Idiot Celebrities

Let’s face it, it’s usually been the religious leaders who have given us the richest palette of stupid words to enjoy. That’s what makes the stupid words of Sharon Stone so delicious to hear. There’s real history between her and us. Just like everyone else, we spent a certain portion of our formative years wearing out the pause button on our VCR (an ancient precursor to today’s DVD or Blu-Ray) trying for just the slightest glimpse of her pussy in that movie that shows it. In fact, we’ve only seen the movie in slo-mo and fast forward. How dare you judge us?!!! But her statements mirror so perfectly the Robertson/Fallwell “chickens coming home to roost” shit we immediately ejaculated when we heard. We knew we had something special. Something to make fun of. It’s the liberal bullshit equivalent to the conservoligious bullshit. Swap in the eastern “karma” concept for the Judeo-Christian “wrath of God” concept, then swap “homosexuality”, “abortion” and “living in a country that values liberty” for “human rights”, “I hang out with the Dalai Lama” and “Hey, look at me!” and you can see the yin and yang of it, man.

IMUS: That's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos and—

McGUIRK: Some hard-core hos, Tom.

IMUS: That's some nappy-headed hos there. I'm gonna tell you that now, man, that's some—woo. And the girls from Tennessee, they all look cute, you know, so, like—kinda like—I don't know.

McGUIRK: A Spike Lee thing.

IMUS: Yeah.

McGUIRK: The Jigaboos vs. the Wannabes—that movie that he had.

           The rugged, tough looking women of the Rutgers basketball team looked mean as hell. Maybe a little gangsta. Maybe not. Maybe a little. A reasonable person could think that, we guess. They were muscular and tattooed. Obviously, this is what Don Imus was trying to make reference to in his moment of infamy. Specifically, he included a reference to School Daze, a Spike Lee joint in which two competitive groups were mismatched. He therefore thought it appropriate to frame the joke in the urban vernacular. You know, like when we used the word “gangsta” earlier to accentuate our cluelessness. But that’s where Imus got lost. Way the fuck lost, calling them “nappy-headed hos”. What the fuck?!!! After about a thousand apologies from Mr. Imus and his constant humiliation, it was time to forgive. This is maybe the stupidest comment in the history of radio (not accounting for any Sean Hannity broadcast, naturally). This was a racially offensive comment, but that doesn’t make the man himself a racist. He’s not oppressing anyone. In stretching to provide commentary in hip-hop slang (which is appropriate in this context) he dipped into the wrong well. Ho? Nappy-headed? You think he made these words up himself? If not, do you think he heard them from a white person?  That doesn’t mean they’re not offensive and they certainly are stupid, but people think you’re automatically KKK if you say that kind of shit. He should know that but, come on… People just wanted to kill him. And he goes on the radio to grovel at the feet of Al Sharpton who says flamingly offensive and racially provocative things for a living. Couldn’t he be spared of that at least?

Then we look at bullshit like Isaiah Washington gets fired for calling someone (who was not present) a faggot during a heated exchange. Is the homosexual in question so thin-skinned? How the fuck did he make it through high school? As writers who once attended high school, the times we’ve been called faggot have usually been swiftly followed by a series of blows…umm…punches. And we’ve barely sucked a dick between us. We certainly don’t mean to make light of bigotry. That seems to be what this is. Bigoted behavior. But does this make a man himself a bigot? Is he out to keep a gay man down? You know what we mean. Is there more or less to the story here? The stories are all so different, we’ll never know the real truth.

I don't look like I could ever be right. This time I am.

Penn Jillette told a joke on MSNBC Live that went like this: “ Obama is just creaming Hillary. You know, all these primaries, you know. And Hillary says it’s not fair, because they’re being held in February, and February is Black History Month. And, unfortunately for Hillary, there is no White Bitch Month.” The word “bitch” is appropriate in certain circumstances. God help us, we can’t believe we just said that. It’s true, though, and it does have a suitable male counterpart: “prick”. And I can’t imagine anyone who’s ever had a male boss who hasn’t at least imagined telling him what a prick he is. Unfortunately, this term doesn’t easily apply to a woman, so it must be sexist. Calling a politician a “prick” makes sense almost always. Likewise “bastard”, which is interchangeable. When someone calls a powerful woman a “bitch” for doing the unfortunate and tough things that a powerful person must do, some would trot out the completely stock statement that stock idiot Joe Scarborough did: “if you’re… aggressive and you work hard and you’re a man, then you’re tough… If you’re a woman and you do the same thing, then you’re called names.” This is the argument of a dumbass. When a man does these things, you hate him, too, and if you work for him you call him a “prick”, a “bastard”, a “dick” and an “asshole”. Is it because he’s a man?  “Bitch” works just fine as a female equivalent, for example, “Joe Scarborough, you are a bitch.” Of course, it can be applied in a sexist way. Is Penn Jillette seeking to oppress womankind? If she didn’t possess the qualities that make her suitable for this nomenclature, she wouldn’t be able to run for office. So when Penn Jillette told a joke containing the word “bitch”, there was a lot of room for argument about whether it was sexist.

Are these people bigots? We don't really know anymore. We thought we did when we started, but then we lost it. Maybe they are. But we should probably not care, at least not as much. In our culture we are very quick to condemn, and we condemn those, too, who do not condemn quickly enough. What Fish and Chip News would like to see is patient judgement from the media. We won't be holding our breath. ...except because something smells fishy here.