(Alan) its a spoof of professional wrestling the sportscaster guys generally do a couple of advertisements for one silly product or another for example, "when you think of a white, viscous substance, think of x-brand of mayonnaise" this week they did an ad for black shoe polish and the guy made some comment about the fact that washington state, where the show supposedly took place, had the highest number of black impersonators in the country, as part of the ad this may or may not be true, thats not the point the point is that my friend was VERY offended by this comment because it was a reference to black impersonators who painted their faces with shoe polish and then attacked black people a veiled lynching reference basically does she have the right to get mad at this comment, which was thoughtless, but used for the purpose of comedy? can he say it if he doesn't think it? another friend seemed to think that the setting of the show, in "locust county washington," provoked him to say something like that, and it is unlikely that he thinks that way the fact is, there's a good chance he didn't really understand the reference he was making but my friend who was offended said that you can't bring something out of someone if it isn't already there why should a horrible thing be on his mind in the first place for it to come out in improv comedy? my friend was really offended and the next night she was arguing with another friend who said that she should be able to see it for its humor and put the racial connotations behind her as an thing of the past

(Kat) If I heard the shoe polish commercial my thoughts would run along the lines of:
1. I don't get it.
2. Probably a reference to the comedians of old (black and white) who wore the stereotypical shoe polish "black face" so you could tell they were supposed to be black.
3. Probably also commentary on the state of mind/prejudices of the character speaking, a wrestling sportscaster who is probably "white trash" and stereotypically racist. The audience is supposed to laugh at his prejudices because he is uneducated and has a job that is not respectable.
4. I still don't get it.
Personally, I would not have made the connection to lynching. I have never heard of anyone dressing up to look like they're black so they could lynch black people. I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, just I have never heard of it myself. So I wouldn't have been insulted, but neither would I have been amused, because I don't get the joke.... And I absolutely believe that characters in books/plays/movies etc. should be able to say just about anything. They aren't real people and their opinions are not at all necessarily the opinions of the author. I'm a firm believer in satire. Also, "the bad guys" aren't censored like that .. that's how you make the audience perceive someone as villainous, you have the villain do and say things that are offensive. But if it was, in fact, a straight-up joke about lynching, that's pretty inappropriate.

(Dan) i just worry that he [Gore] won't do a good job kicking bush's ass.

(Shann) I know its frigtening how many people in this country are supporters of pure irrefutable evil, and worse, they think they're doing the right thing. I guess that's how they feel about us, but if it were that simple they wouldn't be so freverent. They're psychotic, not logical, caring beings with a different opinion. thats why they're so unstopable and life just had to be the only place that evil can triump over good.

(Kat) Aren't you saying, I know that they're evil because they say that we're evil? Your characterization of them as "psychotic" and "supporters of pure irrefutable evil" sounds pretty "fervent" to me. I think they're *wrong*, but I don't think it's so hard to understand the state of mind of a person struggling to uphold the status quo or defending convictions of blind faith.

(Shann) thats the problem, they're doing anything and everything to uphold their blind faith, whereas I'm thinking and overcoming being raised Catholic. not all conservatives are that way, many are just hypocrites trying to get re-elected, and I'm sure many Iowa farm families really do want to save the souls of those they pray for. Even NRA has gun safety programs, its the rabid belives thgat worry me. true, they're a vocal minority that (I hope) doesn't represent the majority of people who vote/belive in a similar fashion (same "feminists" who belive all het sex is rape). they're examples set up to worry us. But people who murder abortion doctors, who would rather kill their kids than admit they're gay, the "greaseman" who wants to drag blacks behind pick-up-trucks for making music he doesn't like (I don't consider it a joke considering his comments after the MLK assasination) these are not not well thought out ideas with pseudo-science behind them. they're nuts. just as nuts as the !left wings nuts the sane right-wingers equate us with. most of us do just have different opinions on what is moral, I was refering to the psychos with the cash to buy legislation. extream right is more bin vogue than extream left, people even have problems with "pc" terminology for example. And I at least don't belive in killing or brain washing or even silencing them. I just want their money used for something I belive in. sure its hypocritical, and sure my only justification is that at least I'm right, but I would be willing to give all money from both extreams to the moderates and let them waffle between each sane wing view point. I don't want them thinking that the right wing crazies are any more sane the leftist ones just because their view point is more often portrayed as moral because they have the funding and church support.

(Dan) how about use of the word "queer." it's become a big deal at Penn because the LGBA changed its name to Queer Student Association. There was a huge debate on the LGBA listserv when all the people opposed (including me) were ignored as "passe" and "secretly homophobic." Then, this bisexual girl wrote in saying that she thought it was terrible and that she would no longer involve herself with the organization. 5 MINUTES LATER, we get an email from an aol account that's all like "you bunch of faggots and queers! Now that i saw your banner, i know who to target!" The aol name was SugarPixie. It was OBVIOUSLY the bi girl trying to make a point. anyone with a brain could have figured that out. but instead, the QSA idiots decide to make this big deal, calling campus security agencies about "hate-mail." The next morning, the headline of the Daily Pennsylvanian is "Penn Gay Group Listserv Receives Hate-Mail."

(Shann) I wouldn't use queer in fron of people that I didn't know were cool with word. I'd use a different all encompasing term if there was a common, easily said one (instead of les/bi/gay/trans)

(Katie) How about... um... pudding? Or borange? Cause then there'd be a word that rhymes with orange. Yeah, borange. We could open up untold possibilities in the poetic world...

(Shann) ...do protests help at all? should other people have to be hurt to get the message out? are protests better than letter writing campaignes?

(Lisa) Now, I know you don't think physically protesting does any more than writing letters. And I know you have become more "neighborhood rights" oriented after this imf thing. and I know you think that 1 person can't make a difference.But, to risk sounding like a dumb college student, whatever happened to protesting for fun, for the opportunity to meet like-minded freaks?

(Gary) Protesting for fun?is that what its come to? Lemme just say the picture of those 'wasters'on the front of our papers in London standing on a daubed statue of Winston Churchill made me want to grab their necks. Like someone said..If it wasnt for Churchill and others like him those ignorant people wouldnt have the freedom they enjoy today....Damn these nebulous riots and long live the memory of the Great defenders of liberty...

(Shann)My concern is people who protest to seem intelligent. Its become a fad.

(Lisa) I didn't mean to sound frivoulous. but moral is a necessity. Shann has given up before she begins.

(Kat) Yes, protests are "fun." There's a euphoria involved in meeting with large groups of like-minded people in public spaces & reveling in your right to inconvenience the general public enough that they'll notice you and your cause. And I don't think that's bad.
I firmly believe that acts of civil disobedience are our responsibility as US citizens. If you don't like the government, change it. There would have been no civil rights legislation in the 60s if there had been no bus boycotts or sit-ins or freedom rides or marches on Washington. I think that the protests of the International Monetary Fund worked, to a large extent. I didn't know the IMF or World Bank or World Trade Organization or anything even existed before the protests in Seattle (and even then I didn't pay any attention), but during the hype preceding the protests in Washington I went online and visited the protestors' websites and the organizations' websites and got myself INFORMED about the IMF's purpose & the protestors' reason for protesting. And that is the real goal of taking it to the streets: informing the public. Letter-writing campaigns don't do that. It remains to be seen whether anything real will come of it; whether the IMF & World Bank will actually reform. But the protestors made an issue of what was not an issue before. And I say, that's great.

(Shann) was that the point of writing "fuck IMF" on GW property? Was that the point of of defacing our streets, statues and residece halls after being asked not to? what about those people who defaced DC property? does disrupting traffic gain you support? What about the anarchy symbols everywhere now? Where is the responsability to keep wackos from destroying your message by hurting innocent people?

(Kat) There will always be "wackos" and delinquents looking for a cause they can latch on to that will provide them the opportunity to air their own destructive impulses. There is nothing organizations with a real message can do about it but firmly denounce violence & destruction of property & try to distance themselves from it. Which is what the IMF protest leaders should have done, but they didn't. They tried to say, "our immediate group members will be nonviolent, but we won't denounce any tactics anyone else chooses to use," which was really very stupid of them. Because it made those prone to using violent tactics feel accepted & the legitimate protest groups upheld a reputation for holding violent protests, so its members were also cast as "wackos." Very bad move on their part.

(Kat)did you all look at the texas criminal justice dept link I sent earlier? wasn't that disgusting? they had a whole page devoted to what people asked for at their last meal. crass and shameful. and you look at when they were first incarcerated and there are so many who were put in jail at 18, 19 .. or that's when they were given the death penalty in the first place! granted you have to do something pretty bad to get on death row (unless they make a mistake - which never happens of course) but to condemn someone to death straight out of high school is ridiculous.
and then there are all those republican types who are anti-abortion and pro-death penalty. you can't be pro-life and support the death penalty. that's just stupid.

(Danny)Hey everyone, i know i havent said much, but i have to disagree with the whole republican thing about how they can be ants-abortion but for the death sentence. Those are two entirely different subjects, and the when using the term death in both of those examples have to be used in a different context.
First of all if you are pro-life, and you support the death sentence, its because someone on death row COMMITED A HANOUS CRIME!!! What did an innocent fetus do to deserve a death sentence. Abortion is killing out of ignorance and didnt stand trial for anything, a convicted felon recieved his chance, and failed as a human, and was tried before a jury of his peers, and IS A PUNISHMENT. ABORTION AND PUNISHMENT ARE TWO ENTIRELY DIFFERENT THINGS. An unborn baby didnt commit any crime, where as someone on death row did!
sorry to sound so rude and blunt, but trying compare and contrast abortion over the death sentence, and rallying on the death sentence side saying its wrong, and just saying that killing innocent babies saying its ok, just seems unethical.
about the kids that were sentenced in texas, when you said how it was wrong to be condemed to death straight out of high school. I can think of a senerio, even better get this; GETTING CONDEMED TO DEATH BEFORE EVEN LIVING!!!!! At least they got there chance!!!

(Alan)most people who are pro-choice are not "abortions for everyone!!" people i personally believe a child should not be born into a hostile environment and have to face a life that is not worth living while there are other options (adoption, thinking about what you do BEFORE you do it, etc.) sometimes abortion is clearly the best choice it should be thought of as saving a life instead of ruining one but compare a life in prison, getting anally raped by big guys and whomped by guards 24-7 to dying quickly in an electric chair why should a convicted criminal be put out of his/her misery while an innocent child is forced to face a life of failure and dispair, and possibly death in the electric chair somewhere down the line? i think the real issue is human rights, and whether someone who has committed a crime should be deprived of his right to live a comfortable life and whether a child should be forced into a world that will not accept him do you believe that death should be used to save someone from misery? and if so, who deserves it more, and innocent child or a cold blooded killer? i think people who are pro-life and support the death penalty have some twisted view of what it means to live in a hostile world (pampered republicans whose mommy and daddy bought them their social status ::cough GWBush cough::) think about that

(Dan)yey kat.
yeah so the death penalty makes no fiscal sense. it costs taxpayers more to go through the legislation to kill someone than it does to keep them in jail without parole for the rest of their lives (arguably a worse punishment).

(Kat)Thing about the death penalty is, it's final and complete and there's no going back & saying "We're sorry, Copernicus, we realize now that you were right & we were wrong." If the justice system in S. Africa had just executed Nelson Mandela instead of sentencing him to the majority of his life in prison, history would've played out a lot differently.
But even leaving political prisoners aside (which I don't think we should do, by the way; even though the US doesn't have very many now you have to look out for your freedoms) it's a HUGE responsibility to put on the jury & judge & all of us as Americans. As Shann's oft-quoted Tom Tomorrow (loosely) put it, if even one innocent has been killed, we are all guilty of murder. I believe that. Whatever it says in the books about killing criminals, if we kill innocents - and we do; it is statistically ridiculous to assert that all convicted criminals that have been executed really commited the crime of which they were accused - that's murder. I am *extremely* wary of giving the government the right to kill. It's just not ok.