(Why) Everybody hates Brad (Garrett) and his freedumb of speech acts
April 17th 2009 03:28
When was the last time you sat down and tried to fit a jigsaw puzzle together? You find that sometimes the pieces just seem to fall into place or they seem to follow a pattern. Let me see if you can work this out. If a guy makes a racist joke one time about African-Americans not usually being in a certain area, you might be able to forgive him, right? I mean look at Michael Richards. His racist rant went on for a good couple of minutes and we've forgiven him, right? Right?
Imagine then that Brad Garrett who according to TMZ " a photog from the FAME photo agency questioned the "Everybody Loves Raymond" star about a joke he made about black people earlier in the week. According to several witnesses and FAME, last month Brad noticed a black photog taking his picture, and in Kramer-esque fashion quipped, "I didn't know there were black people in Malibu. Go back to where you came from."
"The next night, where the 6'8" behemoth reached his boiling point when the same black photog questioned him about the alleged comment. The photog told Garrett that there were "more black people here this time," to which the actor replied, "Yeah, I know ... when did they let you out?" "
Two times, and we start to get a little suspicious of this guy who is starting to make a habit of being demeaning to people of colour, don't we? We sure do, but we watch because we think of an excuse like "Hey maybe because he's a comedian, he just sees stuff that doesn't necessarily seem funny to make a tense situation a litle lighter" I mean Carlin was the king of that kind of stuff, wasn't he? I had Carlin's book, "Napalm and Silly Putty" and I laughed all the way through. He said that anything could be funny depending on where the emphasis is placed. Black comedian Patrice O'Neal has said the same thing. Maybe Brad works along those lines. We'll work with that and believe Brad is a nice guy. Like Robert on ELR.
So then, in doing research for this blog, I came across this little nugget. Brad was on Ellen about two years ago and started singing about "one little, two little, three little Indians" whilst talking about American Indian casinos. Are we seeing a pattern here? So far he has abused the black community and now it's the American Indians turn! The guy that we loved so much on "Everybody loves Raymond" is now feeling a little less love from at least two sections of the community. To make up for it, what does Brad do? He waits and fire off another verbal.
This time it's the Muslim community. Brad this time decided to entangle himself with a man that looks like he's of arab/muslim descent, and Brad can be seen circling his hand over his own head saying "Wear the turban! Wear the turban!" I'm sorry Brad but that's what now, four racial slurs?
Let me add all of this up now. Two against the African-American community, one against the American-Indians, and one against the Arab/Muslim community. That's beyond a simple Michael Richards slip-up, goes further than Carlin's or O'Neal's comedic expression. It adds up to ignorance and bigotry. The good news at least we know who he is and what he stands for. The bad news is that he really stands for nothing worthwhile.
The only reason that he isn't wearing a white hood is because he wouldn't be accepted by the Klan simply because he's Jewish. Ironic isn't it? A bigot can't join his like-minded "friends" on account of them hating his religion.
Maybe because Mr. Garrett is a Jewish "comedian" he feels that his heritage and his occupation overrule decency and decorum, and his off-the-cuff remarks fall under the vague notion of free speech. I understand how the PC people are sometimes too much and the loss of the freedom of speech seems to threaten our way of life everyday, but where do we draw the line? What is now acceptable to say publicly?
The trouble is, we don't know. Nobody knows. To some like Brad Garrett and his bigoted ilk there are no boundaries. I think therein lies the problem. Instead of ill defined limits, to him there are none. Perhaps if he loses his career, it may help him to find what the boundaries are and if he hopefully loses that part of himself, he may find something much more important inside of himself to find others.
Imagine then that Brad Garrett who according to TMZ " a photog from the FAME photo agency questioned the "Everybody Loves Raymond" star about a joke he made about black people earlier in the week. According to several witnesses and FAME, last month Brad noticed a black photog taking his picture, and in Kramer-esque fashion quipped, "I didn't know there were black people in Malibu. Go back to where you came from."
"The next night, where the 6'8" behemoth reached his boiling point when the same black photog questioned him about the alleged comment. The photog told Garrett that there were "more black people here this time," to which the actor replied, "Yeah, I know ... when did they let you out?" "
Two times, and we start to get a little suspicious of this guy who is starting to make a habit of being demeaning to people of colour, don't we? We sure do, but we watch because we think of an excuse like "Hey maybe because he's a comedian, he just sees stuff that doesn't necessarily seem funny to make a tense situation a litle lighter" I mean Carlin was the king of that kind of stuff, wasn't he? I had Carlin's book, "Napalm and Silly Putty" and I laughed all the way through. He said that anything could be funny depending on where the emphasis is placed. Black comedian Patrice O'Neal has said the same thing. Maybe Brad works along those lines. We'll work with that and believe Brad is a nice guy. Like Robert on ELR.
So then, in doing research for this blog, I came across this little nugget. Brad was on Ellen about two years ago and started singing about "one little, two little, three little Indians" whilst talking about American Indian casinos. Are we seeing a pattern here? So far he has abused the black community and now it's the American Indians turn! The guy that we loved so much on "Everybody loves Raymond" is now feeling a little less love from at least two sections of the community. To make up for it, what does Brad do? He waits and fire off another verbal.
This time it's the Muslim community. Brad this time decided to entangle himself with a man that looks like he's of arab/muslim descent, and Brad can be seen circling his hand over his own head saying "Wear the turban! Wear the turban!" I'm sorry Brad but that's what now, four racial slurs?
Let me add all of this up now. Two against the African-American community, one against the American-Indians, and one against the Arab/Muslim community. That's beyond a simple Michael Richards slip-up, goes further than Carlin's or O'Neal's comedic expression. It adds up to ignorance and bigotry. The good news at least we know who he is and what he stands for. The bad news is that he really stands for nothing worthwhile.
The only reason that he isn't wearing a white hood is because he wouldn't be accepted by the Klan simply because he's Jewish. Ironic isn't it? A bigot can't join his like-minded "friends" on account of them hating his religion.
Maybe because Mr. Garrett is a Jewish "comedian" he feels that his heritage and his occupation overrule decency and decorum, and his off-the-cuff remarks fall under the vague notion of free speech. I understand how the PC people are sometimes too much and the loss of the freedom of speech seems to threaten our way of life everyday, but where do we draw the line? What is now acceptable to say publicly?
The trouble is, we don't know. Nobody knows. To some like Brad Garrett and his bigoted ilk there are no boundaries. I think therein lies the problem. Instead of ill defined limits, to him there are none. Perhaps if he loses his career, it may help him to find what the boundaries are and if he hopefully loses that part of himself, he may find something much more important inside of himself to find others.
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