The New York Times solicits eight opinions on the burning issue of the day "Whitewashing on the Small Screen." You see, HBO's new non-hit sit-com "Girls" has four white actresses playing the four titular girls.
But, where is the diversity among the debating diversitoids? I see five blacks, two Jewish women, and, mirabile dictu, one Asian dude. But why is the vibrant 50,000,000+ Hispanic Latino/Latina community flagrantly excluded from the debate? It's almost as if nobody particularly cares about them. The New York Times should have a debate over the lack of diversity in this debate. I see the opportunity for an infinite regress coming on.
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74 comments:
Where's the diversity of opinion? Every one of them said practically the same thing, that it would have been better if one of the leads of this show was a 'woman of color'. I can't believe that the NYT, with its copious resources, couldn't find one person in this country of 300 million to state the obvious, that this is a stupid nonissue created by people with no useful work to do and a media with nothing interesting to report.
What is this 'x of color' thing? Do they mean black? I vote for an all-pygmy cast for the next HBO show.
I like how these eight are called the "debaters" by NYT. They all expressed an identical PC line, debating exactly nothing.
White gentile?
" They all expressed an identical PC line,"
One did not - JL Cauvin. He correctly notes that people self segregate as adults.
Were the same kind of complaints made about popular shows in the past like Sex in the City, Friends and Seinfeld? I did not hear similar complaints at the time but I did not read sites like this back then.
This is so Pravda...
If the New York Times were a poker dealer, a long time ago it'd have been shot dead for stacking the deck.
Thou spleeny folly-fallen moldwarp!
Idiotic bullshit. I presume these people have some intelligence (altough I've met some pretty smart stupid people). And this is how they spend their time. This is what they worry about. That's 'Citizenism' in America today.
I have an idea: they should develop their own program, making it as diverse as they want, and then go sell it to HBO. Or whoever.
Mr Sailer,
I think you should move on now as well.
Hispanics aren't included in the discussion because apparently they are a dissenting voice in favor of whitewashing the small screen. On Univision's most popular telenovelas, all the women are busty, leggy, and super European looking. Mexican and Colombian girls just don't fantasize about being Ugly Betty.
"Were the same kind of complaints made about popular shows in the past like Sex in the City, Friends and Seinfeld?"
If they were, there was no brouhaha about it. This shows the advancement of p.c. in the last few years. It also seems to be a case of hipster-on-hipster verbal violence.
Maybe someone at the NY Times should notice that the number one movie this week is "Think Like a Man." Judging from the pictures of the case at http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1621045/
one has to look past 17 faces until one sees a white, female face.
If Tyler Perry can ignore whites, then why can't whites in elite, hipster NYC ignore blacks? Do all movies need to look like an advertisement for TGIF or Chilis?
Eric Alterman spoke at the Local Lefty Bookstore last night. Take-aways:
1) Liberalism has acquired a bad name over the last 40 years because of Rush Limbaugh, funders like the Koch brothers and liberal reluctance to proudly bear the liberal name. We may need a constitutional amendment to remedy the second problem.
2) Conservative talk radio is more powerful than the much bigger liberal media because liberal media always want to present the opposite views.
3) Liberalism is the only sensible way to govern a modern country.
And this is their Stanford-PhD intellectual.
reminds of CNN's "Next up wolf blitzer discusses the iran crisis with Will Kristol and Thomas Friedman.. do we bomb iran now or wait til next week"
"Children and fools tell the truth."
Comedians are the only ones allowed to speak the truth today. I was only going to say black comedians, but with the Corollas, Nortons, Toshes & DiPaulos out there, we are making some headway. I disagree with the above comment that says Steve should move on. We are going to reach a tipping point on this soon. Best to document it and keep the heat up on the DWLs that are attempting to squelch the debate.
I would suggest that everyone leaving comments here also leave similar ones at the NY Times site. Not for the benefit of their editors, but because more naive/younger readers do need to know there's a legitimate opposition to such stupidity. It's a very low-cost way of getting our own side of the cultural argument across.
And the funnier/snarkier, the better.
Possibly relevant:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/our-white-people-problems-problem-why-its-time-to,72974/
(Full title: "Our 'white people problems' problem: Why it’s time to stop using “white” as a pejorative")
swpl creativity. gotta give credit where it's due.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/the-most-dangerous-gamer/8928/
http://youtu.be/X6hm5Y5Pzag
http://youtu.be/wVDoNF0Z_Go
If Brooklyn is only one third white then isn't an all-white tv show set in Brooklyn celebrating one of the borough's cherished minority groups and therefore its rich cultural diversity and vibrancy?
Or doesn't it work like that?
>Do all movies need to look like an advertisement for TGIF or Chilis?<
The Scots-Irish, if they are pushy about nothing else, are very pushy in late years about loading every movie with blacks. I personally was involved in a low-budget film in which the producer and his coethnic friend the cameraman were obnoxious in their demands. The film had nothing to do with blacks and was already cast; the demands were to "lose the whitebread," i.e., fire any of the white actors and replace them. ("Whitebread" was of course said with spitting contempt by people who themselves were extraordinarily pasty.)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/04/120425140457.htm
Shedding Light On Southpaws: Sports Data Help Confirm Theory Explaining Left-Handed Minority in General Population
NY TIMES finds yet more urgent social problem.
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/25/should-your-dog-be-watching-tv/
I must ask, should weasels and
skunks be writing for a newspaper?
As a New Yorker, Half Sigma adds some personal observations on the HBO/NYT diversity rracism crisis.
--- begin excerpt ---
[Girls] is about SWPLs living in Greenpoint, so they wouldn’t be SWPLs if they weren’t white. Anyway, it’s pretty realistic that an apartment in Greenpoint shared by twenty-somethings would be all-white. Greenpoint is very strictly divided into three categories of residents: working-class Polish people who are white, poor Hispanic people living in rent-controlled units in multi-family houses that the Polish owners can’t kick out because of the rent control laws (the Polish owners would prefer to rent to SWPLs), and SWPLs who fall into two distinct sub-categories: white hipsters, and white professionals. Greenpoint doesn’t attract Asian professionals who prefer Long Island City. There is probably one black Oreo type living somewhere in Greepoint.
--- end excerpt ---
Off-topic, but fodder for Steve's next column perhaps: "Are Republicans Genetically Inferior".
Silly Steve, only "diverse" people and their very special friends like Morris Dees can say how much "diversity" is enough!
I like how you used the word "titular".
Excellent point about how no one watches this show, only Media elites do.
here's something to ponder: why are girl-centric shows so..... narcissistic, they're always about 'girls.' and 'girly' stuf....
To all those who love their own kind:Throw your tv in the trash and go out and do some volunteer work to help your own kind.
I got rid of my tv back in the early 90's and stopped going to the movies.It's all "divide and conquer" bullsh*t.
We're being used as pawns- especially whites and blacks.Don't let hollywood drive you crazy. Joe
I love how these NY Times insta-colloquia throw together some random professional nobodies who all happen to express the CW fluently, except with an exception to fortify the rule, the single male comic they polled (hard to find those in NYC) who interestingly is also an ex-lawyer as was the late Greg Giraldo of HLS pedigree
I never pay attention to the Times anymore or Time or Newsweek, or any of them. But it's clear from looking at this blurb that the issues here aren't even about ideology. People are just spouting platitudes they picked up in school.
I like how these eight are called the "debaters" by NYT. They all expressed an identical PC line, debating exactly nothing.
The NYTimes should have a new point-counterpoint column: Anyone vs. Derb: any journalist or pundit can write about a subject and then Derbyshire gets to respond. Wouldn't that be fun?
Controversy: It does keep a lot of people employed doing seemingly nothing
These people are probably upset that I hardly ever hire black hookers, only white, latina, and filipina.
maria ortiz at foxnews.com points out there are no "hispanics" likely to be selected in the NFL draft today, and calls for an official reckoning by the NFL over this astonishing oversight. 45 million "hispanics" in the US now and the NFL less than 1% "hispanic"? lawsuit time.
http://tinyurl.com/bvj49tv
similar lawsuit coming up by asians, indians, muslims, jews, and all other groups who are underrepresented on the field by orders of magnitude?
I used to feel inadequate as a man because I didn't like sports, but now I know that women have something equally stupid to follow.
Anything having to do with HBO in the last dozen years has a real tree-falls-in-the-woods quality for me. Time for an update of CP Snow's "The Two Cultures"
"Comedians are the only ones allowed to speak the truth today."
euro american comedians, and, surprising, jewish comedians, have not been allowed to express freely in their material, since the late 70s to early 80s. i don't think occassional outbursts or momentarily slipping a few comments past the watchful eyes of the culture warriors, really counts as telling the truth.
all other comedians are allowed to say whatever they want, which leads them to use race for about 50% of their material, because it's easy, funny when it's novel, and virtually unexploited by the european and jewish guys, since they aren't allowed to touch it.
however, this leads to eventual stagnation, as the novelty of "And white people are like this..." humor wears off, and the vibrant comedians begin to rely on race humor as a crutch. they never develop the other methods and techniques of comedy and humor. this exposes them as more limited than the european and jewish guys, who are forced to be much more creative, witty, and exploratory in their humor, since race as a topic is off limits for them.
this, in part, is what has lead to the declince of the african comedian in the US. with respect to the stage and screen. they were never a major part of comedy writing or production teams in general, and few were writing movies and shows, even during the couple decades in which plenty of african actors and stand up comedians were putting out quality, very funny work.
tyler perry has taken this to the extreme, whereby he writes exclusively for an african audience, and owns everything he produces. this is a very smart move, and has made him a hundred million dollars easily - but at the price of a limited audience. nothing he writes has widespread appeal, but then again, a key tenet in comedy is to know your audience, and he has nailed it.
How do you know that Seltzer and Silverstein are Jewish? ;-)
Mercer,
Seinfeld got some flack for the lack of black characters. Then they did an episode where George got defensive about not having black friends.
No idea about Friends or SITC.
PORNITANICAL OVER PURITANICAL. The New USA.
What about "Economic Girly Men"?
I am so glad I don't watch this show.
Hard for me to muster interest in this type of piece but there was at least one consolation. Like most here (I'd presume), I do prefer girls (not only in "Girls") to be tit-ular. Mo' titular, mo' bettah!
I just posted the following at the NY Times article:
Funny that we spend time debating the proper and realistic portrayal of races in a fictional television show. I'd settle for a proper and realistic portrayal of races in the news.
And they didn't delete it! Not yet anyway. Somebody will probably hit the "flag" button any second now.
Then again, most of the people reading it probably don't get it. They're probably thinking, "yes why does the news always portray black people in such a terrible light?" I'll probably get a flood of "recommends."
So, let me get this straight. There aren't enough female Hitlers on Wiki and not enough black skanks in TV sitcoms.
The interesting dynamic here isn't white vs non-white but SWPL vs POC.
I know there was Jackie Chiles, a memorable (if not quite commemorative) black character
Where be all the hispanic rappers in rap? Where be all the Mexican men in porn? Browns must rise up!!
The only black character I recall on "Friends" was played by Aisha Tyler (and only because I liked her show on E at the time and also that the rest of the cast sort of blended together in my mind). N.B. she is the child of Dartmouth faculty. Mr. Cauvin in the Times is right, if you just slap together a "diverse" show that's a statistical certainty to be a crowd-displeaser. The practical effect of representation regulation is not much of an improvement over a Wahhabi-style flat-out ban on all of it so we are headed there for sure; dust off yer "Canticle for Leibowitz"
"Are There Racists Living in Skokie?"
All those elderly Asians, Middle Easterners and Easter Europeans couldn't possibly be racist! The only reason they dislike Obama so much is that "he doesn't know his place" and that "if he wants to be president he should go to Nigeria".
Volunteering with ESL for Seniors at Skokie Public Library is always a fun experience.
Wasn't a group of women going through a sea of sex partners the whole plot of Sex and the City?
Were the sex partners diverse?
I watched Xena the Warrior Princess at the time, and I can report that Xena had herself, 2 white guys, one black (her true love), one Hispanic (who was portraying Ares, the god of war) and 2 lesbian experiences. Very progressive.
people self segregate as adults.
As a b-ball game was getting underway in Berkeley, a 6'5" black guy known as "Premo" called out, "white guys guard white guys." I guess he didn't want any of that characteristically bad smell on him. His CD was selling in the discount bin at Leopold's for ten cents.
When you order a season of a show by a tedious, sheltered solipsist what do you expect? At least David Simon had his weekly crime scene visit. This is essentially art as created by people lacking life experience. Maybe if you're a super-bright phenom like Jane Austen you'll be able to transcend a cloistered upbringing but ANY 21st century cable dramedy is unlikely to amount to more than postmodern background noise at best.
The late Kevin Smith who played Ares on both Xena and Hercules was of mixed White and Fijian ancestry.
As for TV, NBC diversified up a few years ago ("Undercovers," "the Event") in response to Maxine Waters race-baiting on the issue of not enough Black leads. The shows were ratings losers and soon canceled.
"Lose the Whitebread" is the cry of the day because the mostly female audience demands it on TV (and increasingly in chick-flick movies, see "the Help.") Meanwhile Tyler Perry makes hundreds of millions, but has to resort to well, not paying his workers to do so. That's Olympus Camera level accounting problems, indicative of deeper losses hiding on the balance sheet.
Only McDonalds and Nike make much if any money off Blacks and Hispanics, the lack of disposable income being a barrier to making money off those demos. WB and UPN tried various Black-coms, some bad and some worse ("Homeboys in Outer Space," "Secret Diary of Desmond Pffeifer," "Moesha" come to mind as the worst.)
The TV audience is overwhelming White female, and the demo that pays off is White female 18-34. THAT is the holy grail. Guess what, these people want to see idealized versions of themselves. All those "girls behaving badly" shows have the same all White casts: Chelsea, Whitney, GCB, Don't Trust the B--- in Apt. 23, etc. Why? Because they are made to appeal to the audience.
Older female skewing soap operas like Desperate Housewives and such will have some non-Whites in non-lead roles, Shonda Rimes rules that stuff (Grey's Anatomy, Private Practice, her latest I can't recall the name of the show). But the golden demo of Female 18-34 wants mostly to see itself.
"All those elderly Asians, Middle Easterners and Easter Europeans couldn't possibly be racist! The only reason they dislike Obama so much is that "he doesn't know his place" and that "if he wants to be president he should go to Nigeria".
Volunteering with ESL for Seniors at Skokie Public Library is always a fun experience."
That's pretty funny. I'm Skokie born and bred. Interesting that Steve would have multiple readers from that famously Jewish suburb. Thanks for reminding me of that fine public library.
"The Christian Right and neocon Zionists have one thing in common. Neocon Zionists side with the Christian Right because it's good for the Jews. Christian Right sides with neocon Zionists because it's good for the Jews."
This is a very incisive comment on the "Girls" controversy.
"That's pretty funny. I'm Skokie born and bred. Interesting that Steve would have multiple readers from that famously Jewish suburb. Thanks for reminding me of that fine public library."
We grew up in a fine little town, didn't we? I'm sure that the 3 of us running into each other on this blog is just an accident. But... I don't know when you attended school there, but in my time it was all about our strength in diversity. We rolled our eyes at it because it sounded so cheesy, but our diverse student body got along great. Most of the cliques were multicultural and interracial. Plus, we had all those restaurants and specialty stores. I think most kids who grew up in Skokie at that time became very liberal, open minded and true believers that everyone can get along regardless of background.
However, NOW, after the projects in Chicago were demolished, we get to see yet another wave of new comers. I don't know what it looked like to the old time residents when my wave (it was a big year for Bulgarians, Russians and Koreans) flooded the place. Maybe they were distraught as well. As for me and my peers, we feel upset over our schools dropping in performance every year and crime becoming commonplace in our old neighborhoods. Perhaps a lot of people who grew up in Skokie and the adjacent towns feel saddened, confused and search for answers online where they stumble upon Steve's blog.
Maya, I grew up in the Seventies and Eighties. My first interracial friendship was with a Korean kid who moved onto my block when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade. His family seems to have been part of an early wave of newcomers in the Seventies. My other childhood best friends were an Irish-American, a German-American and a Polish-American (some istevers seem to think this is impossible for a Jewish kid growing up in a Jewish neighborhood, but it is so). Later, my junior high and high school (Niles North) had a fair amount of Asians of different kinds. The student body was fairly diverse, although there were very few NAMs or Muslims at that time, but we weren't subjected to much "diversity" indoctrination, which suggests that perhaps you are younger than me and came of age after p.c. had set in.
Yeah, every once in a while you'll find a "white" show with out a black person in a prominent role- at least there is some reality to this, as whites make up the majority of the population esp. among professional groups, etc. Where is the hand-wringing when a "black" show has their cast as all-black, esp. given that the blacks are a small portion of the population and 2) that we hear endlessly about whites discriminating against others by black leaders, so the black industry must be exhibiting a stellar display of the right way to do it? In fact, Martin Lawrence, representing an all-too-typical response, actually bragged on one of the late night shows some time back, that he was getting an all black crew to work on one of his upcoming productions that he was hawking at the late show. Martin's show some time ago was particularly illuminating- a number of his satirical characters were him in "whiteface, and not only that, these whites acted like grossly foolish stereotypes. Many black comedians- Murphy, Lawrence, Chappelle, just to name a few, have done this yet you never hear a word in complaint about it in the MSM. This NYT nonsense is just another elite leftist attempt to distort the truth to fit their narrative of what is going on.
As a Half-Eskimo Half- Andamanese Negrito, I too feel slighted as does my Kazakh-Cherokee wife!
>Throw your tv in the trash.[...] It's all "divide and conquer" bullsh*t.<
The latest meme, starting with "Gran Torino," is that whites shouldn't leave any money to their kids. White kids are worthless; money should go only to the most meritorious, which means Tyrone or a home for abused horses; in any case, willing money to your kids only harms them. If you are moral, you won't do it. Thus speaks the meme. It's everywhere if you keep your eyes peeled.
Whatever annoyances one has about one's children (assuming they are more or less law-abiding), family legacies are the bedrock of multi-generational success - and you can bet that at least one minority group doesn't buy any part of the anti-legacy idea.
White familes should be broken up in any way, by any angle - from porn to impoverishment. It's moral, and it's good for society. That is the overwhelming thrust of the manure your TV emits. Junk it.
"Maybe if you're a super-bright phenom like Jane Austen you'll be able to transcend a cloistered upbringing but ANY 21st century cable dramedy is unlikely to amount to more than postmodern background noise at best."
By the standards of her day, Jane Austen wasn't cloistered. The Bronte sisters were through much of their lives, but not Austen.
She was one of 7 children. She and her sister did not marry, but she had brothers to whom she was close--always a social education, to be close to a sibling of the opposite sex. You also meet more people of the opposite sex through them. It's probably the best way to get to know, lacking the miasma of sex, how it is to live with a spouse once the initial infatuation has played out. It's too bad this awareness was never featured much in her novels, which all dealt with the preliminaries of marriage, and left their protagonists still in the vestibule of that institution.
She was as "out there" as an unmarried, respectable, vicar's daughter could be. She went to dances as often as she was invited in her younger days, and lived along side the families of two brothers, each family numbering 11 children eventually. She saw plenty. She spent time in fashionable resort areas like Bath, and was a matchless observer of a certain type of humanity.
One of the most remarkable things about her was lack of any apparent resentment or sense of loss. She'd never be Blanch DuBois, that's for sure. Too much else in life, Sagittarian that she was. (Sorry fo the astrological reference; just a joke.)
"here's something to ponder: why are girl-centric shows so..... narcissistic, they're always about 'girls.' and 'girly' stuf....
Yeah. It's a trip alright. I don't know why football games and hocky matches are so male-centric. It's all about flipping off the wife and getting with the guys so you only have to be other guys. I can't figure it out why they'd want to do that.
And porn? I just can't get any satisfaction. They just pander to men and pay the girls more than than the guy so she'll forget any narcissistic self-respect, common sense, and hygiene, she may have acquired and behave like an anatomically correct blow-up float.
Narcissism. Pot calling the kettle black, chum.
Did I say "blac?" oops. My bad pc.
She was as "out there" as an unmarried, respectable, vicar's daughter could be. She went to dances as often as she was invited in her younger days, and lived along side the families of two brothers, each family numbering 11 children eventually. She saw plenty. She spent time in fashionable resort areas like Bath, and was a matchless observer of a certain type of humanity.
One of the most remarkable things about her was lack of any apparent resentment or sense of loss. She'd never be Blanch DuBois, that's for sure. Too much else in life, Sagittarian that she was. (Sorry fo the astrological reference; just a joke.)
Not only that, but she was well-read on military matters, fascinated with the Navy, and had two brothers who reached flag rank who corresponded with her relentlessly. She could have been the Patrick O'Brian of her day--had she felt like she had something to say via a sea novel.
"here's something to ponder: why are girl-centric shows so..... narcissistic, they're always about 'girls.' and 'girly' stuf.... "
Of course we can spin it the other way.
Why are girl-centric shows so independent of male themes, and without men being roped in unlike good-looking women that grace the cheerleading squads or as reporters in football games?
How is that women can be independent of men when they want to, yet men are not capable of the same?
A simple application of the womb envy and birth power resentment follows, and kapow!
GIRLPOWER!
"The latest meme, starting with "Gran Torino," is that whites shouldn't leave any money to their kids. White kids are worthless; money should go only to the most meritorious, which means Tyrone or a home for abused horses; in any case, willing money to your kids only harms them. If you are moral, you won't do it. Thus speaks the meme. It's everywhere if you keep your eyes peeled."
How do you know he didn't leave his kids any money? (Besides, he didn't have much to leave.) All he left the Lao boy was his car, but it was for emotional reasons. One thing the movie got right is that whites who earned their money and moved to safe areas don't give a shit about poor blacks. Eastwood's kids are so much like white liberals who move to their safe zones and don't give a shit about what be happening to po' whites stuck in the pits.
The latest meme, starting with "Gran Torino," is that whites shouldn't leave any money to their kids.
That's not a new idea; it's been around the Baby Boomer consciousness since 1990 or so.
White kids are worthless; money should go only to the most meritorious, which means Tyrone or a home for abused horses;
Or any sort of preferential treatment for the mentally handicapped ... that's one huge gold star for the Boomers. They never have the same sympathy for people in wheelchairs.
in any case, willing money to your kids only harms them.
Says the generation with no qualms about accepting anything from their parents or other elders....
Well, I managed to track down the answer to the question no one else is even asking: Is Lena Dunham related to Barack Obama?
No, at least not through their respective Dunhams. Lena's father is the artist Carroll Dunham V, who descends from a genuine Dunham family. Stanley Anne's family came over as Singletarys, which the craziest son changed to Dunham. Sen. Brown of Mass. descends from a saner Singletary brother.
Lena's mother is apparently Jewish, for what it's worth. No full-blooded Yankee girl would ever go naked on TV, or anywhere else for that matter. And no Yankee boy has ever become a rock star.
Whit Stillman's favorite actor was the main character's boss, and an asian girl with photoshop skills was the biggest diversity in the show. Except for the scots-irish, of course.
[Girls] is about SWPLs living in Greenpoint, so they wouldn’t be SWPLs if they weren’t white. Anyway, it’s pretty realistic that an apartment in Greenpoint shared by twenty-somethings would be all-white. Greenpoint is very strictly divided into three categories of residents: working-class Polish people who are white, poor Hispanic people living in rent-controlled units in multi-family houses that the Polish owners can’t kick out because of the rent control laws (the Polish owners would prefer to rent to SWPLs), and SWPLs who fall into two distinct sub-categories: white hipsters, and white professionals. Greenpoint doesn’t attract Asian professionals who prefer Long Island City. There is probably one black Oreo type living somewhere in Greepoint.
I know Greenpoint well and this is spot on. Those critics are protesting because the show is true to life. They want it to represent reality less accurately.
So is Obama related to Mike Singletary? That'd be, well, it'd be worth a blurb in U.S. News & World Report I'd hope.
Charlotte - Im sure that original why do girly shows have to be so girly you responded to was ironic.
Anonymous said...
"Charlotte - Im sure that original why do girly shows have to be so girly you responded to was ironic."
Oh. Ok then. Never mind.
No full-blooded Yankee girl would ever go naked on TV, or anywhere else for that matter. And no Yankee boy has ever become a rock star.
Self described "Aryan from Darien" Chloe Sevigny did a lot more than that. Google "The Brown Bunny".
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