Meta-Blogging*

(from the artist formerly known as He Hate Me)
I have a confession. I have been cheating on the Grouse. A couple of weeks ago I started my own political blog - The Democratic Instant Message (theDemIM.blogpot.com). Basically the idea of the blog is to play out my fantasies of being the Democratic Party's Karl Rove. I'll continue to blog here, of course, but you will now be spared of my political ramblings on the Grouse.

On an unrellated topic, everyone should see "The 4o Year Old Virgin" at their earliest possible convenience. It is absolutely hilarious and interesting in its approach to meta-bigotry (AKA post-PC) humor. This a topic about which I've blogged previously that continues to intrigue me.

It might be that I am being overly-elitest or a result of going to school with a bunch of stupid racist white people but post-PC shows often make me feel uncomfortable because I think the vast majority of people don't 'get' the joke.

From a letter on AndrewSullivan.com:

In fact, Chappelle himself cited this phenomenon as one of the contributing factors to him leaving his show midway through the 3rd season. Below from Time:

The third season hit a big speed bump in November 2004. He was taping a sketch about magic pixies that embody stereotypes about the races.

The black pixie—played by Chappelle—wears blackface and tries to convince blacks to act in stereotypical ways. Chappelle thought the sketch was funny, the kind of thing his friends would laugh at. But at the taping, one spectator, a white man, laughed particularly loud and long. His laughter struck Chappelle as wrong, and he wondered if the new season of his show had gone from sending up stereotypes to merely reinforcing them. "When he laughed, it made me uncomfortable," says Chappelle. "As a matter of fact, that was the last thing I shot before I told myself I gotta take fucking time out after this. Because my head almost exploded."

It's difficult to quantify, but the best example I can give is when I watched some Chappelle skits with some southern relatives of mine who would be charitably described as racist. I couldn't figure out why they were laughing at what was clearly a sketch written to make fun of people with attitudes and beliefs exactly like theirs (The blind, black KKK sketch). I noticed they were laughing not only at the wrong time, but for what appeared to be for the wrong reasons. Later, when they were quoting what they considered the "funny" parts of the skit, it wasn't what everyone "in on the joke" was quoting.

At this point I really want to ask our readers if they "get the joke" or not but I doubt someone would volunteer the fact that they enjoy watching the re-enforcemnet of stereotypes. Besides me.