Thursday, May 08, 2008
Kicked To The Curb
In what must be the final indignity to the vaunted Clinton name, Toni Morrison uses a Time Q&A to revoke Bubba's ghetto pass:
By the way, Ms. Morrison is singing quite a different song (of Solomon?) than what she used to say back in the day. Her actual quote from the 1998 New Yorker piece: "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."
Yep, that's every black person I know (note to self: You don't play the sax, remember?).
Of course, those of us with very long memories know that Bill was never really black, because of a very important fact that Ms. Morrison omits out of politeness.
I couldn't find the original (though I may have the magazine at home), but thankfully the Internet is one huge memory bank:
Life just sucks sometimes, don't it?
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Do you regret referring to Bill Clinton as the first black President?Here all along, Bill Clinton thought he was seen as Kunta Kinte by the black community, only come to find out that, actually, his name is "Toby" -- or maybe just, "Mud."
—Justin Dews, Cambridge, Mass.
People misunderstood that phrase. I was deploring the way in which President Clinton was being treated, vis-à-vis the sex scandal that was surrounding him. I said he was being treated like a black on the street, already guilty, already a perp. I have no idea what his real instincts are, in terms of race.
By the way, Ms. Morrison is singing quite a different song (of Solomon?) than what she used to say back in the day. Her actual quote from the 1998 New Yorker piece: "Clinton displays almost every trope of blackness: single-parent household, born poor, working-class, saxophone-playing, McDonald's-and-junk-food-loving boy from Arkansas."
Yep, that's every black person I know (note to self: You don't play the sax, remember?).
Of course, those of us with very long memories know that Bill was never really black, because of a very important fact that Ms. Morrison omits out of politeness.
I couldn't find the original (though I may have the magazine at home), but thankfully the Internet is one huge memory bank:
He just can't get over the Penthouse article in which Gennifer Flowers said, "Bill Clinton has a small penis and his wife has fat ankles and they'll just have to get over each others' imperfections."Day-um! Every trope of blackness -- except "white" where it really counts!
Life just sucks sometimes, don't it?
Labels: Bill Clinton, Toni Morrison
