Quick: What goes through your mind when you look at the following image?
If it occurred to you that this cartoon, which Marietta, Georgia bar owner Mike Norman is proudly and defiantly hawking at his establishment in the form of T-shirts, might be considered racially sensitive in some circles, you're not alone. But as of 5:35 EDT on May 13, you'd be in the minority of respondents to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution Poll.
Based on some other verbal gems he's produced, Norman would have a hard time arguing that he legitimately supports the Democratic front-runner for the presidency. To wit:
"I wish Hillary had married OJ"
"No habla espanol -- and never will"
"I.N.S. Agents eat free"
Why someone who posts such things outside his tavern even bothers lying about his intentions and motives is strange, but you have to see what this to this constitutively buzzing vibrator says to believe him:
Norman said those offended are "hunting for a reason to be mad" and insisted he is "not a racist."
Norman said he sees nothing wrong with depicting Obama as Curious George. "Look at him . . . the hairline, the ears, he looks just like Curious George," Norman said. He said he did not design the shirts himself but bought them through a Web site.He said he views it as just coincidence that the character on the T-shirt is a monkey. Norman also said proceeds raised from sales will be donated to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.
Cobb County, of course, has in recent years earned notoriety as a result of the actions of a different strain of Bumpkinis australis, which sought to put "warning stickers" inside science textbooks with the temerity to present evolution as if it had a single shred of evidence to back it up.
Hey, Atlanta's not such a bad city, mainly because so many of its residents were not born in the rural South. So oo to the AJC poll and represent, even if you don't like Obama himself.
Politics
Comments
Please do not make generalizations about the South or wish that our cities would be burned again. I think the shirt is extremely racist and I was born and raised in Tennessee. Assholes live everywhere.
Posted by: microbiologychick | May 13, 2008 6:17 PM
I live in the South. In general, it's a thundering mosh pit of ignorance and fire-breathing stupidity. You know that as well as I do.
Fortunately, from Texas all the way to South Carolina, there are hundreds of thousands of exceptions to what is, unfortunately, a valid rule. (By the same token, there are redneck douchebags in New England, the S.F. Bay Area, and other loci generally upheld as bastions of progressive thinking.) If I didn't care to confront this unfortunate state of affairs in my own humble way, I wouldn't appeal to people to vote in the AJC's "is it OK?" poll.
Posted by: Kevin Beck | May 13, 2008 6:23 PM
One thing you might not know about Marietta, Georgia, is that it is in Cobb County, which has become a bedroom community for Atlanta and which holds a very large contingent of ex-patriot Yankee republicans in addition to the home-grown rednecks. In other words, you should find out which particular group this idiot and his cohorts belong to before you decide where to send Sherman.
Posted by: Mark P | May 13, 2008 6:24 PM
Ha! I missed the last sentence of the post when I just commented. You have drawn exactly the wrong conclusion from the influx of non-southerners into the Atlanta area. That very influx is responsible for a great deal of the ultra-conservatism in Cobb County today.
Posted by: Mark P | May 13, 2008 6:27 PM
Also noted: his apostrophe is upside down.
That's not Southern incompetence, that's
Microsoft Word.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 13, 2008 6:30 PM
"You have drawn exactly the wrong conclusion from the influx of non-southerners into the Atlanta area."
Atlanta the city and Cobb County are, as I recall from my days as an Atlanta resident circa 1994, two vastly different place. Even then Cobb County was making a lot of anti-gay noise, well before the idea of civil unions, etc. took root.
Note also that I didn't say it was a requirement that every redneck presently living in Cobb County be born there in order to earn scorn. Just as there is a reason gays at one point began flocking to San Francisco and Libertarians (mostly the mindless, hypocritical kind) decided central New Hampshire was a good place for them to assemble in sizable numbers, something besides the weather and the Falcons drew the Yankee morons to the Marietta area to begin with.
Don't make the mistake that I'm pretending there are no racists in the North and no decent people in the South. I figured people would stipulate as much for themselves without me needing to be explicit. Boston and Detroit may be the most racist cities out there. But the kind of shit I posted about up there happens far more often in places like Georgia than it does in places like Connecticut.
Now please, y'all, quit the defensive-minded yowling and yammering and pay attention to the point, which is to vote in the poll.
Posted by: Kevin Beck | May 13, 2008 6:37 PM
I'd love to say the assholes are equal everywhere, but I'm from West Virginia. I know. It's a cesspool of racists everywhere, unless the black guy's playing football - then he's the most upstanding citizen in the history of the county.
Posted by: Reginald | May 13, 2008 6:38 PM
I'd love to say the assholes are equal everywhere, but I'm from West Virginia. I know. It's a cesspool of racists everywhere, unless the black guy's playing football - then he's the most upstanding citizen in the history of the county.
Posted by: Reginald | May 13, 2008 6:41 PM
And who is standing up for the rights of Curious George in this debacle? Poor little guy being dragged into the gutter for such craven political purposes. That poll needs a third option.
Posted by: DrugMonkey | May 13, 2008 6:47 PM
I will add with more seriousness. My great-grandmother was born in Georgia just after the end of the war, and grew up in the wasteland Sherman's troops left behind them. She talked about it with us, her great-grandchildren, and she lived to 97. Her memories of those years were clear, and bitter.
Anyone who's lost their country to an undisciplined, uncontrolled occupying army, anywhere, any time, can tell the same stories about what happens. When a hungry army is left to take whatever they want from the civilian population and burn whatever's left over, memory lingers for generations on that ground.
You should read a bit of the history and consider whether you'd wish anything like that on a country to punish a stupid T-shirt.
I doubt anyone on the winning side told their great-grandchildren what they did there.
Much the same story anywhere. Be careful what you wish for.
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 13, 2008 6:54 PM
Who the hell said anything about sacking and burning? You people sure do make a lot of assumptions based on a few short words.
Posted by: Kevin Beck | May 13, 2008 6:56 PM
Personally, I can see the resemblance between Curious George and Obama, myself. It's not that I think black people are all "monkeys"; I just think that specifically Obama kind of resembles him.
Of course, I also think George Bush looks like him. And there are actually Curious "George" T-shirts with Bush's face superimposed on the loveable cartoon character's face.
I realize there is a lot of racial context behind the whole "black people = monkeys" thing, but I can buy the guy's argument, and it doesn't seem totally unreasonable as an explanation to say he just thinks Obama resembles him (much like many think Bush resembles him). Although the "he's a fucking bigot" hypothesis also doesn't seem unreasonable, given some of his past remarks you've included. I'm torn.
I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on this one.
Posted by: Saint Gasoline | May 13, 2008 7:13 PM
Well Kev, Tecumseh did sack, burn, and rape Georgia (he also found my alma mater) as he was marching to the sea, if memory serves.
What tavern does this used-tampon eatin', douche bag drinker own?
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | May 13, 2008 7:27 PM
Let's not forget, too, that behind every Curious George is a Man in the Yellow Hat.
A Yellow Hat.
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 13, 2008 7:46 PM
I gotta step up and say you guys haven't let me down. I was hoping in advance to be called on the Sherman reference in the post title even by those who agree with me in general about the tavern owner being a shitball, and y'all delivered.
I do hope some of you grokked the intentional irony in me pretending not to be connecting Sherman with war crimes, aggravated arson, and gross assholery and excess in general, as this is exactly what the Norman dildo has done in pretending his T-shirt isn't racist. Rarely so you see wingy conservatives policing their own in this way.
The yellow hat thing went completely over my head.
Posted by: Kevin Beck | May 13, 2008 7:57 PM
yeah, I don't really know what that was supposed to mean either. Feelin a little punchy after grading lab reports all...day...long...
Posted by: Sven DiMilo | May 13, 2008 8:28 PM
Well, let me step up and defend Sherman. I am from a town only about an hour from Atlanta, one that was pretty much bypassed by the US Army (I like to use that term rather than "Union Army". I got it from someone else, but I can't remember who.) The people whose towns were burned or whose farms were sacked kind of brought that down on themselves, didn't they? They were all hot to shell Fort Sumter and secede from the Union so they could keep owning humans. I imagine that the politicians were quite pleased with themselves, and most of the population went along with it, just like they do today. Only it didn't turn out quite like they expected.
Sherman introduced modern warfare to end a regime that was qualitatively close to Hitler's, if not quantitatively. The South got what it damned well deserved.
And if you would like to sack Marietta, I won't object too much. As I said, just make sure you get the right ones, and don't chase them too far up I-75.
Posted by: Mark P | May 13, 2008 8:28 PM
Irony?
http://www.cafepress.com/cp/store/store.aspx?storeid=bushorchimp4
Posted by: Hank Roberts | May 13, 2008 9:04 PM
I notice that it seems to be the suburbs that were once (but very recently) real and suddenly find themselves to be "the tech corridor" that end up the loudest battlegrounds in the culture wars from the religious right.
Cobb, as I understood it, used to be mostly rural with a bit of blue-collar industry here and there, but the tech corridor following the interstate, and the surplus of high-tech workers coming out of GaTech and wanting to stay in the area, has flooded that area with the college educated.
As such, there's a culture clash going on between the older south still in residence throughout the county and this new high tech boom of people around Marietta itself who otherwise would have moved to DC or the Valley (or even Charlotte or Jacksonville) had it not been for the tech boom that started there in the 80s and is still going strong.
However, the tech-saavy are not always the most politically active, so it appears to me they now have a political majority that formed out of what has become a cultural minority. This power boost is, to my mind, what is giving them the clout to assert their "truth" over the relative newcomers who certainly would prefer the education system give their children the same tech-saavy, science-saavy background that they got to get them there.
Loudoun County, VA has also been going through that kind of war, with ID proponents writing the editorials in the papers and anti-gay bigots running (always under the Republican banner) for office all coming out of the more rural West of the county. To my mind, it seems the same war - they see intrusion into their turf and are trying to use politics to fight it back or to hold onto political control even as they no longer hold the cultural majority.
However, being DC, the moderates that have moved out here to work around the DC area but wanting decent housing prices (including myself) are more politically active and have voted these nutcases out in the last 4 elections. Certainly with many of the new residence being formerly from high-rated Fairfax County, the last thing they'll do is let Loudoun's education system fail their kids.
Not to say I'm not keeping an eye on the situation.
Posted by: Joe Shelby | May 13, 2008 9:05 PM
It's arguable that Sherman had to burn a lot of stuff down. Many historians credit him with ending the war. Also, much of it was done by his soldiers and not by him.
Posted by: Negi | May 13, 2008 9:25 PM
Substitue Bush for Sherman and burn down a lot of stuff for Abu Ghraib.
Does it still mean the same for you?
Posted by: Jeb, FCD | May 13, 2008 10:34 PM
Whew! Gettin' hot in here... Say, is that the same Norman famous for golfing with Bill Clinton and/or O.J. Simpson?
Posted by: Matt Platte | May 13, 2008 10:43 PM
How do you vote in a poll with those choices? I think the shirt is offensive, but the fact of the shirt, from a free speech point of view is fine. Worse is available featuring GWB,et al. And yes, I worry about a lot of closet racists finding themselves in a voting booth in November and thinking "anybody but a ..."
Posted by: Blind Squirrel FCD | May 14, 2008 12:26 AM
#23 (Blind Squirrel), "fine" from a free speech point is not what the poll is asking. Free speech doesn't mean you have to like it. In fact, it often means the opposite. It's racist, but protected speech. But it's still racist.
Posted by: Ames | May 14, 2008 12:44 AM
The Civil War was 150 years ago. The South had more guns and more troops, but the North still won because we were smarter.
The Confederates were the bad guys who instigated the war and were on the wrong side of the moral issue at the center of it.
Sherman was a War Hero, if you didn't want your cities burned down you shouldn't have started the war. You wanna whine about it? Fine, pick up some guns and try to start another one, but we in the North have been busy advancing over the past 150 years (even though we've had to pay billions in taxes to support the freakish welfare and divorce rates of the South), so we might be a little ahead of you on the technology front.
You instigated a war, Sherman annihilated you. That's war. You lost, get the hell over it.
Posted by: Reginald | May 14, 2008 1:21 AM
The Civil War was 150 years ago. The South had more guns and more troops, but the North still won because we were smarter.
The Confederates were the bad guys who instigated the war and were on the wrong side of the moral issue at the center of it.
Sherman was a War Hero, if you didn't want your cities burned down you shouldn't have started the war. You wanna whine about it? Fine, pick up some guns and try to start another one, but we in the North have been busy advancing over the past 150 years (even though we've had to pay billions in taxes to support the freakish welfare and divorce rates of the South), so we might be a little ahead of you on the technology front.
You instigated a war, Sherman annihilated you. That's war. You lost, get the hell over it.
Posted by: Reginald | May 14, 2008 1:46 AM
WTF? I find the BushOrChimp Curious George shirts seriously offensive. No, seriously. I do not want Curious George anywhere near Bush, they look nothing alike, and Bush doesn't do things out of mere curiosity. There are plenty of other monkeys that resemble Bush without having to drag Curious George into it, no matter how tempting it may be because of his name.
Obama being compared to Curious George doesn't really work either.
Posted by: K.A. | May 14, 2008 2:13 AM
Were you perhaps thinking of Civil War II?
Posted by: kai | May 14, 2008 2:42 AM
Why is it everytime something like this happens, and it happens frequently enough, suddenly people rise up with some version of this meme;
"Hey, I'm from the south and
a.-I live in the north now
b.-I do a lot business up north
c.-when I vacationed in _______(someplace north of the m/d line)
I saw a lot of racists there saying and doing racist things."
Yet time and time again these examples pop up from down thar.
I lived in Florida for four years. I've traveled through a lot of the south and guess what, sometimes those cartoon images, those nasty stereotypes and general impressions are accurate. Draw the Venn diagram any way you want. This idea that the oft-reported "subtle racism" of the north is worse than the overt racism found in the south is ridiculous. It's a cheap and transparent rationalization, "At least we're more honest" is a laughably contemptible viewpoint.
Posted by: ice weasel | May 14, 2008 3:14 AM
reprint the shirt, but change the caption to
BUSH IN `08
I'll bet Goober (oops .. Mike Norman) will NOT be ordering any of those. Why? Because Bill O'Reilly didn't command him to do so.
Posted by: Bubba | May 14, 2008 3:58 AM
For some reason I was under the impression that the US civil war largely started over threatened new taxation laws which would have hit agricultural areas (eg most of the south) a lot harder than industrial ones (eg most of the north).
The abolition of slavery only became a major goal of the war when it became politically convenient to do so, a year or so after the war had already started. (Convenient as it would gain the moral high ground whilst also causing the south potential manpower problems.)
The US civil war was pretty much not covered at all in my school history lessons though, we mainly did medieval stuff about how we lost, consistently, throughout the centuries. (Yay for Scotland ;) )
So, edumacate me!
Posted by: Andrew | May 14, 2008 5:49 AM
What have you all got against apes? In general they are far more noble creatures than politicians.
Posted by: sailor | May 14, 2008 6:09 AM
Man, there's gotta be a new Jack Johnson song to come out of this to defend the GoodMonkey.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | May 14, 2008 7:14 AM
As a South Carolinian (First in Secession!) I still find it funny that the mere mention of Shermen causes adults to fall back into "The South Will Rise Again" mentality. Did you all not read the rest of the post?
Why is that that anytime a Rational Southerner mentions that there are racists everywhere someone has to come along and say, "I lived in Florida for four years" and then goes on about how bad it is down here.
The fact that the more rational members of the south mention the fact that racists exist everywhere is not an excuse for the ones we have here.
What a ridiculous comment yours is.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 14, 2008 7:49 AM
Get your facts straight before you start your rant. The Union had more than twice as many soldiers. But, oh, we southerners are the stupid ones? Idiot.
The north has Faulkner envy. :)
Not that I don't agree with the fact that the south needs to get over the civil war, but then it mostly has. Quaint stereotypes are not evidence.
Posted by: Boris | May 14, 2008 8:56 AM
No one, absolutely none of you, has mentioned that if the good 'ol USA was not still a racist nation, no one would think that t-shirt was racist any more than they thought it was racist with Bush's face on it. And Obama does look more like Curious George than Bush does and, hopefully, IS more like Curious George than Bush is. When Obama wins the November election, you will see his face caricatured all over the US by every political cartoonist everywhere.
As for racist attacks, they have not yet begun. The real racist attacks from the real racists will start as soon as Obama is named over Clinton. They will be "disassociated" with the Republican party but they will make swiftboating look kind.
Get over it. And get ready.
Posted by: Oldfart | May 14, 2008 9:16 AM
Hey, Atlanta's not such a bad city, mainly because so many of its residents were not born in the rural South. So oo [sic] to the AJC poll and represent, even if you don't like Obama himself.
What a thoroughly disgusting attitude you take towards my city. What a thoroughly disgusting attitude you take towards a state where Obama beat Clinton by a two-to-one margin.
And because you found a single racist bar owner in a suburb you call up the ghost of Sherman to burn my home to the ground, to destroy a city that's 62% black, that has a black Mayor, a black sheriff, a black police chief, a city with a thriving black culture and business community, a city with a higher proportion of black college graduates than any other in America.
You're letting your piety get in the way of your ability to think. You're confusing anecdotes with evidence -- on a site called "Science Blogs!" -- and using habitual bigotry against a region as a substitute for thoughtfulness.
Posted by: Vaughn | May 14, 2008 9:19 AM
#25 seems to take more of his identity from the Civil War than the rest of the commenters combined, then asks everyone to "get the hell over it". Intentional?
Posted by: impiri | May 14, 2008 9:30 AM
I do hope some of you grokked the intentional irony in me pretending not to be connecting Sherman with war crimes
Yeah! That's not tacky at all! Hey, next time you disagree with some Cambodian, you should title your post "Why we could use another Pol Pot" so see can enjoy the intentional irony in you pretending not to connect Pol Pot with war crimes.
Posted by: Vaughn | May 14, 2008 9:33 AM
While y'all debate whether Kevin should've used this example, I just have one observation about the Civil War comments.
A couple weekends ago, the PharmKid and I visited the site of negotiations (not Appomattox) for the largest troop surrender of the war (Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida) as they had some exhibits, authors, and reenactments (it was the 143rd anniversary weekend of the surrender that occurred just days after Lincoln's assassination).
As someone born in the industrial North but who has chosen the South as home for one-third of my life, I felt no pride at all in identifying with either side.
What I did feel instead was a sense of overwhelming and gnawing sadness that 620,000 Americans died at the hands of one another, all for a fight over the horrific oppression of another group of Americans.
Generals Sherman and Johnston somehow became friends in the years following the surrender, apparently having somehow salvaging a sense of mutual respect following their joint exhaustion over this wasted effort (despite Sherman's March, people often forget that Sherman proposed far more humane conditions for the surrender (military only) than what was finally negotiated - Sec of War Seward quashed Sherman and Johnston's original agreement).
Johnston later served as pallbearer at Sherman's funeral, refusing to wear a hat in the cold pouring rain out of respect for his former adversary. Johnston then died of pneumonia about a month later.
If these two formerly vicious rivals lived out the rest of their lives not only in peace but as friends, surely we could learn a little something from their example.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | May 14, 2008 10:03 AM
Grammar self-policing: first sentence of the fifth pgh above should read, "apparently having somehow salvaged a sense of mutual respect."
Carry on.
Posted by: Abel Pharmboy | May 14, 2008 10:05 AM
Why use Curious George if it's not meant to be racist?
If they caricature him as a monkey it will be hearkening back to the use of monkeys to denigrate blacks in the past. And will have roots in racism.
The use of monkeys to caricature GW Bush is not racist because it's not a comment on his race, but on his bumbling inept actions. That's a red herring to compare the two.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 14, 2008 10:21 AM
"And because you found a single racist bar owner in a suburb you call up the ghost of Sherman to burn my home to the ground, to destroy a city that's 62% black, that has a black Mayor, a black sheriff, a black police chief, a city with a thriving black culture and business community, a city with a higher proportion of black college graduates than any other in America."
Hey Vaughn: Is Atlanta now in Cobb County? Is Marietta an unincorporated place inside Atlanta's boundaries
And your pretending I implored anyone to burn anything to the ground is at least as bad as my alleged insinuation that all Southerners and wannabe Klan members. I gave "your" city props. Get over it.
Posted by: Kevin Beck | May 14, 2008 12:00 PM
Hey, news flash: the copyright owner of Curious George is considering suing the Marietta bar owner who used the image on his racist T-shirt. I hope they do. Now, I just wish that Bill Watterson had sued the people who make the decals showing Calvin peeing on a Ford or Chevrolet emblem. Or kneeling at a cross.
Posted by: Mark P | May 14, 2008 12:49 PM
Born in Pennsylvania. Grew up there and Indiana. Lived in Woodstock, GA for a while. Live in Indiana now.
I have seen racism everywhere, but the number of white folks who say things like, "My family were good to our slaves," and think that makes it all OK is stupefying in... Georgia.
I love the U S of A, all of it. And the South wanted to break away and picked up guns to do it. They lost. To me, loving the whole country, warts and all, means that the South did a bad thing in trying to break it up.
The Confederate flag is the symbol of anti-Americanism, it's that simple, but I bet this bubba t-shirt seller bar owner has it hanging up somewhere.
Posted by: JessC | May 14, 2008 1:37 PM
Go Sherman! And take Mr. Peabody with you.
Posted by: Phil | May 14, 2008 3:54 PM
JessC, that is truly weird. I have lived in the south my entire life except for about a year and a half in Cali, and I have never heard one person say anything about how their family treated their slaves. And, since I'm nearing 60, that means I lived in the south during a time when lots of white people were doing lots of bad things to black people, so they wouldn't have been shy about their families having owned slaves. You must have traveled in different circles.
But who the hell cares? The T-shirt is racist, and that's the bottom line. I just hope the copyright owner sues him.
Posted by: Mark P | May 14, 2008 4:58 PM
Well, as interesting as the side skirmishes have been, I'm pleased to say that largely because, I am sure, of PZ Myers picking up on this and linking to the AJC poll, the vote tally has gone from 52%-48% in favor of "It's fine" votes (out of a total of 13,000) about 20 hours ago to 66% in favor of "It's racist" votes (out of almost 30,000) at present. That means that since people outside the usual AJC readership started taking notice, the voting has gone almost 4 to 1 against the "It's fine" morons.
A special thanks to Gen. Sherman, for without mentioning his name I never could have gotten half as many people to click on this post as the number who actually have; "Racism alive and kicking in South" is about as much of an attention-getter as "chilly conditions predicted in Fairbanks this January."
Posted by: Kevin Beck | May 14, 2008 5:59 PM
Yes those are such equivalent events for comparison.
Posted by: Rev. BigDumbChimp | May 15, 2008 7:24 AM
Mark-
One woman was a Boortz fan and staunch Republican who had a confederate flag in her cube. She was the most detailed on how good her family was to their slaves, and the "didn't have it bad." They were allowed to read, for instance.
Another was an edgy hippy-type, another was a classic red-neck bubba. All very intelligent people who felt their ancestors weren't the "bad" slave owners, they were "good" slave owners.
Stupefying.
Posted by: JessC | May 15, 2008 8:59 AM
There's another article up about the bar owner including a picture:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/cobb/stories/2008/05/15/norman_0515.html
Gotta love this quote:
Norman acknowledged the charged history of the "monkey" association, but said, "this is 2008. This is not 1941 in Alabama, so get over it." -- filthy racist
Posted by: mgordon | May 15, 2008 11:43 AM