Time Magazine named You the person of 2006. With the already enormous and ever-growing popularity of user-created content sites like YouTube, MySpace, Wikipedia, etc., we are entering into a more democratic state of media -- with infinite possibilities.
With these modern tools of communication come certain responsibilities. There is no longer an excuse to ignore racism, sexism, homophobia, and ignorance in main-stream culture. YOU have the power to write about it, respond to it and do something about it at your fingertips.
Take a look at how Beau Sia, a poet in New York, has used the power of YouTube to get his response to a racist event in the media heard. This is the 18th most viewed video this week:
Mr. Sia clearly explains that it is not simply the racist comment that was offensive to so many of us, but mostly Rosie's ignorant and defensive response to her critics.
Beau Sia has taken it upon himself to start a dialogue with the YouTube community, (who is, let's face it, a lot of us: Beau's video currently has 332,892 views and about 4,500 comments), and with the popularity of the video, elicited this response from Rosie:
2 day i found
beau sia
poet
on you tube
with great delivery
wonderful editing
set in a school room
he spoke
an open letter to all the rosie o’donnells
“ching chong ching chong
is not an accent
it is a racist interpretation of a language
often associated with
being buried alive in a mine shaft”
“i would never make fun of who u r
and then make u feel wrong
for just trying to inform u
of y i shouldn’t say
whatever it is i am about to say
about plus sized lesbians”
“so listen 2 me
because i dont think ur evil
i dont care if ur mean”
“learn from this rosie
apologize darling
tap into the humanity
i know that u posses”
2 beau
an open response
to ur informative creative
and quite beautiful video
i apologize
for any and all pain
caused to any and all
by my comments
ignorance
lack of compassion - empathy
understanding
u r right
i didnt get it
i know
my intent
was not to harm
yet obviously i did
there ya have it
and beau
before u refrain from all observations
comments or comedy
in any context or capacity
about the queer community
in all it variations
arttst 2 artist beau
say whatever it is u need
i trust
after seeing u 4 all of 3 minutes -
ur soul is in the right place
ur aim is 2 enlighten
not debase
as is mine
peace out
rosie o’donnell - plus sized lesbian
And while Rosie could have taken a little more time to say, compose a more thoughtful letter or use a spellchecker, she obviously understood the gravity of her racist remark and defensive response to that remark, and apologized for it.
So, can we, as individuals that comprise this online community, take it upon ourselves to make it our RESPONSIBILITY and our priority to use the tools of modern communication be critical, analytical and to challenge the main-stream norm? Let's see to it that we all employ the resources available to us, as Beau Sia has done, in order to earn our Person of the Year title.
8 comments:
wow. someone sent me this url and wow. after a long weekend of being flooded with a whole range of comments about the piece, it is so touching to read something like this. something which took the care to probably watch my video more than once, which thought about where i'm coming from in what i said, and which thought about what to share with others in a public forum. i truly appreciate ya'll for using my work as merely an example for a much greater need and possibility. thank you for seeing that it is so much bigger than me, and this situation. that the reality of ethnic hatred in the world is deep, complex, and must be discussed openly, and not ignored.
be well.
love, beau sia
This is a great article, Ilana, and is a subject of much needed attention. With so much access to different forms of media, I'm glad that now it is much harder for figures to get away with this kind of racist crap that has slipped under the radar for so long. Bravo Beau Shia, and bravo Ilana.
Racist or just ignorant, Rosie was loud and offensive. It is time someone stood up to her in a way that is clearly uderstood. Thank you for raising the awareness of Beau Sia's words.
The world can be a small and wonderful place, but there is a lot of ignorance and misunderstanding because there has been too much emphesis on cultural differences being an excuse to avoid each other rather than an outreach for understanding.
In the interest of expanding when you can observe some cultures at their best, here's a short list of coming New Year's celebrations in a couple Asian cultures. Please check the dates, as this is a quick list that I did not vet prior to posting. These holidays are subject to a lunar Calendar, so change dates each year:
India "Diwali" or "Festival of Lights" symbolizing the triumph of good over evil on Nov. 9th, 2007
Chinese New Year a time to celebrate and a time of change Feb 7th, 2008
I believe this joke made by Rosie O'Donnell has been made into something it's not. By saying "Ching, chong, chang" or whatever she said, she was making a racial joke just like the thousands of other racial jokes we see on television everyday. Have you seen Chapelle's Show or Southpark? It's this excessive use of political correctness that makes people afraid to say anything about race, gender, sexual orientation without being called out. It's this sort of attitude that propogates censorship by organizations like the FCC. Beau Sia some how connects a joke about the Chinese language to people being buried alive? This is ridiculous. Ching chong chang.
Dear Anonymous. Point well taken. However I will take this issue on from the viewpoint of a woman who lives in a racially and ethnically diverse area which has elluded much of the anymosity between the groups as exists elsewhere.
Perhaps Rosie was just crude, insensitive and forgot her leadership responsibilities to the audience. Some things may go across okay in a small club setting- ABC daytime is hardly that. Or amongst friends: where the person's underlying goodwill is understood as teasing. However, Rosie is a public person who dishes it out without mercy who was on a mainstream media outlet. She went over-the-top. Before she is emulated- shouldn't she be subject to the same criticism and level of sensitivity as she gives others?
The world just might be a better place if some decorum were expected in the public forum. Sinking to the lowest common denominator hardly raises our level of humanity. Rosie had a right to say what she did: that being said, responsibility trumps rights. She did not meet minimum standards in meeting her responsibilities as an adult.
I must disagree Lydia, responsibility does not trump rights. If people were to stop watching the show because of her, then fine, she's off the air and we'll never have to hear anymore of these inhumane jokes again. But when we start holding television personalities to what we consider our own adult standards to make the world what we consider a better place then we have censorship. Bill Maher gets kicked off HBO for suggesting the idea the U.S. had 9/11 coming to it. CBS gets fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for accidentally exposing a nipple. What Rosie did is not hate speech. This isn't endorsing hate crimes on an ethnicity. This isn't even referencing people buried alive. This is a joke. Let your morals guide your television viewing, not mine.
-Birch (anonymous)
Dear Anonymous, Thank you for your thoughts. I would not dream of censoring your taste in television. Even if I were so predisposed, as a practical matter that is not possible in our modern world. My cable provider, on a moderate package, provides the choice of 250 stations at once. But what about the rights of a family to have a reasonable expectation of standards on one of the basic stations licensed for general viewership by all ages, races and religions during normal viewing hours? Don’t they have rights that are to be protected by the licensing agreements under which the major networks agree to operate in exchange for the right to compete to make a profit in the marketplace?
I don’t think anyone is accusing Ms. O’Donnell of hate speech or crimes in the sense that is legally actionable. To use your descriptive, what she said was inhumane. My mother would call it hateful. Any disagreement? She makes a very good living as a purveyor of thought. That makes her a professional, fully responsible for her words. When she does well, she reaps praise, as she should. This time however, the thought she purveyed is insidious. This time she didn’t take on a wealthy, powerful man, fully capable of defending himself. This time she took on a group in a manner demeaning enough that any second grader would know better than to think it would be funny. What she said was supremely arrogant, condescending and deserving of exactly what she is paid to comment for: to provide the basis for public discourse. Aren’t many of the best lessons in life are the ones hardest learned? It should be no different for her than it is for any of us.
FYI- Bill Maher is currently employed by HBO. His new show is very similar to the one from which he was fired, which aired on ABC, except the format is meant to be a bit more intellectual in its guest selection. What he was actually fired for was not suggesting that the US deserved 9/11 (which is comparable to blaming the victim). He was fired for comparing US Politicians with Al Qaida terrorists and then continuing, “We have been cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from …That’s cowardly…. Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it’s not cowardly.” The people who paid the bills, among them Fed Ex and Sears, exercised their rights in pulling their advertising dollars. The network exercised its rights not to carry a show that did not pay its own way.
The Super Bowl XXXVIII incident might also be seen from below the surface. Viacom owns both CBS and MTV, who were co-producers of the show. The NFL also has vested rights of refusal regarding programming, including the half time show and commercials. The actual fine (or whatever the legal term was) was the maximum allowable of $27,500 per incident of indecency, multiplied by the 20 stations CBS showed the program on. Not to discount that $550,000 is a lot of money, but it should also be seen in the perspective that commercials to that game were sold at the rate of $2,250,000 per 30 seconds.
Why was the fine sought? It might have been the record 500,000 complaints concerning violation of decency rules in place between 6 AM and 10 PM on the networks. That is the number of people who believed their rights of reasonable expectation were violated. They weren’t watching MTV- they were watching ABC. It might have been the fact that Viacom was building a history of not enforcing the regulations, both on the radio and television stations it owned. The fine might not have been sought for so much as the actual act, as to make certain the amount was high enough that the networks would find a way to police themselves in the future.That was their right.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Birch, your suggestion that dialog itself somehow promotes censorship is stunning.
That contradiction and a lot of things you bring up present too many problems to address here, but I will say that - go figure - I for one live in no fear of a world where people are afraid to make biggotted remarks on TV because it might hurt their Nielsens. Gee - a world where bigotry no longer sells. Hand me a Kleenex ®.
What you don't seem to get is that mass media has in reality, ALWAYS been more PC than PC could ever hope to be. They stick squarely to the very middle of the middle class ideological road. That's what sells. That's their only concern or "responsibility." We only call it PC when the suggestion to self-regulate leans anywhere just slightly left of center, but TV can be and is ruthlessly PC in its own sweet way. But that's not really a problem, it only becomes "PC" when it tries to move you a micrometer left of center.
In that "safe", tv-presentable, sellable canon of is a certain amount of cozy white supremacy that gets blasted at us like Big Macs day after freakin day. 10,000,000,000 served. *Everything* else gets censored out of it, including our *response* to the daily bread of white biggoted arrogant insult. But if you're white in this country - you have no experience nor motivation to understand what it means to be subordinated in any form - you're at the top of the racist food chain - there IS no belittling of, making fun of, dehumanizing of, over-generalizing-of, or lyching of, white people here. And yes, there IS a indispensable progression between insult and violence. People aren't randomly selected to be assasinated by color. There is a whole complex around a power-group posse deciding they're going to slaughter a person from a non-power-group. All these "jokes" that imply that everyone from a cultural group is "all the same" and "weird" and "impossible to understand" are a necessary medium to establish the dehumanization and hatred of that group and any individual in it. That and much more has to be set in place and in stone before anyone just decides to up and kill a darkie. Or do you think it's 100% natural still for a person to be killed simply because they are different? No, there are lots of social contradictions to it. And simple, safe, what's-the-big-deal, denegration is an indispensable process to overpower those contradictions. By the way, it doesn't *have to* result in murder or physical harm for it to be harmful, or for people to exercise their basic right to defend themselves from it. I'm touched by the generous suggestion that all of us who end up on the wrong end of these insults should put up and shut up. Don't count on it.
And *now* that we have the internet as a work-around, as an actual forum, you would tell us to shut up so that we don't jeopardize the selling and reselling of ideas that others find reprehensible but you don't? That effect the lives of others but not yours? Your big concern and complaint is that a new day is dawning where people have the audacity and the technology to decry on free air waves the assault that comes at them non-stop from commercial ones? That's just rich. Thanks for the advice. My advice to you is get used to it.
For the record, Birch, I personally don't want the FCC - AT ALL. I'd be perfectly happy to let *only* the market deicide what the sellers want to sell. But the reality is that is how it works anyway.
*You* - not we - are dancing in and around censorship without even knowing it, and *you* - YOU, - not we - are promoting censorship.
Beau, or Ilana or me or who the hell ever getting on YouTube to object to something that they think is harmful and noxious to innocent people is free SPEECH, DIALOG, DISSENT. And yes, we can only hope that that dialog will have an effect on the middle-of-the-road mindset, which will in turn affect what execs want to put on the air.
This land belongs to you and me, Birch. Out loud, and Proud.
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