media post 4- Pink Floyd Waiting for the Worms

The portion of this song starts about 40 seconds into the clip of The Wall and only lasts about 60 seconds.




Ein! Zwei! Drei! Hammer!
Ooooh, you cannot reach me now
Ooooh, no matter how you try
Goodbye, cruel world, it's over
Walk on by.

Sitting in a bunker
Here Behind my wall
Waiting for the worms to come
In perfect isolation
Here behind my wall
Waiting for the worms to come

(Megaphone: Will the audience convene at one fifteen
outside Brixton Town Hall where we will be...)
Waiting (to cut out the deadwood).
Waiting (to clean up the city).
Waiting (to follow the worms).
Waiting (to put on a black shirt).
Waiting (to weed out the weaklings).
Waiting (to smash in their windows and kick in their doors)
Waiting (for the final solution to strengthen the strain).
Waiting to follow the worms.
Waiting (to turn on the showers and fire the ovens).
Waiting (for the queens and the coons and the Reds and the Jews).
Waiting (to follow the worms).
Would you like to see
(backgr: Would you like to see us rule again, my friend?)
Britannia rule again, my friend?
All you have to do is follow the worms.
Would you like to send
(backgr: Would you like to send them home again, my friend?)
Our colored cousins home again, my friend?
All you need to do is follow the worms.

Those are the lyrics to Pink Floyd’s Waiting for the Worms. If you cant tell by reading the lyrics, Pink Floyd is talking about WWW II. Sitting in a bunker waiting for the worms (soldiers) to come, basically meaning that he is hiding from Hitler’s Gestapo. Clean up the city, put on a black shirt, weed out the weaklings. The black representing Hitler, cleaning the city and weeding out the weaklings is getting rid of everyone who isn’t like him. In WWW II the extermination of the Jews was called the final solution. The showers and ovens refer to the concentration camps. And of course the queens are the gays, the coons, black, the reds being Indians and the Jews. As we all are well aware of Hitler exterminated anyone who wasn’t like him, you had to have blonde hair and blue eyes to be considered like Hitler and safe. There is a small section about this particular song in The Wall video; he is dressed in all black with the trademark crossed hammers of Pink Floyd, that slightly represents a swastika. He is walking down the street pointing like he would be hailing Hitler. The portion of this song starts about 40 seconds into the clip of The Wall and only lasts about 60 seconds.

Pink Floyd is reinterpreting what Hitler did into one of their many demented songs. Pink Floyd asks “would you like to see us rule again?” Basically asking us if we want another WWW II and another Hitler. I chose to use this song as a media device because I can relate it to Johnson’s “Privilege, Oppression and Difference.” In the very beginning of the chapter Johnson says “fear keeps us from looking at what’s going on and makes it impossible to do anything about the reality that lies deeper down.”(page 12) Which describes the people during WWW II, everyone was afraid of Hitler so no one said anything about what he was doing. Hitler was afraid of people who were not like him because he thought he knew them which is exactly what Johnson says. Johnson says “the trouble around diversity is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference against other people” and Hitler perpetuated this.

I like Pink Floyd, their music is amazing but after reading the lyrics and really seeing what they are saying, kind of creeps me out. I guess in a way though Pink Floyd is using this song as a tool to show us how racist we really are.

media post 3- Jeff Dunham

Ventriloquism is a lost art, but comedian Jeff Dunham brings it back to life with his many characters. In his new special on Comedy Central, Spark of Insanity, Jeff is in D.C. and his skit is very racially motivated. One of his characters is a skeleton, Achmed the dead terrorist, who is probably the most racist of all the puppets, oh and was a suicide bomber. Jeff interacts with his puppets and the whole skit is hilarious but very wrong, considering racial tendencies.

Some of the things that Achmed says are completely awful such as when he says “God damnit” then the audience laughs and Achmed corrects himself and says, “oh I mean Alla damnit.” Alla is who the Middle Eastern people worship. Achmed even has a turban on his skull further showing that he is of Middle Eastern descent. Achmed proceeds to tell a joke, “okay two Jews walk into a bar” and Jeff says “ no, no”. Then Achmed replies “what you don’t let Jews in your bar, you racist bastard” and Jeff rebuttals and says “I don’t want any racist jokes in my act.” Which or course is an odd statement in and of it self, considering the whole skit, including the other characters, is very racist. And what is even more interesting is the fact that the Spark of Insanity tour, premiered in Washington D.C.

Continuing on with Achmed’s Jewish jokes, he says, “what if I kill the Jews”
Jeff says “no.”
Achmed says, “ I’m kidding, I would not kill the Jews, I would throw a penny between them and watch them fight to the death.”
Then Jeff reprimands Achmed and tells him “jokes like that offend people.”
Achmed says, “what do I care I’m dead.”

All of these “jokes” reminded me of Zinn’s “Drawing the color line.” Although Zinn is talking mainly about blacks being slaves, it still applies here because the whites motivate it. The Middle Eastern are a more recent version of suppression. The stereotype, now, for any Middle Eastern person is, Oh you must be linked to terrorism or a terrorist yourself. In the past it was, your black so you must be a slave (Zinn page 24). Zinn says that the “experience the first settlers acted as pressure for the enslavement of blacks.” (Zinn page 23) This still tends to be true, but for the Middle Eastern. We are on their land fighting and killing them, so they can be free. Which is very closely related to slavery, I will give you a place to live after you have been exported to America, but you have to do manual labor for me. Even though Zinn is talking about blacks and slavery in Drawing the Color line, it still applies for any and all races. Every race in history that has been seen as a minority has been discriminated against; the Jewish, Irish, African (Black), Muslim, Asian, the list could go on forever. However now, no matter what race you are, if you look white, you are white. All this racism starts with “the color line” and it starts with White America discriminating against those that don’t look like them. None of this racism is natural but our socioeconomic system is making it harder and harder for us to see that its not.

I like Jeff Dunham I think he is very funny, but this skit I didn’t find quite as hilarious as his first one, Arguing with myself. Previously I would have found this to be funny, but after taking this class I realize its not as funny as everyone thinks. Racism is a hot button issue and he took advantage of that, poking fun at it just to get some laughs. Even though it is his characters actually saying the comments, he thought of them and he’s the one who makes them talk. So, in all actuality it his thoughts and “jokes” we are hearing not Achmed’s. Whether Jeff is racist, in real life, or not, he is still very offensive.

media post 2- Titus

The setting is an older television show called Titus, it was cancelled after three seasons on FOX. Titus has a good friend named Tommy, who throughout the show is very flamboyant and an outsider of the group would probably think he is gay. Well it turns out that his father is gay after 40 years of marriage. Thus provoking Tommy to believe that he too is gay. At the local bar Tommy’s father was beaten up because he was gay, and it happened to be by two of Titus’s friends. After being in this class I can really see that whole episode has the underlying theme that all people should be treated equal and that diversity is all around us and we need to accept it.

At the end of every episode Titus has a short black and white monologue and the one for this episode was really powerful. He says that once we start placing alike people together, we have the gays over here, the Jews over here and so on. While he is saying this he is of course pointing but he uses his whole hand and at the end of his spiel he ends up like he would be hailing Hitler, and he says “you see how this can get out of hand”. Thus reiterating the fact that we must embrace diversity, because, look what it did to us in the past when we didn’t.

The whole show was very controversial and dark, which is why it was cancelled. Most of the episodes would be a great representation of sexism but I chose to post on this episode of Titus because I knew that of all the “controversial” episodes this would be the best one to post about.

This episode reminded me of Johnson chapter 2, Privilege, Oppression and Difference. Chapter 2 talks about diversity and uses the Diversity Wheel. Johnson goes on to say “the trouble with diversity is produced by a world organized in ways that encourage people to use difference to include or exclude, reward or punish, credit or discredit, elevate or oppress, value or devalue, leave alone or harass”(page 17). Basically he is saying that because we see someone as gay, black, disabled or whatever it may be, we treat him or her different. This relates to this particular episode of Titus because a man got beat up because he was gay and the ones who beat him did not want him in “their” bar. They only saw that he was gay they did not care about anything else which is just like labeling a blind person only as blind nothing else (Johnson pg 19). All these thoughts are a result of our culture; we have been conditioned to judge people by their cover, so to speak.

I know that there are plenty of people in the world who are “homophobes” some of them are my friends and family members but I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with being homosexual. I know and am friends with many gay guys, so when I hear that certain family member talk about homosexuality being wrong or gross I get irritated. I suppose I could say it’s the generation gap, but that still shouldn’t matter. Different religious beliefs play a large role in the fact that being gay is wrong. But just look at the Catholic Church and all the priests, and they still say homosexuality is wrong, talk about being a hypocrite