Thursday, December 6, 2012

I'm Not Uptight About Political Correctness

I've identified myself on this blog by many labels: poor, white, feminist, democrat, liberal, childfree, bipolar. But you know what? In no way am I politically correct. I say "retarded" all the time. I say ageist things, sexist things. I laugh at fart jokes. I laugh at racial joke. I say "black" instead of "African American" because that's just too many syllables and I'm lazy.

A lot of people will say "if you laugh at [x] joke then you don't really hold [x] values." I don't think that's true at all. I can still be a feminist and made crude abortion jokes about pushing/being pushed down some stairs (always with a Southern drawl). I can be horrified by sweat shop conditions in Asia and still think this is funny:

Why is this the only clip I can find? This isn't nearly as funny.

We live in such an over-sensitive society where we're so afraid to offend everyone that we keep everything as G-rated and Clorox clean as possible. I was thinking about this last night on my drive home, after watching The Soup and Tosh.0 with John, and the drag queen Manila Luzon came to mind. In her season of Ru Paul's Drag Race, she came under fire for perpetuating Asian stereotypes twice in her portrayal of Imelda Marcos and an Asian reporter (the Marcos impression was hilarious, by the way. Full episode here.). When asked about the backlash, Luzon said "The feedback I’ve gotten from other Asians don’t really think it’s offensive and honestly I didn’t think it was either."

People, we need to laugh, and if we can't laugh at ourselves and each other, what else is there? I'm not saying be mean about it, just have fun for Christ sake. I make fun of my own heritage and hobbies all the time. Take for example this weekend,  John and I are going to set up our  laptops at his house and pretty much give ourselves tendonitis from playing DC Universe Online all weekend. I made a crack that I planned to be in a cheeto-stained wife-beater with Mountain Dew and a new beard. "Wait, what, a beard?" he said. "Well I am French." I replied, taking another bite of my soup. There. Harmless fun. 

So relax, people, and enjoy this cartoon Asian thing not being able to say R and L properly:


No comments:

Post a Comment