Ahhh, can Dick Cavett write...
Hail, the Conquered Hero
Dick Cavett
NYT blog
How absolutely silly it looks from this distance.
A widely popular entertainer and broadcaster made an offhand and — as became instantly clear — ill-advised joke about a basketball team made up largely (but not entirely, I was surprised to learn, given the attention the story was getting) of black women.
The joke hit the fan and Yeats’s “the worst” filled themselves with passionate intensity. A senator held up a picture of the team and righteously intoned, “How could he say those awful things about these lovely girls?”
And no one hit him with a pie.
A lot of people did not come off well.
Experts at exploitation and manipulation seized on the event and flew into action. Over-reactors outdid themselves. Alleged friends of the unlucky man in question measured their comments a bit too cautiously, perhaps, for their current comfort.
Wee embers were fanned into an inferno by skilled flame-fanners and the professionally offended. Demands were high-handedly demanded. All sorts of people piled on the wounded body. It began to resemble the way certain birds and beasts pile on the ailing pack member and peck or chew it to pieces.
(Continued here.)
Dick Cavett
NYT blog
“You take my life when you do take the means whereby I live.” — ShylockThe “Imus incident’” burned so brightly way back when, knocking big stories from front pages. It seems so long ago.
How absolutely silly it looks from this distance.
A widely popular entertainer and broadcaster made an offhand and — as became instantly clear — ill-advised joke about a basketball team made up largely (but not entirely, I was surprised to learn, given the attention the story was getting) of black women.
The joke hit the fan and Yeats’s “the worst” filled themselves with passionate intensity. A senator held up a picture of the team and righteously intoned, “How could he say those awful things about these lovely girls?”
And no one hit him with a pie.
A lot of people did not come off well.
Experts at exploitation and manipulation seized on the event and flew into action. Over-reactors outdid themselves. Alleged friends of the unlucky man in question measured their comments a bit too cautiously, perhaps, for their current comfort.
Wee embers were fanned into an inferno by skilled flame-fanners and the professionally offended. Demands were high-handedly demanded. All sorts of people piled on the wounded body. It began to resemble the way certain birds and beasts pile on the ailing pack member and peck or chew it to pieces.
(Continued here.)
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