*promote the busey-ness

Heh.. yeah, the funny part is that I DO still go to concerts in my 30s -- I'm setting the alarm to pick up those Tool tickets the next morning after a late show like in the video -- even though I identify with all the stuff in the vid.

NIN was a great show, I saw them recently as well.

And thanks for commanding the siftbot to do all those nice things

Yeah, they're very hit or miss.

I've addressed that I understand the context several times above and given the reasons that I still think it's problematic even considering its context.

I'm feeling the same astonishment toward your interpretation of the things I'm saying, like you're totally missing the point I've been repeatedly trying to make. I think I'll leave it there. I just don't think anything more productive can come from this dialog unfortunately.

Eh. Ultimately, satire can offend, but its goal is to enlighten people. If it's good satire, there should be a net positive societal gain.

I'm arguing that if you end up offending more than you enlighten, there's no net positive societal gain there. Especially if you offend a subset of the very group (targets of racism in this case) than you're trying to uplift with the satire.

It's got to be case-by-case, and it's often a very tough call. As I mentioned above, Dave Chappelle himself, by most accounts a comedic genius, struggled with it immensely in his material. And figuring all of this out is a tricky, ongoing process of discovery and dialog which requires a more nuanced viewpoint and empathy than you're showing a willingness to take on. Honestly it's a lot to process and I often wonder and question my own ability to navigate these issues.

Ultimately, I feel like you and many others just want win an argument and not really have to think about things like this anymore in the future. You want your racial satire and you want your rape jokes without talking about or thinking about any boundaries or grey areas for the purveyors of that comedy, and that's that. Black and white.

If something like this comes up again, welp, you already have an answer for that. You can just pull out your rubber stamp that says:
"It's satire people! Those offended don't get the context of the joke."

Colbert's character is a satire of just that kind of black and white way of thinking, so it's highly ironic for his viewership to mimic it.

I understand exactly what he's doing. I'm pointing out that it's possible to cross lines, even with racial satire, and that those lines are gray and fuzzy and worthy of our thought, attention, and dialog. You seem to think that when it comes to racial satire, there shouldn't be any lines, whatsoever. That there's always some 100% correct answer to this kind of question, and that answer is "Colbert is righteous".
You're right, my example wouldn't air. Let's say it did though, and there was an uproar from a portion of the black community. Would you still be saying those folks essentially have their panties in a bunch and need to lighten up?

No arguments there on the good at math idea not being funny... I never suggested such an option. What would have been good funny alternative bits for Colbert to have done could be a separate conversation I think (good satire punches up, etc).
I appreciate your personal note. It indeed jives with what one of my Asian American friends told me- they don't find particularly offensive either. This friend also mentioned that their experience is not equal to every Asian American experience though. For others, it seems that it stings quite significantly. So I don't think this is case closed.

The question I posed with my analogy still stands -- while this is not true for yourself or my friend, for some people of Asian descent, "the Ching Ching ding dong foundation for cultural sensitivity" might be offensive on a level similar to how it would have been for Blacks if he had used "The cotton-picking nigger foundation for cultural sensitivity". How many? Maybe that number is at 10%. Maybe that number is at .1%. Maybe that number is at 50%. I have no idea. How do we as a society figure whether that is the case? I think we do it by having a big old dialog where a lot of people of Asian descent are involved.

Instead what I see is a whole lot of posturing, sabre-rattling, and band wagon jumping from people that are not of Asian decent and therefore have no personal experience with this particular form of racism to bring to bear on the matter. Those people should be primarily listening and asking questions, not posturing and sabre-rattling.

I don't disagree with your comments about Suey Park, as I said I think she acts crazy and I don't support her approach in any way. I think it's unfortunate that she's leading the charge on the other side of this thing, because I think she's doing a horrible job.

As I see it, Colbert is using Asian Americans (a minority that is also most definitely not atop the social power structure) as an example or prop to try to educate people about racism that's happening toward another group of people. Cool! We're helping out Native Americans. It's not really engaging Asian Americans though, who very commonly have racism directed at them as well. In my readings on this, it would seem a fair number (but NOT all) of Asian Americans grew up being ridiculed by things like "Ching chong ding dong", and it is steeped in an extremely negative racial connotation for that group of people.

I'm stretching to an extreme with this analogy, but I think it's necessary. What if Colbert instead called it the "The Cotton-picking Nigger Foundation for Racial Sensitivity"? I don't know about you, but I think that feels quite a bit more problematic.

But why does that cross a line where "Ching chong ding dong" doesn't? To be honest, while I think I could come up with some ideas that seem quite reasonable to me off the top of my head, I'm not *exactly* sure. Because at the end of the day, here's my reality -- I'm not an Asian American that was ridiculed with that saying and things like it, so I didn't have that firsthand personal experience. For all I know, for a large subgroup of Asian Americans, maybe it *is* very similar to the other example I mentioned would be for blacks.

So rather than thinking I have some magical grasp on what is offensive toward certain groups, I listen very carefully to what they're saying, and what their experience is. I think everybody should do that, and continue thinking about it and conversing about it. Instead, everybody seems to be rushing to Colbert's defense.

Suey Park aside (she acts crazy), I personally believe many of you would be well served by thinking about this situation more critically before you jump on the defend Colbert bandwagon. Colbert is a funny satirist, but is not without flaw, and in my mind this bit on his show was at best a shitty joke and at worst completely unnecessarily racially insensitive (i.e. even as satire, it did not serve his point well). An article here talks about it in a more articulate way than I probably can:
http://www.blackgirldangerous.org/2014/04/colbert-white-racial-satire-dont-need/

This is somewhat tangential (I'll tie things together later), but based on my readings it seems Chappelle may have grappled with whether some of his skits were having net positive social impact, especially near the tail end of the show's run. From Chappelle's wikipedia entry (way more context there) --- "Chappelle said that he felt some of his sketches were "socially irresponsible." ... "According to Chappelle, during the filming of the sketch, a white crew member was laughing in a way that made him feel uncomfortable and made him think. Chappelle said, "It was the first time I felt that someone was not laughing with me but laughing at me."
--- For me, coming from somebody like Chappelle, that's pretty heavy stuff. if Dave Chappelle -- IMO quite brilliant both comedically and otherwise, and has personal experience being an oppressed minority -- struggles with what makes good socially responsible satire, that probably means it's hard. Really hard. Yet there are many people far less qualified than Chappelle in the area of satire creation and firsthand experience of racial oppression using "Colbert is satire, don't you know what [good, socially responsible] satire is?" (I'll answer that rhetorical -- No I don't, nor do probably most people) as a bit of a rubber stamp for Colbert being totally justified in doing this bit.
In my opinion, if there were ever a time for Stephen to totally break character for a second and just say "I'm sorry. Satire can be very difficult at times and we make mistakes. This was one of them. We've got to try harder.", now would be the time. As Chappelle pointed out, some people could be comfortable in laughing for the wrong reasons and not realizing it ... those people need a bit of a reality check. As the person everybody is rushing to protect, Colbert would be the best one to deliver it. In doing so, this could even more powerfully (than his satire) make people come around to the idea that racism is not just a switch you can turn off and be done with it (a la Stephen Colbert the *character*), it's a constant maintenance process like brushing one's teeth ( a la Jay Smooth -- Great talk here by Jay on just this topic ). "Wait.... even Stephen Colbert (the person) satirist master extraordinaire needs to think about race issues!? Hmmmmmmm..."

An interesting bit from that Wiki link:
"It is believed that a contributing factor in the accident was the JR West policy of schedule punctuality. As a result of this, Masataka Ide, JR West adviser who played a major role in enforcing the punctuality of the company's trains, announced that he would resign in June 2005 at the company's annual shareholder meeting, with the company's chairman and president resigning in August."

Executives taking responsibility for things? Woah. An unfamiliar concept in America...

I'm asking this out of curiosity, not to be snide -- I really don't follow the HP stories closely at all -- don't children come from all over the world to attend this wizard school and thus the demographics of its students should have very little to do with the demographics of Scotland? I remember them taking a fairly long journey to get there in the first movie...

I'm surprised this didn't get more attention.

Dead right now, but here's a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBd6ptb7-QA

dead for me