The Buie Knife

Explaining American Football

Andy Griffith's classic, "What It Was Was Football," with archival footage from University of North Carolina football games. This film was actually put together in 1997.

Watch on Youtube.com

If You Meet a Muslim....

Direct link. Clearly some of the commentators over at Sam Spagnola's blog are having real influence. Here's an expert on national TV parroting their views. Of course Onion News Network is satire, but they're SERIOUS.

Bigotry Rears Its Ugly Head

In the last few months, traveling on three continents (North America, Europe, and Asia), I have heard or read bigotry expressed against Muslims, Catholics, Jews, Arabs, Palestinians, African Americans, Christians, Turks, Kurds, Americans, Mexicans, Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Brits, Africans, Chinese, the French, Roma (gypsies), the poor, the rich, and homosexuals, to name a few. The list may not be all inclusive. Just goes to show the world is still full of tribal people who assume their tribe is superior to certain other tribes. And despite incredible advances in communication, the humanitarian barriers among people are still pretty high. People still seem to relish detesting or feeling superior to "the other" -- groups of people who they in most cases don't know well, if at all. It's enough to revive that funny song from the 1960s, "National Brotherhood Week" by Tom Lehrer (Youtube video clip; lyrics).

No person, ethnic group or ideology is immune from bigotry. I find myself from time to time thinking bigoted thoughts. For example, on a crowded ferry I observed a French woman acting very selfishly, sprawling out on three seats, oblivious to the needs of a half-dozen people who had no place to sit at all. I thought of Mark Twain's statement that the evolutionary scale is upside down. Actually, humans are at the bottom of the scale, he said, and below man, "there is nothing, no one -- no one except the French."

Now, if I actually knew any French people, I might revise my opinion instead of using this and other trivial examples of French rudeness to harden my impression of French people and not allow any positive experience of them to enter my consciousness.

I've also seen a lot in the media recently on bigotry.  

"He that cannot reason is a fool. He that will not is a bigot. He that dare not is a slave." -- Andrew Carnegie. (Hat tip, Facebook friend Heather Dur)

Vanity Fair: What is the trait you most deplore in others? "Bigotry." -- Senator Edward Kennedy.

"A Primer on Bigotry," by James Fallows: "All of life is on a spectrum of individual idiosyncracies and large group traits. We're each our own person, but we're all marked to some degree by the categories that contain us. Yes, I am a unique and special and independent thinker! But I'm also an American, a male, a white person, a dreaded Baby Boomer, a member of the dreaded and doomed media, a parent, a rich person compared with most of the world, etc.  

Along this spectrum, Fallows observes:

"one obvious truth is that the more populous the category, the less it tells you about any individual within it. Yes, "men" are all a certain way. But there are three billion of us, and Kim Jong-Il doesn't have that much in common with Lance Armstrong -- or either of them with Benedict XVI or Stephen Hawking or Lil Wayne. Another obvious truth is that the less contact you have with individuals, the more you necessarily rely on group traits -- or stereotypes - for your images.

"These two truths combine with pernicious effect when it comes to mainstream American views of what "Muslims" are like. I put the term in quotes because it's preposterously over-broad. It is just as possible to say what typifies "Muslims" as it is to say what typifies all Indians, or all Chinese, or all of the world's Christians. Each of these is a grouping of roughly a billion people, and each has some similarities but far more dramatic internal differences. (James Earl Ray, Desmond Tutu: both Christians. Discuss.) Most Americans know that about "Christians," and may have some growing awareness when it comes to "Chinese" or "Indians." But a lot of Americans lack the individual awareness of the variety within Islam -- and think that the violent, hateful, dangerous parts define "the Muslims" as a whole. They don't." 

And yet, it's difficult to overcome all bigotries. I confess that I know almost nothing about Roma (gypsies), who were recently expelled from France, but I have difficulty understanding them. I hate to admit it, but in this case I sympathize with the French.

How Fear Becomes Hatred, and Bigotry (Psychology Today)

What Kind of Bigotry Exists Today? (Esquire)

Bigotry defined on Wikipedia

Related:

• How To Define Racism? Everybody's a Little Bit Racist

Husband Teaches Wife How to Handle A Gun

Click. Funny.

Facebook for Geezers (Old Folks). And What If Facebook Existed During the Civil War?

Stephen Wildish designed this clever parody of Facebook: Pensionbook. (Click on the image to enlarge).

And what if Facebook had existed during the Civil War? Click to find out.

Discuss:

• Older Generation on Facebook

SNL: McCain's Great Self-Deprecating Sense of Humor

View this and related clips on Saturday Night Live Site.

McCain at the Al Smith Dinner (Part One): See all related clips here.

Saturday Night Live Scores Another Victory, on Petraeus Iraq Hearing

Saturday Night Live, in its coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, has hit the nail on the head quite a few times, influencing public opinion. They did it again on April 12. Watch this clip at NBC.com.

Most Watched SNL Video Clips.

Gay Scientists Isolate Christian Gene

• Watch this on YouTube.com
• Is Homosexuality A Sin?
• Homosexuality: Nature Vs. Nurture

Thanksgiving Humor

Repeat post from 11/24/2005: American Greetings Thanksgiving Day online "cards."

The quality of this cell phone photo of our Thanksgiving is rather like that of an impressionist painting, or how the world looks without glasses or contacts.

No matter. We had fun hosting it. My wife suggested a game in which a name from 17th century America was taped onto the back of each family members in attendance -- names such as Captain John Smith, Pocahontas, Virginia Dare, Squanto, Pilgrim and turkey -- and each person had to ask yes or no questions to guess who they are. I was "Puritan."  Once I figured out who I was, I enjoyed asking questions such as "Are any of you as moral as I am?" No, came the answer. Then retorts: "Who would want to be?" and "We're not as moral as you think you are."

A Love Story in Just Three Pictures

http://www.jwpincorporated.com/lovestory.html