General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: You know, I've been on DU for sixteen years... [View all]mwooldri
(10,303 posts)... we'd be losing lots of people.
Society changes. What was acceptable a few or many years ago may not be acceptable today.
Case in point... I was watching on YouTube some early 60s BBC TV - specifically "That Was The Week That Was" - a groundbreaking, cutting edge for its time, political satire show. One sketch would definitely NOT be made today... a song and dance routine about lynchings of African-Americans in Mississippi. This routine featured caucasians in blackface, liberal use of the N-word and other things that would shock and outrage people if it were repeated on say, Saturday Night Live today.
Then at the end of the show (before the end credits)... we have David Frost (he wasn't a Sir back then) say this "joke"... "What do you call a tall, suave coloured gentleman, highly educated University professor with three degrees in Nuclear Physics in Alabama? N-word."
My guess is that Sir David would be cringing at what he was saying and doing back in 1963 - even though when you look at it all you would see that the overall message was that racism is absurd. However he has the luxury of many many years.
Joy Ann Reid is being hauled over the coals for some obscure blog post that she wrote years ago, and whether it was actually posted or not is debatable. The debate about homosexuality's place in mainstream society has moved much more quickly than the debate about race. I think she could have handled the situation somewhat better but I do not see her as a homophobe.
Let her be. MSNBC, don't drop her. This will come to pass in the end.
If it doesn't, then maybe I should be petitioning the Queen to remove Sir David's knighthood for using a whole bunch of racially insensitive words on prime time national TV, watched by tens of millions of people.