9 Responses to “Bagged & Boarded 10: To All My Brooklyn”

1. rob e? Says:
   December 4th, 2008 at 10:38 pm

   first, i have black friends, and when they first referred to me as ‘nigga’, my response was confusion, then calling them a cracker. then they were the confused ones.

   the whole n-word thing reminds me of a recent bit louis ck did. granted this is not word for word, but reinterpreted:

   saying the word ‘n-word’ does much more damage than actually saying nigger. by saying ‘n-word’ it makes whoever hearing it, not say nigger, but think about the word and its meaning.

   by the gratutious use of the ‘n-word’ made me recall this.

   also, the whole girls-making-out-with-other-girls-but aren’t-bi thing i think is relevant in most of the united states.

   i live in wisconsin and girls are always on other girls, grinding and making out at parties. it has to be the attention factor, because these girls will just do it to put it on their myspace or facebook whatever.

   closing: in the words of dave chappelle “if you dont like chicken then theres something wrong with you”

2. rob e? Says:
   December 4th, 2008 at 10:49 pm

   sorry for the double post, but i see no problem with black humor.

   stand up as an example.. chappelle, rock, the kings, mooney, pryor, any comedian off of def comedy jam.

   if its hurtful to race or ethnicity, if its black people insulting their race, or insulting mine, i laugh my ass off.

   which brings me to my question.. does this make me racist that i laugh at their humor about one another?

   to myself, i see comedy as comedy, but where is the line for a white person on black humor?

3. Zayus Says:
   December 5th, 2008 at 5:35 am

   First.. Wow.. This one is mislabled, it was funny.. But it was also insightful, intellegent, honest and open.. Easily your best podcast yet.. Do this every now and again.. It’s very very good…

   I’m the whitest white guy in the world.. My nephew, bi-racial.. However his father, a black gentleman, died shortly after his birth and his family is not open to us.. So this little half-black boy will be raised by his family, quite white we all are… And I wonder about his racial identity.. The day will come, after he starts school I imagine, that he will realize he’s not the same as the rest of us.. And I wonder where that’ll take him.

4. JesseRivers Says:
   December 5th, 2008 at 11:35 am

   Hopefully, it will make him stronger and able to be more independent.

5. Shawn Says:
   December 5th, 2008 at 1:29 pm

   Great show guys, and a very topical one considering the country has decided to finally put a black man in the position of “Most Powerful Man in the World”. I would also like to preface my comments with the fact that politically I am probably 180 from you, but I hope that won’t taint your opinion of my comments.

   On the issue of the “N-word” (I even hate using that, I would rather just say the word), I can see where Jesse is coming from in being uncomfortable with it’s usage. It is a word that’s meaning behind it is derogatroy. It is meant to bring a person down. So I grab from the George Carlin model (the Seven Words You Can’t Say on TV sketch) and say that it is not so much the “word” that is at issue, but the meaning behind the word. And that is where the problem comes in, since only the person using the word can know the intent behind it. Black people have taken the word and removed the negative meaning behind it. But in doing so, it has blurred the meaning of the world and made it more difficult to determine the intent of a person who is using it. Before, people obviously knew that that word was negative, while now it is completely subjective to what the word’s meaning is. This leads to (in my opinion) more blurring between what is racist and what is not.
   So, by changing the meaning of the word, it has made it more difficult to determine whether or not the person using it was racist or not.

   On the issue of homosexuality, it is more complex. Having Bachelors Degree in science and having studied genetics, heredity and evolution, it puzzles my why nature would preselect a percentage of the population to be drawn towards a lifestyle that predisposes them from passing on their genetic material. In all higher lifeforms on the planet, evolution has broken the reproductive process into a requirement for genetic material to come from both sexes in order to produce offspring. Homosexuals cannot naturally have offspring. Refering to what Matt said, as a heterosexual he could never see himself being attracted to a person of the same sex, so how could a homosexual find themselves attracted to a member of the opposite sex, a requirement for the continuance of their genetic lineage? I can’t say that it isn’t natural because, like Matt, I have only felt an attraction toward members of the opposite sex…it just just puzzles me.

   Well, I now open myself up to any rebuttals that the fine listeners of “Bagged and Boarded” will (and should) hit me with. Will keep listening, and hope that the next show is all dick and fart jokes and Jimmy Moore visits to balance this episode out…:-)

6. JesseRivers Says:
   December 6th, 2008 at 1:00 am

   GREAT post! Wonderful points.

   I think you got Matt and I confused though. I’m the cool one.

   Some DEFINITE Jimmy Moore appearances on the way. I may even invite him myself.

7. Jesse (the other one) Says:
   December 6th, 2008 at 6:22 pm

   People are not taught to hate. They are taught who to hate.

8. Shawn Says:
   December 6th, 2008 at 9:27 pm

   D’oh!!!

   Way to go me for invalidating my “well thought out” post with a stupid mistake like that.

   And I always knew you were the cool one…

9. Jon Says:
   December 7th, 2008 at 4:24 am

   Bit harsh to say straight girls do it only for attention, whilst undoubtably a lot of them do, there’s more to it than that. Homosexuality is an entirely arbitrary taboo reinforced by religious and evolutionary dictates. In the past few decades female homosexual ACTS have become more acceptable, even encouraged, by a male dominated hyper-sexualised culture. Once that taboo is broken down though you might make out with the same gender for a whole host of reasons, attention being one of them, just a laugh being another, or even as a completely platonic bonding of friendship. I have a pretty liberal group of male friends who’ve been known to make out with each other before, their principle reason is because its ‘funny’ or they’re attempting to ‘weird out’ the other half. Largely due to the fact that even in the most liberal of hetero male groups, male homosexuality is still quite a taboo. Interestingly enough though, the few hetero friends of mine I could even imagine being gay have never done anything like that, whilst its the ones most blatantly hetero that have done it time and time again!

   What Jesse said about actors was a good point though, if there’s actually no sexual attraction there whatsoever its not really a “gay kiss”, its closer to kissing your grandma or something.

   As for the word ‘nigger’ its always kinda made sense to me (albeit as a white Brit) that the word was reclaimed by African Americans. In the same way that other oppressed groups like the working-class or women reclaim derogatory words used against them and use them as a symbol of pride and strength. I look forward to the day when thats what the word ‘nigger’ is remembered for. Its happened already to a small extent with the word ‘bitch’ which has connotations of assertiveness and strength nowadays which it previously didn’t.

   As an interesting (maybe) aside to that, how has it suddenly become okay to “black up” again? I’ve seen a bunch of comedy actors do it, the highest profile being RDJ in Tropic Thunder. There’s no ‘reclaiming’ going on here though, its just “oh look at the funny white man making himself look like a nigger” and I gotta say I’m a little uncomfortable with it, given its history.

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