I’m working under the assuming that “racism is not OK” is a given.
Paragraph might have been written better, but I’m not taking away from it that the author himself is racist.
I prefer the Ye Olde Englishe spelling: ‘queints’
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Wow, perfect example of shoddy journalism…
…from Boing Boing.
RTFA, dude.
My good friend Princess Sparkle Pony, who lives in DC, has a blog that deconstructs Cohen’s columns and illustrates them with some nicely-shooped images of Cohen. Check it out:
Princess Sparkle Pony’s Cohen articles
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Actually, just trying to make a point about the idiocy of the social construct known as “race”. In the final analysis, we’re ALL human, everything else is trivia.
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And I disagree, you’re wrong. End.
Wow, that’s easy! 
Incidentally you’re still missing my point. The paragraph you follow up with also adds nothing to the converstion.
Is your suggestion that his use of the word ‘conventional’ was both self-knowing, and ironic? Because I read the piece, get the tone - and that section still feels off.
I have no axe to grind, I hadn’t heard of this chap until today, and I also wouldn’t have posited that conservatives, as whole, find inter-racial marriage vomit inducing (they’re selfish arseholes across the board, but their bigotry does vary), - but that sentence, even as part of the whole, still has tell-tale signs of sympathising with a point - perhaps the one with reading comprehension issues is yourself? Cause it’s only one word that does it for me, and that’s ‘conventional’, I’ve explained why, and I see no counter argument.
Edit: After reading through some other comments, and visiting http://sparklepony.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Richard%20"Please%20Hit%20Me"%20Cohen mentioned by another poster - I’m now wondering if you’re mistaking satire for trolling? I could totally buy that he’s a troll.
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I trust some editors more than others. This is the first time I’ve noticed an article posted by Rob that I feel has been grossly misrepresented in the synopsis. The arguments that suggest Rob’s interpretation was correct - that despite what was actually written, Mr. Cohen surely meant it another way - seem pretty convoluted to me.
I trust the BoingBoing editors to display a certain amount of bias. Some more than others but as long as they’re reasonably consistent, I’ll continue reading.
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If you think that this was merely ironic or satirical criticism of conservative racism rather than mental-anal leakage of Cohen’s pseudo-liberal psyche, you are maybe a robot lost in imagined calculations.
It’s easy to impute or assign a viewpoint to one’s opposition, but Cohen’s rhetorical failure to do this very simple thing, over and over again, without gluing on these cringe-inducing sympathetic blurtings, is precisely the problem.
It’s a slip. Cohen’s blurtings are not coy inveiglings, subtly teasing out clever, winking parallels between convention and conservatism and the ever-evolving American mainstream.
They are David Brent, explaining how women should be not be rewarded for having nice tits, because they should be equal.
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Clearly you don’t know how satire works. Try reading “A Modest Proposal” by Jonathan Swift.
I have one child whois biracial and when there is cause to refer to his racial status, I call him biracial. Your personal preferences are just that: personal.
That does not follow logically from the points you have presented, in any way whatsoever.
To repeat: you clearly do not understand how satire works.
He may or may not be racist, but I don’t think this was the best example as he was pretty clearly describing the GOP base and doing so in a condescending way.
You (and a lot of other commenters here) seem to have missed the significance of the sentence immediately before the “People with conventional views must surpress a gag reflex” sentence. In that prior sentence, he says:
Today’s GOP is not racist, as Harry Belafonte alleged about the tea party, but it is deeply troubled — about the expansion of government, about immigration, about secularism, about the mainstreaming of what used to be the avant-garde.
The pretty clear implication here is that it’s not racism that would cause people with “conventional views” to gag, but some other aspect of their being “deeply troubled” by this modern world (maybe he thinks interracial marriage is “avant-garde”?)
Also, you said “I would have to read some of his other columns before casting a judgement on his personal opinions”, so you might check out this column. In that piece he tries to address the Martin/Zimmerman case with a “reasonable”, “both sides have their points” type opinion by saying that while he hates that Martin was killed, “I also can understand why Zimmerman was suspicious and why he thought Martin was wearing a uniform we all recognize”, and that as a result he is “tired of politicians and others who have donned hoodies in solidarity with Martin”. Basically he seems to condemning a protest whose point was that young black men shouldn’t be murdered or assumed to be criminals if they wear hoodies, because…? Something something “urban crime” and sweatshirts with hoods being “uniforms”? (But only when worn by black men, I’m sure.) It basically seems like a long, incoherent rationalization for his own feelings of nervousness around black men who adopt this fashion.
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Will put into regular use!
By name, by nature, eh?
Satire does not “work”. It amuses. If this article is satire, I’m a monkey dressed as George Washington dancing the Polka.
My personal preferences are indeed deeply personal. I would never seek to define, orient, pattern or corral my child’s development or existence in terms of their race. Why do that? Why use a word that brings their genetic heritage to prominence? How about - what a smart kid, they’re so smart and I’m so proud of them.
Tell you what - given that I expressed my personal preference, and given that you acknowledged that personal preferences are indeed personal, how about you live and let live. At a minimum. Did I attempt to dictate to you, personally, how to refer to your children? No.
And why do you keep talking about satire, repetitively? Are you saying the article is satirical? I’m used to satirists winking and nudging that they’re being satirical.
And everything I say, ever, is logical. Totally.
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I read it three times, he says it parenthetically, trying to create a character profile for the “conventional” conservative voter. It’s bad writing though, because he doesn’t explicitly 'people with conventional views [in the GOP], and for the fact that he is generalizing about a group that I have found as varied in their views on social issues as any Democrat, Socialist or Anarchist.
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Oh, it is interracial, as long as people believe that there is such a thing as “race”.
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the real irony (or tragedy really) is that someone called Cohen didn’t realize how bad slavery was until he saw McQueen’s 12 Years A Slave.
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You’re not really making one, that’s the problem. Or rather, you’re (sort of) making one based on your horrible reading comprehension. Something is off. Would be best to just keep quiet, you sound ridiculous.
From that wikipedia article: “Scientists consider biological essentialism obsolete,[5] and generally discourage racial explanations for collective differentiation in both physical and behavioral traits”
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The problem with race isn’t that it exists, it’s that it matters. Of course it bloody exists.
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Which is awesome!
What’s your point?
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“He doesn’t say that it’s the view of someone with a conservative mindset, but that of someone with a ‘conventional’ mindset.”.
What was that about reading comprehension?
(Also, just a tip, no need to be an asshole, we’re not enemies… the only one who sounds ridiculous is yourself.)
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