
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cactoblasta
bakerstreet
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Reply #20 February 14, 2007 12:56:19 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
"You've never laughed at someone with a mullet, a fightin' attitude and an intolerance towards gays and NASCAR-haters? What DO you laugh at?"


You're just being obtuse. Do you really think most people with a mullet care what these guys think? They can sit and think what they want, I don't give a damn. There are southern comedians that make jokes about that kind of thing all the time. No one stones them. The guys with the mullets even laugh.

When you show up with a camera crew and three cars, painted garishly with insults and things purposely intended to make people angry, it isn't about their opinions any more. There's a difference between stating your opinion and taking a circus to a small town to PURPOSELY antagonize people. Worse, when your video is INTENDED to demean the people standing there, heavily edited to make it as bad as possible?

The difference is Phelps making a website or a TV show saying god hates gay people, and Phelps showing up at the Fantasy Fest in San Fransisco waving the signs in people's faces. Most of the mob wouldn't normally get up out of a chair in response, yet when they are there, in your face, antagonizing you, it would be a pink, fuzzy abattoir.

They obviously went there to bait people into anger, and they got so little they had to edit the video heavily to show it. It's sad. What is saddest is that the REAL act of intolerance was the one you are calling funny.
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #21 February 14, 2007 12:59:55 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
It's been pointed out to me that the old flag, rather than standing for a discredited set of social and political values, is now just a fanciful graphic.

The Dukes of Hazzard, after all, had one on the roof of their car, and no one thought it was in any way distasteful. It was just the good ol' boys from the South being sentimental about their roots.

And that seemed like a fair comment. I like a sense of history as much as anyone. But then something else occured to me.

I've never met anyone in Europe wearing a swastika T-shirt.


Well that makes sense to me. Have you ever seen a non-skinhead German wearing a swastika? Americans, like all those who go for Guevara shirts, are very odd about what symbols they keep and what they discard. And the flag which history remembers as being that of slavers is a pretty odd symbol for a country which claims to be the pinnacle of virtue.

Is that what's getting your panties in a twist?

Or is that the unspoken suggestion that American southerners aren't really all that better than British soccer louts (as one of the commenters on that blog suggested?
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #22 February 14, 2007 1:02:35 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums

They obviously went there to bait people into anger, and they got so little they had to edit the video heavily to show it. It's sad. What is saddest is that the REAL act of intolerance was the one you are calling funny.


High horses are for losers, Baker. If you're the kind of person who gets rowdy when you're insulted you deserve every injustice a cruel world throws at you. Sure, it's not fair, but nothing is, so if other people find it easy to get a rise of you it's hardly their fault.
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bakerstreet
Join Date 03/2001
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Reply #23 February 14, 2007 1:11:44 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Right there it is. Southerners vs... soccer louts. Southerners vs... skinheads. You take tens of millions of people and compare them to a small slice of miscreants in another nation. Like I said it is the difference between "freedom fries" and actually going to France to threaten people and watch them run.

No, the confederate flag only symbolizes slavery to the ignorant. It would be like me saying the British flag symbolizes imperialism or the Australian flag symbolizes the slaughter of indigenous people. You'd think I was an ass if I went to australia and compared the flag there to the swastika.

No, it's funny because it tags one of the last cultures that it is fashionable to be hateful to. Paint up your cars and go just about anywhere else in the world and the response would be outrage. In the American south it is "humor". I don't find it funny.
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #24 February 14, 2007 1:30:41 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
Right there it is. Southerners vs... soccer louts. Southerners vs... skinheads. You take tens of millions of people and compare them to a small slice of miscreants in another nation. Like I said it is the difference between "freedom fries" and actually going to France to threaten people and watch them run.


You know I was only using shorthand for redneck or whatever the current label of choice is for the small group of rednecks in this world. Don't be a dick.


No, the confederate flag only symbolizes slavery to the ignorant. It would be like me saying the British flag symbolizes imperialism or the Australian flag symbolizes the slaughter of indigenous people. You'd think I was an ass if I went to australia and compared the flag there to the swastika.


But the British flag does symbolise imperialism and the slaughter of indigenous people in Australia (we didn't have our current flag til after independence in 1901; we were done with blatant slaughter by then and were involved in 'integration').

People would think you were a communist if you started spouting that kind of thing, but I don't think you'd get bashed outside of Cronulla.
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cactoblasta
cactoblasta
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Reply #25 February 14, 2007 1:32:52 AM
from JoeUser ForumsJoeUser Forums
No, it's funny because it tags one of the last cultures that it is fashionable to be hateful to. Paint up your cars and go just about anywhere else in the world and the response would be outrage. In the American south it is "humor". I don't find it funny.


Ah, so Little Britain is unfashionable in the UK and elsewhere? It's kind of sad if satire of the powerful is unfashionable in the US, but that works for me - I was more precognisant than I expected - Irony is indeed dead in America!
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