May 21, 2012

Inherent Cracks in the Obama Coalition

The New York Times has finally picked up on that funny story I noticed last month ("George Lucas to show Marin dark side of the Force") about how Mr. Star Wars' neighbors in Marin County, where John McCain got only 20% of the vote in 2008, won't let Lucas build a film studio on a fraction of the eight or so square miles he owns in Marin, so he's decided to erect "low-income housing" there instead. The problem is that Marin is so exquisitely rich, liberal, and environmentally sensitive that you can qualify as low income there while making $88,000 per year, so George probably won't get away with erecting Hunter's Point North as his vengeance. The development will likely wind up being restricted to, say, widowed Marin school teachers or something similarly nonvibrant. 

On the other hand, George might have some domestic motivation to go all the way in trying to bring diversity to Marin. His girlfriend is Mellody Hobson. She is president of Ariel Investments, the money management firm founded by John W. Rogers Jr., former Princeton basketball teammate of and then employer of Craig Robinson, the brother-in-law of Barack Obama, whose Administration has been giving Marin County the evil eye legally for not being diverse enough. 

This little tiff in Marin reminds me that keeping Obama's Coalition of the Diverse together is going to be a full time job, requiring nonstop demonization of the Nondiverse as being divisive in order to distract attention from inevitable internal divisions among the Diverse.

By the way, John W. Rogers was a childhood friend of Obama's Education Secretary Arne Duncan. A reader explains:
Okay, I think I see what's going on: George Lucas is enabling Arne Duncan to create a network of militarized charter schools to raise a Clone Army of people dumb enough to want to watch George's movies.

By the byway, in this photo, Spike Lee's wife appears adorably nerdetteish. She looks as if she were genuinely thrilled to meet her childhood hero George Lucas.

61 comments:

  1. Section 8 in a rich neighbohood?

    The best thing he made in years.

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  2. Why is it not surprising that Spike Lee's "Black" wife is so much lighter skinned than George Lucas's very dark-complected spouse?

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  3. In this picture, Spike Lee's wife looks like a really cute nerdette. She appears very happy to meet her childhood hero George Lucas.

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  4. Talking about cracks in the coalition. What about the mayor of Newark NJ speaking his mind yesterday. Corey Booker could be trouble nationally if he wins statewide office. Both his parents are black but he looks whiter than obama

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  5. Harry Baldwin5/21/12, 7:00 PM

    Haven't they come up with breast implants that aren't completely obvious? If so, you think someone with Mellody Hobson's money could afford them.

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  6. Oh, I think our public schools are already doing a fine job of raising a clone army of people dumb enough to want to watch George's movies.

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  7. I think Obama is going to lose enough white people so that Romney wins. Romney is not popular, but neither was Nixon in 1968.

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  8. last thing upper class blacks want around is lower class blacks. So i doubt section 8 housing will be built.

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  9. Uh oh.

    If you think it might be stressful entering into a serious relationship with the billionaire founder of one of the world’s biggest Internet companies, you are not alone. Apparently, Chan was so concerned about it that before she agreed to move to Palo Atlo to be with Zuckerberg, she held a series of negotiations and wrote strict rules into a contract for Zuckerberg to sign. Most of the contract’s details are secret, but one of the items did leak. The contract stated, “One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.”

    Will Mark Z be happy in the future? Magic 8 Ball sez.... outlook not so good.

    Source for quote: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/05/21/who-is-priscilla-chan-new-wife-of-facebook-founder-mark-zuckerberg.html

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  10. Ever since Jar Jar was criticized as being racist, George Lucas has been quite obsessed with proving to the world how "super not racist" he is.

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  11. a Newsreader5/21/12, 8:00 PM

    Lucas may be a terrible screenwriter, but always had an eye for talent.

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  12. i have a better idea. build the housing complex ON skywalker ranch.

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  13. Hmm ... so that explains Lucas's movie "Red Tails."

    Just like the Gates Foundation prohibition against scholarships for White kids probably reflects Gates keeping his harpy of a wife happy (White professional women HATE HATE HATE Beta White males) than anything else. Bill Gates before he got married hardly seemed to care about anything but money and software dominance (the two btw were always at odds)*

    *Gates software dominance ran straight up against his desire to be as cheap as possible in labor costs -- he seemed to resent unlike Zuckerberg his sharing IPO riches with co-investors and key people. Thus MicroSoft particularly after he was forced to expense share options (and the stock went under the option strike price) went ultra-cheap: H1Bs galore, turning much of MicroSoft into indentured servitude land, with project managers hiring guys they knew back in the neighborhood in India, or China.

    Result: MicroSoft's failure to utterly dominate, and lack of execution in the X-Box arena, and particularly Smart Phones (a miserable failure) was a direct result of Gates "cheap at all costs" instinct coming up against his desire to dominate.

    By contrast, Steve Jobs didn't care about either, merely being cutting-edge constantly, figuring that was where the growth and ultimate profits were. Neither Gates nor Jobs are my cup of tea, but of the two Jobs was far more visionary, Gates seemed to think he could be Standard Oil forever. Forgetting the anti-trust lesson of John D. Rockefeller.

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  14. Mellody is a female android made of silicon.

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  15. I first read the title as "Inherent Quacks in the Obama Coalition," to which I replied: "Duh."

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  16. the roger ebert complex.

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  17. Spike is actually a good guy and a good sport. I've weirdly run into him a couple of times in sports-regalia retail locations--Yankees Clubhouse on E. 59th or wherever it is, and just the other day when he was buying stuff at the end of a Rangers playoff game at Madison Square Garden. In that case some Long-Islandish white ethnic knucklehead had him in a seemingly mock-chokehold, proclaiming to the exiting hockey faithful that "He's actually really a *Rangers* fan!!!"

    Everyone was laughing, including Spike. Although now that I think of it, he may not have had much choice in the matter...

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  18. Joe Six-Pack5/21/12, 8:47 PM

    "Ever since Jar Jar was criticized as being racist, George Lucas has been quite obsessed with proving to the world how "super not racist" he is."

    GWB said that the worst thing about his Presidency was being called a racist by Kanye West.

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  19. dumb enough to want to watch

    Who's this Spike Lee guy? Oh, right -- he's the jerk who tweeted the wrong address of George Zimmerman. That was his thoughtful contribution.

    For the record, I think you have to be even 'dumber' to watch Spike Lee's movies. Which I've heard he makes.

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  20. http://youtu.be/y_kKWGVvCPw

    obamateur

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  21. Spike Lee is pretty much a black nerdette's dream, I think. Smart, black, and artsy.

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  22. Obama is going to need crackers to be reelected...

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  23. she held a series of negotiations and wrote strict rules into a contract for Zuckerberg to sign. Most of the contract’s details are secret, but one of the items did leak. The contract stated, “One date per week, a minimum of a hundred minutes of alone time, not in his apartment and definitely not at Facebook.”

    Oh, dear! If that's the life rich people have, I most decidedly don't want to be rich. Any man signing anything like this has got to have zero self-respect.

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  24. I can't believe Lucas is shorter than Spike.

    I can't believe Lucas's hairline hasn't budged while everything else has gone pear-shaped.

    I can't believe Lucas has been bowling the same gutter balls since 1981.

    That he couldn't move on from the adolescent Star Wars saga is a disgrace. THX was a statement. American Graffiti is the best film of its kind. The guy could've made fifteen more great statements like Scorsese but instead Lucas went deeper into the weeds than any other major talent has gone before.

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  25. Hi-rez pic of the misses. Spike obviously wears the color in this family:


    http://www.jalc.org/about/gallery/2008_springgala/pages/14%20Spike%20Lee%20and%20Tony%2336584.htm

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  26. " "Ever since Jar Jar was criticized as being racist, George Lucas has been quite obsessed with proving to the world how "super not racist" he is."

    Exxxxxxxactly!

    (or maybe he's having sex with a chick?)

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  27. Thomas, not so fast. Ravi was sentenced to only 30 days in prison.

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  28. Yeah, but the fact that he is being held responsible for the other student's suicide at all is really a bad precedent - regardless of how much time he's serving.

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  29. "Why is it not surprising that Spike Lee's "Black" wife is so much lighter skinned than George Lucas's very dark-complected spouse?"

    That lady standing next to Lee is supposed to be black? Are you for serious?

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  30. "Will Mark Z be happy in the future? Magic 8 Ball sez.... outlook not so good. "

    What a witch Chan is! I bet she wants regular sex with Zuckerberg too. If he's not careful, Chan might insist on cooking for him,or she might even exploit him to fulfill a vile desire to bear his children. If I ever become super rich, I'll make sure to hook up with someone who'll just be happy to spend my money without seeing me at all. Ever.

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  31. Is having a taller woman than self considered a luxury status symbol for men?

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  32. Whiskey psychotically ranted...

    Just like the Gates Foundation prohibition against scholarships for White kids probably reflects Gates keeping his harpy of a wife happy (White professional women HATE HATE HATE Beta White males) than anything else.


    But isn't Gates really a beta male by your definition. An insanely rich one but still beta, right? By your standard Beta Bill could keep his wife happy not through beta suplication but through alpha resistance and opposition.

    I mean he looks like an over the top White nerd stereotype, he has no scary Alpha traits - not a biker, not black, not a male stripper, or petty criminal, no obvious tattoos, no baby mamas, basically a tech geek.

    So why did she marry him?

    Lets be clear, the vast majority of White "professional" women not only PREFER PREFER PREFER White beta males, they actually DEMAND them. That is if they aint already wifey will turn them into one.

    That is something a White omega dork like whiskey can never acknowledge because it would force him to admit that the reason he is a virgin and failure with White women is not because he is a hated beta male but because he is a clueless omega one.

    Whiskey could no more admit that than he could admit there are actually more than a few Jews attending and teaching at Harvard, working in Hollywood or concerned at all about Israel.

    His entire Internet oeuvre is an exercise in warding off those realizations.

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  33. Spike found a girl JUST black enough to keep him out of trouble with the Sista-hood.

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  34. http://www.historytoday.com/jeffrey-richards/forgotten-war-remembered

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  35. http://www.hoover.org/publications/hoover-digest/article/113016

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  36. "Lets be clear, the vast majority of White "professional" women not only PREFER PREFER PREFER White beta males, they actually DEMAND them."

    The thing is that their demands should be read as warrior who protects kittens, in that order, and not kittens saver who dreams of being a warrior and buys katanas off internet.


    "That is if they aint already wifey will turn them into one."


    Yeah women turn their husbands into beta men, and then hate them. Every other day a man posts a similar story on spearhead.

    If the alpha status of Gates was high enough, his wife wouldn't need the SWPL status credentials through charity to quench her status thirst, and the renumeration would be lessened.

    "Hi-rez pic of the misses."

    Are glasses a feminizing accessory? She looks cute in steve's pic, here you would have to contort the word to include Lady Obama.


    "Is having a taller woman than self considered a luxury status symbol for men? "

    Tall women are scarce so why not. Though usually it's high heels giving the illusion instead of a genuine pair like Cruise and Kidman.

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  37. "Spike is actually a good guy and a good sport."

    Somehow I doubt the McClains agree with you.

    I certainly don't. And no, my surname isn't McClain. It isn't Zimmerman, either.

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  38. alonzo portfolio5/22/12, 10:42 AM

    So I'm supposed to believe this person actually manages $3 billion?

    http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://t0.gstatic.com/images?q%3Dtbn:ANd9GcR3y2w37wVKzsmlCPWrtrnZIOu71QdMOjaVHq77SOLOhx7uPVWLL2KlQA&imgrefurl=http://adversityinharlem.blogspot.com/2009/05/mellody-hobson.html&h=162&w=216&sz=5&tbnid=JK7QoB6ssR5avM&tbnh=0&tbnw=0&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dmellody%2Bhobson%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=mellody+hobson&usg=__LwkqL8teiDHqSq1YUcZo_XiBI9Y=&docid=03n86zmz1NnD-M&sa=X&ei=ks-7T86lL4SRiALWp_XiDQ&ved=0CI8BENUX

    Well, call me a racist.

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  39. "Lets be clear, the vast majority of White "professional" women not only PREFER PREFER PREFER White beta males, they actually DEMAND them. That is if they aint already wifey will turn them into one."

    This one time, during a game of drunk stopwatch definitions, a girlfriend of mine defined "true men" as computer fixing devices that feel really good.

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  40. Woops. Posted Zuckerberg comment to wrong thread. Didn't mean to derail.

    #hangsheadinshame

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  41. Damn, that would make a great movie plot--mixed race couple want to build low income housing in exclusive area. One thinks it's a good idea, the other to punish his neighbors. Wonder if LucasFilms would produce it?

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  42. It's probably been said a zillion times already, and you just put a lampshade on it, but I'll say it anyway.

    What could be more divisive than importing diversity against the wishes and without the consent of the 90% majority, turning it into a 65% majority? Or creating victim/advocacy groups out of homosexuals, AIDS victims, the handicapped, and whoever else will let you?

    Liberal accusations of "divisiveness" are projection.

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  43. "Damn, that would make a great movie plot--mixed race couple want to build low income housing in exclusive area. One thinks it's a good idea, the other to punish his neighbors. Wonder if LucasFilms would produce it?"

    No, it would make a great reality show. Take families who populate the ghetto school where I work, and offer them housing in, say, Winnetka, IL. Then follow them around with cameras as they encounter the natives while shopping, hanging out at the park, attending school and participating in community events. The trick would be to do it without a warning.

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  44. The problem is that Marin is so exquisitely rich, liberal, and environmentally sensitive that you can qualify as low income there while making $88,000 per year, so George probably won't get away with erecting Hunter's Point North as his vengeance.

    The Hunter's Point reference is ironic because it's still the S.F. location of some instant slums put up in WWII to accommodate the influx of workers at Hunter's Point Naval Shipyard. But Marin was also the site (just north of Sausalito--which if you've been there you know is just as bo-ho cute as it gets) of Marinship, a shipyards my father helped build Liberty Ships in during WWII. And it had/has its own Hunter's Point: Marin City--not a very "Marin" type place to live, but a good argument against Lucas building another dysfunctional municipality in that county.

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  45. Looking at Mrs Spike Lee, I suddenly get a new perspective on the racial politics of JUNGLE FEVER, particularly vis-a-vis Lonette Mckee's role as Flipper Purify's nearly-White wife.Perhaps Spike was wrestling with his own interracial demons?

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  46. "The best thing he made in years."

    4 more years!

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  47. I'll guarantee you that if either of those women (especially Spike's wife) took a DNA test, they would discover a substantial percentage of European ancestry.

    Black is one phenotype among many that distinguishes . . . well, blacks from whites. These women have the one, but not many others.

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  48. "Well, call me a racist."

    It's already been done. Why come late to the party?

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  49. "So I'm supposed to believe this person actually manages $3 billion? "

    No, because she doesn't. She is essentially the business manager aka operations manager of the place, and has nothing to do with the portfolio [the money management/investment part of the business] or with research, according to the linked bio.

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  50. Looks like George has turned to the dark side...

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  51. "Sting said...

    Thomas, not so fast. Ravi was sentenced to only 30 days in prison."


    - Empire strikes back, son! 30 days in a vibrant New Brunswick, New Jersey County Jail- and he'll probably be the only Asian there.

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  52. Well, this is something also ignored by the Republicans that blame Ca's problems all on high taxes and business regulation, yet some industries in Ca that employed illegal immirgants paid the lowest taxes or none and had the least regulation. Marin is mainly white and I believe at the most 13 percent foreign botn and its unemployment is only 6.4 percent. Take Orange County 30 percent foreign born at 7.4 percent unemployment and Santa Clara at 8.2 percent. Demographics are ignored by Republicans since counties that are less minority in Ca have lower unemployment by the way La is about 47 percent hispanic and has an unemployment rate around 11 percent.

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  53. "No, because she doesn't. She is essentially the business manager aka operations manager of the place..."

    That's funny, her bio says that she's the president, as well as the chairwoman of the board of trustees.

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  54. "...as well as the chairwoman of the board of trustees."


    I find it interesting that it is acceptable in liberal circles for people to use 'chairwoman' for a female, but 'chairman' for a man is sexist- we are expected to use chairperson in that situation.

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  55. I think I will watch the movie Serial

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  56. Mrs Lee may well be whiter than Mrs Lucas - but Mrs Lucas is prettier.

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  57. "That's funny, her bio says that she's the president, as well as the chairwoman of the board of trustees."

    Reading comprehension is hard.

    I guess your eyes just sort of skimmed over this sentence, as as you refer to the lines immediately preceding and succeeding this one:

    As President, Hobson is responsible for firmwide management and strategic planning, overseeing all operations outside of research and portfolio management.

    Take particular note of those last 6 words. What they mean is that the lady does not have anything to do with the money management side of the business.

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  58. Rogers, founder of Ariel, is a smart guy. I read an interview with him in the early 1990s on his investment strategy. Of course, you can never maintain or scale up a winning strategy, so you have to turn to other advantages.

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  59. "Reading comprehension is hard."

    Yes, particularly with the word "president."

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  60. Grover Prosling5/29/12, 10:10 PM

    so he's decided to erect "low-income housing" there instead. The problem is that Marin is so exquisitely rich, liberal, and environmentally sensitive that you can qualify as low income there while making $88,000 per year,

    ^^Sailer is right on here. Lucas may posture about "low income" housing, but as Thomas Sowell notes, rich affluent places like Marin County have long ago "ethnically cleansed" themselves of lesser classes by restrictions on the building of more housing units. Less housing available = higher costs = less minorities. Done. While liberals have it figured out- less blacks while still piously appearing to be "down" with the progressive thing. In the meantime, integrated hoods of ordinary black and white and hispanic military veterans and their families can be dismissed as "backward" proles - unworthy of hanging out with the smart set. Only the gullible haven't caught on to the game...


    Just like the Gates Foundation prohibition against scholarships for White kids probably reflects..
    ANother bogus claim. What fantasy world does this guy live in?

    DYork sez:
    Lets be clear, the vast majority of White "professional" women not only PREFER PREFER PREFER White beta males, they actually DEMAND them. That is something a White omega dork like whiskey can never acknowledge because it would force him to admit that the reason he is a virgin and failure with White women is not because he is a hated beta male but because he is a clueless omega one..

    Interesting. Could this "loser's frustration" account for the fierce racism of such types whenever they see an interracial couple? Such interracial hookups are trivial overall. As far as marriage for example, black-white hookups are less than one half of one percent of all marriages. The numbers really are trivial with virtually no demographic impact on whites. Yet on website after website, hordes of "betas" and "omegas" obsessively catalog and share pictures of black-white celebrity couples, lamenting their very existence, foaming out their rage and impotence in screeds of hate. WHat can account for this intensity, over a social phenomenon (black-white marriages) that is less than "chump change" in the larger sphere of things?


    Looking at Mrs Spike Lee, I suddenly get a new perspective on the racial politics of JUNGLE FEVER, particularly vis-a-vis Lonette Mckee's role as Flipper Purify's nearly-White wife.Perhaps Spike was wrestling with his own interracial demons?
    Interesting observation. This is the same SPike Lee who in a magazine article says he "glares" at interracial couples for some sort of intimidatory purpose. In JUNGLE FEVER he framed a not too subtle setup to "make sure" the audience got the "message" about how "bad" interracial sex was. So Wesley does Annabelle on a hard office desk, in messy fashion. In other scenes the background is gritty and messy. The "message" being conveyed is that interracial hookups are "bad". This is typical of Hollywood hypocrisy. Its standard formula where IR relationships are concerned are: (a) make the sex uncomfortable or messy and (b) make the white female character an outcast, airhead or slut of some sort. Hence in one of Denzel's movies, they are careful to make his white female co-star a hooker, rather than a regular girl- again- applying a subtle "taint" to any real romance. Its the same hypocritical Hollywood liberal formula while posturing as "progressive." It would be refreshing to see Hollywood run some scenes of say a white Marine unapologetically hammering some nice round chocolate bootay of a girfriend (a not uncommon occurrence in the military where a fair number of IR hookups occur). But such a scene, while interracial, would not be deemed "progressive" by the Hollywood Hypocrites.

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