In the classic early '60s novel A Confederacy of Dunces there was a rebellious young Jewish heiress named Myrna Minkoff. Perhaps the funniest thing in a very funny book was the back story description of the Minkoff character. College girl Myrna spent a summer traveling the rural South, attempting to teach black folk Negro spirituals and work songs that she had learned from Library of Congress recordings.
Of course, that was satire. No one would actually act that damned stupid.
Unless they would. Check out this report from Reason science editor Ron Bailey, detailing a Joan Baez concert the day after Bush's re-election:
Alice, the black teenager from Arkansas Baez was pretending to be, spoke in a dialect so broad and thick that it would put Uncle Remus and Amos and Andy to shame. Baez' monologue was filled with phrases like, "I'se g'win ta" to do this that or the other and dropping all final "g's." Baez as Alice made statements like, "de prezident, he be a racist," and "de prezident, he got a bug fer killin'."
Now, not to put too fine a point on it, but Myrna Minkoff would have had the excuse of being a teenager. Joan Baez, on the other hand, is 63. What's her problem?
Article comments
1 - Eric Olsen
what, exactly, was she trying to prove?
2 - Sean
She was trying to prove that the President is a bad man.
3 - Al Barger
It's some kind of really messed up racial psychology, investing black folk with some special primitive spiritual powers-though those seem to be proportioned out based on how low down the food chain they are.
Think of the movie Bulworth, which I found utterly fascinating. In Warren Beatty's world the absolute worst crack dealing thug turns out to be a deep ghetto philosopher.
Best I can tell though, those special powers mostly apply to ghetto dwellers. Black folks with college degrees and middle class jobs don't seem to have NEAR the deep spiritual allure.
4 - Anne
How can you say that Joan Baez is a racist? do you who are we talking about? JOAN BAEZ, the one who marched with Martin Luther King, the activist, the pacifist, the woman who fought for black people rights...I bet you don't even try to understand. How can a woman like her be racist? she was just trying to prove that Bush is a bad man, like Sean said. I bet that Bush thinks that black people are all like Alice...that's what Joan was trying to make you understand.
5 - Martin Lav
Anne,
You have to understand that our esteemed author and blog critic, much like most people on the right claiming to be libertarians, prowl the world looking for liberals positions they can malign. Look at the so-called Veterans for Truth and their attacks on Kerry during the elections.
In the case of most right leaning speakers for the rest (ie....Rush, O'Reilly etc...) they do not allow actions to speak louder than words. If they did, then who would listen?
6 - Al Barger
Anne- This is just the kind of move that I so LOVE from liberals. They can indulge the worst stereotypes and ridiculous crap like this Joan Baez incident- and then use that as proof that Bush is somehow "racist" cause you know that's what he's thinking or something. But it's not Bush going around talking like that- nor any kind of conservative.
Note that I did not specifically accuse Baez of "racism" - though that would not be an entirely inappropriate word. Still, I don't like slinging that kind of mud.
But see, this is good racism, filled with condescending love rather than the plain disdain that all conservatives supposedly obviously feel for anyone who is not a rich white person. That way, you get to indulge in horribly caricatured racial nonsense like this- yet still feel morally superior in doing so.
Put another way, apparently Joan Baez' idea of black folk is this Alice character, whereas George Bush's idea of black folk is Condoleeza Rice or Colin Powell.