The Old Negro Space Program

Steve N. writes:

Dennis Dale links an extremely slick Ken Burns parody.

Funny in its own right, but especially in how it lampoons the whole “Ken Burns” documentary look and feel. A must see.

LA replies:

I haven’t clicked on the link yet, but from your subject line, I can imagine what it is: a documentary on the space program in which the main narrative thread concerns the terrible, horrible, unbearable, never-to-be-gotten-over fact that blacks were kept out of the space program.

Steve replies:

Only a lot funnier!!

Posted November 24

Tom H. writes:

Very funny indeed. Reminds me that the blacks also formed the great Egyptian empire and had invented all sorts of wondrous things that the vile white man stole from them through force, violence and aggression. BTW that same blog also has a terrific essay on the myth that is Obama:

Some good excerpts from this writer (Dennis Dale):

• The historical reality and present romance of black suffering in America assigns a moral premium to blackness.

• The nation yearns for a climax, a final act of absolution. It stubbornly recedes the more we strive for it. Thus Barack.

• Of course in this cultural milieu, adopting the collective guilt model so regularly and inelegantly expressed in such arenas as Barack Obama’s former long-time church, “whiteness” as an ineradicable sin in itself is a necessity. The candidate himself stated as much clearly when describing slavery as “America’s original sin”, as if the institution originated and continues here, rather than in Africa. He also means, more to the point, “cardinal sin”. There is no final absolution for white America, just perpetual contrition.

• For a candidate to arrive on the scene as a sort of prefabricated historical figure, for his ascension to be defined as an act of justice and absolution; in light of the grand myth of the civil rights movement in America and the sheer power of this narrative—the wonder of Barack Obama is not that he is here, but that it has taken this long for him to arrive.

• Barack Obama was inevitable.

• The Obama campaign, more successfully, made itself one with the myth of civil rights. Ultimately the point is to present the candidate as the living human embodiment of Providence.. In a post-religious age, politics and celebrity fill the evangelistic void.

• While on the topic of blackness, I found his take on Oprah Winfrey just as telling:

• Oprah’s tyranny is enforced not by guns, secret police, and informants; Oprah’s power is a result of her aggressive, expert manipulation of public sentiment using today’s censorious weapons of mass destruction: race, gender, and victimhood.

• Oprah’s brilliant use of her public testimony of being sexually abused by male relatives, combined with her status as black woman (the unassailable birthright of which is placement atop the hierarchy of victim politics), and a star quality endearing her to millions of middle class women, makes her a virtual Spanish Armada of modern American moral purity.

• Oprah maintains this image by adopting a folksy demeanor, dipping in and out of black urban verbiage and inflection with just enough authenticity to endear her to legions of white housewives, eager to absolve themselves of the ever present accusation of racism while at the same time allowing them to feel that they are cosmopolitan; intimate and comfortable with this funky, down to earth black woman.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 20, 2009 06:40 PM | Send