Thursday, November 04, 2004
The Joan Baez Minstrel Show
Folk singer Joan Baez was in C'ville Wednesday night. Reason's science correspondent Ronald Bailey was there. Apparently, there was some commiseration between Baez and her audience about Kerry's loss to Bush... and then things got weird.
Not that Baez should be pilloried; her own words condemn her sufficiently that no one else need try. And despite the wild applause Bailey reports from the crowd, I'm sure a great many of them were suitably squicked by her bizarre departure from reality. But the whole incident is emblematic of the hysterical self-marginalization of some elements on the American Left, which in the aftermath of losing one single presidential election are acting as if the sky were falling, as if there will be no more dawns, as if Bush were preparing to unleash the hordes of Mordor upon the world. To them, and to the many people who are actually (seriously?) calling for secession from the United States (like Moby) or other such batty solutions to the intractable problem that the democratic process sometimes produces results you don't like, I say:
Get a grip.
Please.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
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...Joan stopped singing and announced that she had "multiple personalities." One of her multiple personalities is that of a fifteen year old poor black girl named Alice from Turkey Scratch, Arkansas. Baez decided to share with us Alice's views on the election. Amazed and horrified I watched a rich, famous, extremely white folksinger perform what can only be described as bit of minstrelsy—only the painted on blackface was missing. Alice, the black teenager from Arkansas Baez was pretending to be, spoke in a dialect so broad and thick that it would put Uncle Remus and Amos and Andyto shame. Baez' monologue was filled with phrases like, "I'se g'win ta" to do this that or the other and dropping all final "g's." Baez as Alice made statements like, "de prezident, he be a racist," and "de prezident, he got a bug fer killin'." Finally, since Bush won the election with 58.7 million votes to Kerry's 55.1 million, Alice observed, "Seems lak haf' de country be plumb crazy." Since Baez was reading Alice's notes, it is evident that she thinks that Arkansas' public schools don't teach black children to write standard English.Imagine Charlie Daniels doing something like that. He'd've been pilloried by now.
Not that Baez should be pilloried; her own words condemn her sufficiently that no one else need try. And despite the wild applause Bailey reports from the crowd, I'm sure a great many of them were suitably squicked by her bizarre departure from reality. But the whole incident is emblematic of the hysterical self-marginalization of some elements on the American Left, which in the aftermath of losing one single presidential election are acting as if the sky were falling, as if there will be no more dawns, as if Bush were preparing to unleash the hordes of Mordor upon the world. To them, and to the many people who are actually (seriously?) calling for secession from the United States (like Moby) or other such batty solutions to the intractable problem that the democratic process sometimes produces results you don't like, I say:
Get a grip.
Please.
(Hat tip: Instapundit.)
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