Update: You'll notice I changed the image above. Turns out that Barack Obama doesn't seem to think that Barack Obama masks are blackface either. (The above is from this SNL skit, by the way.)
The Great Rodeo Clown Kerfuffle of 2013 is nearing an end; somehow the republic has muddled on these last few days as the commander in chief nurses his wounded pride on the links. If you do not know to what I am referring, the short version of the story is that a rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask was banned for life from a Missouri fair after Democrats got upset. The whole thing was ridiculous. There is something obviously unseemly about the mob howling for the blood of a man who dared make fun of the president; Michael Austin gets at the absurdity of the situation nicely over at NRO.
The faux "how dare you mock the presidency!" outrage is bad enough. But there's something remarkably irritating and especially pernicious about the left's desire to turn this into a racial slight.
"On the blackface rodeo clown thing, 'everyone should breathe deep' and calm down, [Peggy Noonan] adds," wrote Salon's Alex Seitz Wald wrote in a piece headlined "Noonan: Obama should defend blackface rodeo clown." Meanwhile, over at Wonkette, Gary Legum mocks those who dare point out the absurdity of getting upset when the president is made the subject of fun: "Political Correctness Runs Amok As Decent People Not Amused By Rodeo Clown’s Hysterical Blackface Routine."
You keep using that word "blackface." I do not think it means what you think it means.
The rodeo clown was wearing a Barack Obama mask, the sort of mask that many people wear at, say, a Halloween party. People frequently wear masks of presidents. Sometimes they do so to make fun of the president and highlight his unpopularity. Sometimes they simply do so to hide their identity. Indeed, Kathryn Bigelow made a whole movie about a pack of bank robbers who wear masks of presidents to do just that!
Blackface, meanwhile, is a very different thing. It involves painting one's face and exaggerating the facial characteristics of black people to mock them. This is blackface:
This is an Obama mask:
Blackface:
Mask:
Racial Stereotype:
Mask designed to look like a specific person:
Now, I know why Seitz Wald and Legum are describing a "mask" as "blackface." They're doing it because it's racially inflammatory and signals to the rest of the liberal tribe that to be on the side of the rodeo clown is to be on the side of awful, no good, very bad, super horrible RACISTS. And you don't want to be on the side of the racists, do you? No. Of course not. So get in line and criticize the clown.
The implicit point that they're making, not so incidentally, is that anyone who defends the clown is racist. This is pernicious and destructive to civilized political discourse.
Pernicious and destructive but not surprising. It's been a hallmark of the left for the last five years or so. Remember when posters started popping up portraying Barack Obama in Heath Ledger's Joker makeup?
Liberals freaked out. "The only thing missing is a noose," some wag over at LA Weekly fretted. I'm sure there was similar outrage when Vanity Fair published this horribly racist painting:
Lol jk no big deal because Rethuglicans are gross.
It's all quite absurd. If you are unsure why conservatives don't take the vast majority of accusations of racism against Barack Obama seriously, you simply haven't been paying attention.