My previous post raised the debate of whether a certain political television advertisement is racist. I couldn’t, for the life of me, figure out how it could be racist. But then again, I had no idea the complete ignorance that still exists in the country.

“Slaghammer”, the brilliant mind behind alchemyanyone.blogspot.com/ , left the following in the comment section of Dr. Blogstein: If you think this ad is racist, you must be a racist but it is far too insightful to be hidden in there.

I hope he is okay with me bringing into the forefront. Read it now and then we’ll discuss:

Incidentally, its a landslide winner of

I think this issue needs some context.

I know people who only recently discovered that blood from black people can transfused into white people. They’ve lived their lives operating on the assumption that black people’s blood is black and is therefore poison to white people. Their opinion is primarily based on a knifing incident involving some family members where the blood of the victim appeared black. I think it was because the blood was all over a gas station floor stained black by grease. I’m pretty sure they saw what they wanted to see.

A couple of years ago, another person told me that God had called him to preach, this only moments before he told me that black people don’t have souls so it is ok to kill them. He believes that the concept of a white person being jailed for killing a black person is outrageous. I’ve heard endless diatribes regarding verses in the bible that support enslaving black people and decades of detailed stories about the evils of the that race.

Of course, not all racists are that outrageously ignorant of biology, but from where I stand, the more intellectual pro-racist arguments are just as laughable. I worked with skinheads in the north several years back. They were constantly rotating in and out of jail because they just couldn’t pass by a mixed race couple without “inviting them to a boot party.”

I mention all of that so I can say this, according to the racist mentality, of all the alleged sins perpetrated against the white race by the black race, by far the most serious and the one they just can’t stop talking about is the “pillaging of their women and the polluting of their gene pool.” Based on my experiences with racism in the south, it appears there have been more minorities beaten and killed for that perceived threat than all of the other reasons combined.

Bottom line, that commercial is not racist any more than a wrench or a hammer can be racist. However, if a person uses the tool and knowingly encourages detrimental racial stereotypes in the process, then that person is a racist. If you don’t agree, then your argument is with the dictionary people. There is nothing racist about a person’s ignorance of the subtext in the commercial, especially if they have not been exposed to the reality of racism.

Regarding the people who actually created the commercial, I guess it could be argued that they had no working knowledge of the history or current reality of racism in the south. Maybe they had no idea that portraying a white woman insinuating sex with a black man might incite racists to action. Maybe some kid in his parent’s basement in Connecticut made the commercial. How sheltered would a person have to be to believe that?

Of course, there is nothing racist about living a sheltered life. The argument about racist voters not voting for black people anyway is irrelevant. I can’t think of a more powerful tool with which to get racists off the couch and into the voting booth than to insinuate that a black candidate in their district has been having sex with white women, in a close election, that could easily be the issue that tips the result one way or another. I guess I can understand why some people have such a hard time understanding it. For those fortunate enough to have never witnessed a crowd of racists being whipped into a frenzy, they could be forgiven for not understanding why the issue of racism is being raised.

Am I the only one so naive to be surprised that the above still exists? Am I also the only one who kind of thinks those ignorant, racist bastards who excel in violence as described in Slaghammer’s comment are just as dangerous as Islamic terrorists who may be living in our country? Shouldn’t Skinheads, KKK and the like be considered terrorists and taken out as part of the War on Terror? Perhaps, while “we’re fighting them over there” we should also be fighting our own homegrown terrorists too!

I’m Dr. Blogstein and I approve this message.

It was rather innocuous and quite succinct but the comment left by omninaïf of “A droll way to look at things” in response to my rapping debut sure made me fly off the handle.

In RUN DMZ, I poke fun at the adorable dictator of North Korea by writing a parody of a classic Run DMC song. Kim Jong Illin’, as I named my rap, was ridiculous. That was the point of it. The whole idea was to make people laugh.

I succeeded in doing so with omninaïf. I know this because he told me in the form of a comment: “I’m laughing at you. Not with you.“

Mission accomplished, right? You would think so, but for some odd reason I took offense to that comment. Maybe it was the lack of sleep that is a symptom of having a favorite team in the playoffs or perhaps the stress of keeping up the #1 blog on the entire World Wide Web, but I jumped all over poor omninaïf:

Sheesh, Blogstein, chill out!

His was a very valid comment, so valid that it wins COMMENT OF THE WEEK and not because I feel bad for jumping down his throat for no reason. Rather, because he proved to me that what I’ve been doing here has served a purpose.

My goal is to make people laugh and think, but mostly laugh. I don’t care whether you’re laughing with me or at me. I don’t care if your laughing at something totally unrelated but that I reminded you of. Just laugh. In fact, I can’t blame anyone for laughing at my reaction to omninaïf’s COMMENT OF THE WEEK.

I’d be laughing myself if I wasn’t so embarrassed about it!

Another week in the books and again readers have contributed to Dr. Blogstein in ways that I never could have. One such contribution, by Ra Ra Ra Bunggio of “Awesomely Amazing“, is the clear cut winner of COMMENT OF THE WEEK.

In a post from Monday titled “Shooting Up Your School“, I gave my thoughts on the recent rash of school shootings. Ra Ra Ra, however, was able to provide a first hand account of a near tragedy.

Ra Ra Ra (left) is in high school and his school came thisclose to making the news in a very bad way. He responds to my post by saying, “I actually had an expierence [sic] with this kind of thing at my school. The Problem(s) with Englewood“