“Obama Fingers”
(a random pagemonkey rant)

I have a spot in my brand-new office chair to clean up, Gentle Reader, which I’ll get around to just as soon as finish this little spiel. Hopefully by then I’ll be all done with laughing so hard I pee.

The US is dealing with its first African-American president, and I’m having a more fun than a… Well, than I should.

It seems like we can’t go a whole week without someone, somewhere sticking a foot in a mouth, and I don’t mean a foot of cock. I mean good old timey racism.

Or at least something which at first glance seems like racism - but might not actually be, until we apply our “instinctive” internal racist leanings to that something.

Walgreens, in a knee-jerk fit of political correctness, pulled their store-stock of the Obama Chia Pet off their shelves after reaching the too-sensitive conclusion that it wasn’t appropriate.

But an observant fan of www.boners.com caught a Walgreen’s location with their balls showing - whether stocking cotton balls underneath Black History Month signage was deliberate or accidental, it proves someone there was truly asleep at the switch.

Then there was national outrage (at least in some) when a German foodmaker honored Obama with a line of tasty curried fried chicken strips. I believe it was an innocent mistake; racist Germans don’t associate Africans with fried chicken. They have their own slurs, which are of a different nature.

And really, in modern times, is trans fat free fried chicken really a bad thing to be associated with?

Even tho the “black folk and fried chicken” thing has roots in hostile racial memory, quite honestly, fried chicken has become an American staple for all creeds.

Far worse things have happened in fuzzy world of product naming - and those things pale in comparison to other things which have happened on the streets and in the businesses of this country.

Virtually every business in the US has used what I’ll call “the Black Image” in promoting a product or service.

And they still do, although that “Black Image” has changed quite a bit over the years.

This antique magazine ad clearly shows African-Americans in a servile role, a sign of its era.

The $64 Question is this: Does something like the Obama Chia show any disrespect? Many have been honored in the Chia way, another American quirk.

Some things are over the top because of the way they employ these hostile racial memories, and perhaps we should concentrate on them instead.

~ pagemonkey