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About TK
- T.K. (Ask a Korean!)
- The Korean is a Korean American living in Washington D.C. He lived in Seoul until he was 16, then moved to Los Angeles area. The Korean refers to himself in the third person because he thinks it sounds cool.
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I would hardly call that "decrying" an appointment, it was stupid faux-racist jackassery. Even highlighting it on this blog seems to give it to much credit.
ReplyDeleteA 'funny' or 'satirical' letter? Uh, yeah, sure, except it wasn't funny and far from satirical (read the theonion.com if you're not sure what satire is, guys). How fast can you backpedal? I'm glad that the outrage on Dartmouth was enough to make the appropriate apologies...
ReplyDeletethere seems to be two arguements here...
ReplyDelete1. That the blitz was just a satirical email meant to be taken as an extreme joke and that publicly decrying it is discrediting Dartmouth as a whole.
2. racist comments are extremely offensive and distasteful regarding of the motive behind them.
and as a Korean, call me biased, but I'm for 2. Doesn't matter if it was written as a joke. Call my sense of humor limited but I bet my life that if this email had been written as it had been, targeted against an African American president, there would have been MAJOR public attention shed on the "simple" email blitz.
olsen,
ReplyDeleteThat's why it only got one sentence.
January,
The Korean would disagree. A well-done racist joke, coming out of the right persons with the requisite skills, can be a source of great entertainment. The Korean is a purveyor of stand-up comedy, and racial stereotype jokes, done right, are a fantastic source of laughs that gave careers to many talented comedians. (e.g. Richard Pryor, Chris Rock.)
Of course, it clearly requires a lot of skills to pull off a successful racist joke, which these Dartmouth students clearly lacked. It seems that they were trying this type of joke, and failed miserably at that.
I think the problem was they tried too many things.. satire or parody requires a fine touch and these guys were tossing in bad pronunciation jokes, cheap immigrant jokes and the "immigrants" take over jokes (the last two don't make sense in the same place at the same time), food and movie jokes.
ReplyDeleteThe Onion joke works because it is pointed and focuses on one clever idea, it doesn't throw two handfuls of crap at the wall to see what sticks.
You do your "humor" like this and you should expect to be called dumb, at best, and racist at worst.