Black like Al?

Some readers tell Gore to cut the jive talk. Others think he speaks just fine.

I was pleased that someone in the national media finally has picked up on and actually taken issue with the way our vice president cynically changes his tone to suit his audience. I have long noticed the way he tries to talk and behave like a caricature of a black preacher when he speaks at African-American churches and other gatherings with people of color. Were I an African-American, I would feel mocked and insulted by this behavior.

But Mr. Gore puts on this kind of show for more that just African-American groups. As a white Southerner here in Mr. Gore’s alleged home state of Tennessee, I take offense at the way he talks as if he has dirt and gravel in his mouth to Southern audiences. As a well-educated and well-spoken graduate of the law school that Al Gore dropped out of, I am insulted that he thinks he has to talk like a “Hee-Haw” rerun when he comes around here. If he would just be himself, whatever that might be, I would be more likely to listen and believe when he speaks.

– W. Aaron Fortner

You make the claim that Al Gore talks differently in front of different groups. Well, this is a very common political and rhetorical strategy. When Clinton talks to a Southern crowd you can instantly tell this by the cadences of his voice and how he phrases things. You will often find small mention of this fact from the reports of his speeches.

Both Clinton and Gore are Southerners, and are Southern Baptists, and both these factors do have an influence on their speech patterns. When Al Gore gets excited (and yes, I’ve actually seen this) he takes on a certain cast in his voice and inflection. When you say he’s a white man who is trying to sound like a black man, I’ll come back with the observation that this is what plenty of Southern white guys sound like when they are excited and fired up. It’s the culture thing folks, this is what he’s always sounded like, and down home, there’s plenty more like him, and folks who understand where he’s coming from. No, he doesn’t have the mangled syntax and the faux Texas come Connecticut Country Day school “accent” of “Dubya” Bush, but then again Al’s always been more genuine.

– J.M. Prince

I am a black American and I have watched Gore speak before black audiences on several different occasions. I thought I was the only one to notice Gore’s change in speech when addressing black people. To me it indicates that he harbors a stereotypical view of black people.

Does he think that we will be motivated by the way he says something as opposed to what he is saying? If so then he must not think much of black intellect. But this doesn’t surprise me in the least. I do not believe that one party has a lock on bigotry. It exists on both sides in equal amounts. I am extremely disappointed in the NAACP and other pro-Democratic black groups for being so fearful of stating the obvious.

– Keith Houchen

I am a black woman and I listened to Al Gore’s speech to the NAACP. What I heard was a man reacting to the enthusiasm of his audience, no more, no less. I’m sure that many white people have been inspired by the energy and speaking style of great black leaders and Al Gore is no different. He is also a politician and it shouldn’t be some big surprise or a big deal that he sounded enthusiastic and inspired when he spoke to a group of people who obviously support his cause and who will play a critical role in getting him elected this fall. Don’t read more into it than necessary and please give Al a break. Would you prefer that he’d gotten up there and been his usual wooden self? I prefer this version.

– Tanya Clements

I don’t need to listen to the audio clips to know that Al Gore puts on a little show when he talks to black audiences. I saw the NAACP speech and the debate in Harlem and I haven’t heard a caricature of an African-American voice like that since “Amos ‘n’ Andy.” It’s borderline offensive and I can’t believe he gets away with it. Dubya certainly wouldn’t get away with it. I suppose Gore is trying to add some excitement to the speech, but I for one am embarrassed for him every time I hear him take on the “soul voice.”

– Dave Connell

I think you people need a reality check. If you watch Al Gore and really listen to him he is a spirited speaker. The spin is he is stiff and boring when all he wants to do is talk issues

I am from California and grew up in San Francisco and I had lots of black friends … and guess what, when you get around them you get their spirit … by osmosis … it just happens! Al Gore is no different than any other person who loves the colorful spirit of our black brothers and sisters of America.

— C. Hildreth

Having been born in Arkansas and living there until I was 20, I am particularly sensitive to Southern accents and the nuances of the “language.” For years I have noted the difference when a white person speaks to a black person and is trying to “make points” with their “acceptance and open-mindedness.” Their voice rises a bit, they become more animated, laughing a bit more, in my opinion attempting to say, “Hey, look everyone, I’m talking to a black just like he is white.” It’s the same when an adult speaks to a child or a dog. The adult’s voice changes. I try to speak to all children over 1 year old with the same voice as I would an adult.

When I am in a group of people of mixed races I can always detect with my eyes closed if they are speaking to a black person. It makes me cringe because if I can hear the difference, I’m sure the black person feels it. Al Gore is the biggest pandering and patronizing person I have seen in years. I pray that blacks can see through it.

– Ila Richardson

What a dumb lead for an article. Of course he adopts preacher-style cadences when he speaks to black audiences. Ask a few black people. They know, and they don’t mind. Al himself would admit as much, and so would his aides.

This seems to be about white liberals who are uncomfortable with someone like Gore being direct and emotional. Yes, it’s contrived, but so was the style of Martin Luther King Jr. Do you think that King spoke that way when he asked for a cup of coffee?

– Bennett Charles

After listening to the last 10 minutes of the NAACP speech, I have come to the conclusion that this guy will do, say, perform any act (even a monkey act like he did before the NAACP) to spread his venom and lies and to destroy the racial harmony which exists today for his own selfish and greedy power needs.

This is a dangerous liar who must be firmly repudiated by blacks and whites at the polls –I fear for this country if he ever becomes president.

– R. Brown

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Tim and Eric’s comedy of repulsion

In their new movie, the cult comics push the limits of human vulnerability -- and generate laughs from nerves

VIDEO

By Kartina Richardson

Topics:Movies, TV, Television

“Repulsion” is an emotional response that darts past the smug butterfly nets of intellect and rationale to expose my true and shameful feelings: Nothing turns my stomach like a stranger’s display of vulnerability. This reaction sickens me, in turn, and begins a cycle of nausea and self-loathing. I am repulsed, revulsed and repulsed again.

I say a stranger’s vulnerability and not a friend’s, because a loved one’s vulnerability is less of a risk to them, and so less of a burden to me, the witness. In the split moment that a person is vulnerable, or when we project a vulnerability onto them, we become responsible for their existence in the world. In seventh grade, the year-supreme of vulnerability, I overheard a girl in my class talking about her excitement over the year’s first dance. Her mother was taking her to get her hair done, she said, and to buy her a new dress. My skin prickled with discomfort. Didn’t she know the dance wasn’t a “get your hair done” kind of big deal? On the night of the dance, everyone was in a casual dress or jeans. She showed up with an elaborate updo and a ball gown. That moment has forever seared itself in my mind. I wanted to throw up and cry.

This repulsion towards vulnerability is really a resentment at being put in charge of a person who doesn’t know how to play the game of affecting invincibility. The main purpose of this game is pretending death will never come; the smaller goal is to pretend that we are all perfectly self-sufficient. This is why so many people were outraged at Lana del Rey’s “Saturday Night Live” performance: she stopped playing the game and forced us to bear witness to her crippling fear. This is also why people abuse the elderly and disabled and animals — their vulnerability is too obvious and provokes hostile resentment.

But here’s where it gets tricky: When we’re revolted by someone’s vulnerability, we split into two. We imagine that person’s vulnerability in the eyes of the rest of the world, and we ourselves are one of those other people, watching. We’re watching the interaction between ourselves and that person, simultaneously, from the inside and the outside. Our repulsion becomes sadness as we watch ourselves reject them — because if they are vulnerable, then we are, too.

No one provokes this death spiral of emotion better than Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim, the Tim And Eric comedy team whose sketch show “Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!” aired on Adult Swim from 2007 to 2010. Their new movie, “Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie,” is available now on demand, and in theaters March 2. There’s a Facebook watch party Saturday at 6 p.m.

Almost fainting or willing yourself into non-existence is a large part of the Tim and Eric viewing experience, and if you haven’t seen them before, you might have to take the grossness in doses. Start with the more easily digestible, and amazing, Paul Rudd “Celery Man” clip.

And here’s “Biology for Foreign Men,” on “the chubs”:

Chubs aside, the show’s true comic genius lies in its cultivation of moments of sincerity towards increasingly obsolete cultural norms: ideas of success, professionalism, sexuality, masculinity, entertainment or social interaction. It’s this sincerity that causes excruciating discomfort, for witnessing someone else’s belief in something we’ve decided is a joke, is pure vulnerability.

Look at the “petite feet” sketch below. Cowboys play pool. They hear a woman’s footsteps. The woman turns out to be a man with the footfall of a woman. The cowboys get on stage and sing a song. A song about a man with the feet of a woman. This is all funny on it’s own, but the sketch’s main brilliance is the “actor” playing the petite-footed man and the surrounding extras. They aren’t in on the joke, not in the same way that Tim and Eric are. This is true for most of the supporting actors and extras in the majority of Tim and Eric sketches. In their “Billion Dollar Movie,” a man delivers the duo new work uniforms. They dance around in their new clothes, while the man stands there… and continues to stand there long past the time we’ve expected the scene to cut. He looks uncomfortable, and in turn, I want to throw up.

As Tim Heidecker says, “We cast some legitimate character actors, as you saw, some real funny comedians, and then some people that — we like to say — put a headshot up online and forgot about it, maybe. We dig through to the bottom of the pile and find them, then give them lots of lines.”

Just reading ”bottom of the pile” makes me queasy.

These actors have either been given no direction, or purposefully incongruent direction. Their presence is awkward and forced, or often worst of all, they’re genuinely having fun, excited to participate in showbiz, not knowing that we’re laughing. It’s this not knowing, a lack of awareness of context that makes us so uncomfortable. Half of the whole is in on the joke — and half of the whole is not. The burden this imbalance places on us is why many people can’t stomach Tim and Eric, don’t understand them, or walked out of their Sundance screening. But this is exactly the reason why Tim and Eric are brilliant.

It’s important to mess with the spiritual structure of the world — the architecture of ideas, institutions, identities and even the structure of filmmaking. Only by doing this can the ludicrous nature of the game be revealed. Maybe one day we will overcome our repulsion towards weakness and admit our fragility on a daily basis. On that day Tim and Eric will no longer be unsettling, but until then, in a very twisted way, they’re helping us get there.

: More Kartina Richardson

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Who is Newt’s sugar daddy really helping?

Sheldon Adelson will apparently plunk down another $10 million for the pro-Gingrich super PAC

By Steve Kornacki

Republican presidential candidate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (Credit: AP)

Topics:War Room

CNN is reporting that Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate who in the past decade has lavished $17 million on various Newt Gingrich political groups, will cut a $10 million check for Winning Our Future, the super PAC that’s aligned with the former Speaker, by the end of this month.

But the main beneficiary of his largesse will probably be a candidate other than Gingrich: Mitt Romney

Since the Florida primary, Adelson has been sending signals that he understands Gingrich is very unlikely to win the Republican nomination, that he is perfectly comfortable with Romney being the nominee, and that he doesn’t want to hurt Romney’s long-term prospects of beating President Obama.

There are also signs that Adelson, whose political involvement stems mainly from his hawkish views on Israel and the Middle East, isn’t enthusiastic about the man who has supplanted Gingrich as Romney’s chief GOP foe, Rick Santorum. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week:

Mr. Adelson doesn’t oppose Mr. Santorum, but he doesn’t share the former Pennsylvania senator’s socially conservative positions, including his strong antiabortion views, associates said. Mr. Santorum was one of only two Republicans who didn’t meet with Mr. Adelson in October around the time of a candidates’ debate in Las Vegas, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Viewed in this light, Adelson’s new $10 million gift could be seen as an indirect contribution to Romney. After all, Gingrich seems to run best among religious conservatives in South, where several states will vote in early and mid-March. Santorum, who has already demonstrated strength in the Midwest, badly needs to fold those southern voters into his campaign if he’s going to have a real shot at knocking off Romney. A revived, or partially revived, Gingrich could severely complicate this task.

By the same token, a revived Gingrich probably wouldn’t be much of a threat to Romney, who has had little trouble beating back the former speaker during his two previous surges. Gingrich, with all of his personal and ethical baggage and with all his influential enemies within the Republican Party, is a much easier target than Santorum for the Romney campaign.

The ideal scenario for Romney would be for Gingrich and Santorum to be equally viable in the upcoming contests, splitting up the conservative vote and allowing Romney an easy path to victory. But if he has to have one main conservative foe, he’ll be much better off if it’s Gingrich. To the extent Adelson’s $10 million makes either of these scenarios more likely, it’s a huge boost for Romney.

What may be most interesting here is the apparent ideological gulf between Gingrich’s actual voters and his chief financial backer. Gingrich has been pitching himself as the candidate for conservatives who want a true believer and who see Romney as the embodiment of a Republican establishment that doesn’t really share their values. But it turns out that the guy keeping the Gingrich campaign alive is precisely the kind of Republican they suspect Romney is.

: Steve Kornacki writes about politics for Salon. Reach him by email at SKornacki@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @SteveKornacki More Steve Kornacki

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“Eastbound and Down” heads to the Redneck Riviera

Minor-league players are big-league fools -- and even worse parents -- in the HBO comedy's third and final season

By Roger Catlin

Austin McLamb, Danny McBride (Credit: HBO/Fred Norris)

Topics:Television, TV

That slyly funny Brit Ricky Gervais will get all the praise and smarty-pants chittter-chat this weekend for his admittedly insurrectionist new series “Life’s Too Short.”

But let’s raise a peach Schnapps and give a rebel yell to his HBO comedy companion Kenny Powers, that maniac in a mullet and a muscle shirt, and the new season of “Eastbound & Down.”

Actor, writer and Will Ferrell buddy Danny McBride so embodies the larger than life Powers that it would be hard to separate him from the horrible, self-centered former big-league pitcher forever trying to adjust to a new chapter in his life. He’s such a real character that an actual minor-league team, the Pensacola Pelicans, extended a contract to the fictional Kenny Powers two years ago.

As with so comedies built around unlikable central characters, it was tough to warm to someone so callous, dimwitted — and truly redneck. You got the feeling that some fans of the Confederate-flag waving, doobie-smoking Powers were just cheering on his antics, and longed to emulate him.

In the first season, getting hired as a gym coach at his old small-town North Carolina high school proved tough to take for a flamed-out former major leaguer. Last season, he took off for Mexico, to wallow in all manner of incorrect antics, cockfight cartels and drug mishaps. But back in the states for this third and final season, Powers has been signed by the (fake) minor-league Myrtle Beach Mermen and is living large once more.

For years, McBride and his comedy co-writer Jody Hill talked about moving the show to the so-called Redneck Riviera and now it’s happened: It’s the intersection of trashy tourist culture, chain restaurants, souped-up jet skis, tattoo shops, monster trucks, muscle T’s – in other words, a Kenny Powers paradise. He takes to it like a man with his boogie board, done up in Confederate flag and pot leaf design.

He’s even got a best friend that plays up their mutual jerkiness, Jason Sudeikis of “Saturday Night Live” fame, pitch-perfect as his catcher and pal Shane. The two cads who imagine themselves players (and wait outside the high schools for their girlfriends) egg each other on with extreme handshakes and exhortations (to the mystification of the rest of the locker room).

Powers’ one-time sweetheart April Buchanon (played by the remarkable Katy Mixon), scarcely seen in Season 2 after he ditched her at a gas station, is back in Shelby raising their now 1-year-old child. Kenny can barely bring himself to hold the baby.

Forced into fatherhood, the clueless Powers ferries the tot in a backpack that he’s cut holes in for breathing, straps him in shotgun in Shane’s big-wheel pickup (with weird DeLorean doors), uses a curtain affixed with duct tape as an all-day diaper and tries to figure out which kind of soda the kid likes best. At the beach, he digs a hole and covers him with a towel to keep him from getting sunburnt (or getting away while he body surfs).

His infant-handling skills go far beyond anything seen in “Raising Hope” or even “Raising Arizona.” There ought to be a disclaimer that no babies were hurt in the filming; after a while, you start to wonder.

And as they traverse this dangerous comedic edge every bit as skillfully as Gervais does with the little-people humor on “Life’s Too Short,” McBride celebrates the Southern-fried dirtball culture of flyover America like some “Red State Diaries”; it’s a veritable HBO “Hee-Haw.”

: More Roger Catlin

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David Brooks: “I have heard of Jeremy Lin”

Is it an "anomaly" for a professional athlete to be religious? (No)

By Alex Pareene

David Brooks

Topics:David Brooks, New York Times, Sports, Basketball, Jeremy LIn, Religion

David Brooks had to write a column about something, and his deadline was fast approaching, so he glanced at the sports page and saw something about New York Knicks phenom Jeremy Lin, and he was like, yeah, that works. Next stop, most-emailed list!

Lin is a point guard who rocketed to near-instant celebrity when he came off the bench and had a series of monster games, dragging the Knicks to a .500 record while their two biggest superstars were sitting out games. His celebrity then became a “mania” in part because he’s Asian-American and a Harvard graduate, two rarities in the NBA. It also obviously doesn’t hurt that he plays for the dominant team in the nation’s biggest media market (also it’s the fallow period between football and baseball). That’s basically the whole deal, and if you’d like to learn more read Andrew Leonard’s account of the early social media explosion and Alexander Chee’s take on Lin and Asian-American identity. Whatever you do, don’t read David Brooks’ take on the Lin phenomenon, because David Brooks doesn’t understand basketball or social media or race or religion or American society in general.

Here is Brooks’ first paragraph:

Jeremy Lin is anomalous in all sorts of ways. He’s a Harvard grad in the N.B.A., an Asian-American man in professional sports. But we shouldn’t neglect the biggest anomaly. He’s a religious person in professional sports.

Here is the next sentence:

We’ve become accustomed to the faith-driven athlete and coach, from Billy Sunday to Tim Tebow.

Haha OK. This is the point where you hit “select all” and then “delete” and start your column again. Brooks must’ve started this thing like 10 minutes before his deadline. (No time to edit it!)

So, yes, a “religious person in professional sports” is like the least anomalous thing in the world, besides maybe “a racist comment under a YouTube video.” Or “an old white guy in political punditry.” (Also, minor note, but: I think there’s actually a decent number — enough to make Lin not particularly “anomalous” — of prominent Asians and Asian-Americans in professional sports, unless you’re only defining “Asian-American” as “of East Asian descent” and you’re only counting the “big four” leagues as “professional sports.” And you’re not really counting baseball.)

While Lin’s Christianity is obviously of great importance to Lin, it honestly has barely anything to do with what made him an instant superstar, except for when hacks want to compare him to Tim Tebow, which is dumb, because Lin is suddenly famous because he’s really good at his sport while Tebow’s whole shtick is succeeding despite being awful at being a quarterback. (If Lin had been a college superstar and high draft pick who was famously inept at the fundamentals of his position, the Tebow thing would be an accurate comparison, but Lin is in fact the opposite of that.)

Having contradicted his own faulty premise five sentences into his column, Brooks rambles on about how he has noticed that being good at sports and being pious is sort of contradictory, because being good at sports doesn’t involve much “humility” or “self-abnegation.” Then we have some boilerplate theological musings, about how sports is like modern society and how Abrahamic religious values contradict modern cultural values, especially regarding individual achievement. (YAWN.)

But even while grappling with the tension between religious values and contemporary cultural values, which is basically well within Brooks’ wheelhouse, he demonstrates a hilarious misunderstanding of sports, and what sports are “about,” because Mr. Brooks has been spending far too much time in his cloistered elite liberal media ivory tower munching on brie and arugula and not enough time among Real Americans in their “Sporting Taverns” watching “The Big Game” over a pint of mass-market domestic lager.

For many religious teachers, humility is the primary virtue. You achieve loftiness of spirit by performing the most menial services. (That’s why shepherds are perpetually becoming kings in the Bible.) You achieve your identity through self-effacement. You achieve strength by acknowledging your weaknesses. You lead most boldly when you consider yourself an instrument of a larger cause.

I could be wrong, but “consider yourself an instrument of a larger cause” is basically step three of “how to be good at team sports,” after “be gifted physically” and “practice a lot.” (And acknowledging your weaknesses? Like when Magic would spend the off-season practicing “the weakest part of his game” until he improved it?)

The “two moral universes” of religion and societal achievement may be “irreconcilable” — I am not a religious person and hence don’t care — but that has very little to do with Jeremy Lin, or basketball, or politics, which Brooks for some reason brings up in the last paragraph, because he wants to pretend this column has been about something other than extended free-associative riffing on the fact that a famous person is religious.

In conclusion, the New York Times should probably consider having someone take a quick glance at David Brooks’ columns before they publish them.

: Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon. Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene More Alex Pareene

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Come back, “Colbert Report”!

The show takes a mysterious hiatus - and reminds us how much we need it

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Stephen Colbert (Credit: Yuri Gripas / Reuters)

Topics:The Colbert Report

Where’s Stephen? On Wednesday, fans eager to attend a taping of “The Colbert Report” were shocked to learn the show had been abruptly canceled. The situation turned to one of mass withdrawal symptoms Thursday as the show still didn’t return; Comedy Central issued a terse announcement that the show was shut down due to “unforeseen circumstances.” It was the first time in the show’s seven-year history that it’s had to cancel taping.

Questions continue about whether Colbert and his nation will return Monday (the show doesn’t tape Fridays). The leading theory is that the sudden hiatus has to do with the host’s 91-year-old mother. The Wall Street Journal reports that “people familiar with the show” attribute the sudden suspension of production to “an emergency in Mr. Colbert’s family.”

Whatever the cause, it’s impressive that Colbert has managed for so long to keep a respectable degree of privacy around his off-screen persona and family life. His colleague Jon Stewart trades in daily snark too, but mingles it with intense sincerity — for proof, look no further than Stewart’s interview Thursday with Education Secretary Arne Duncan, and the way the schoolteacher’s son from New Jersey made the conversation eminently personal.

Stephen Colbert, in contrast, the youngest of 11 children, the boy who grew up in South Carolina pronouncing his last name with a hard “t” on the end, nightly slips easily into the guise of Stephen Colbert, bespectacled, vaguely French sounding, super PAC-starting conservative blowhard. He’s spent his Comedy Central career deftly creating a knowing caricature, a man whose absurdity isn’t just brilliantly funny, it’s also a hell of a disguise – one that has no doubt afforded him and his family a degree of insulation from his larger-than-life persona.

A mysterious and sudden halting to a successful television show is always newsworthy. But this week, his silence has also made clear how deeply viewers depend on the show for a nightly dose of satire in a sea of political and religious insanity. Just the night before the show went dark, the Catholic Colbert was raising hackles for citing “Obama’s vengeful crusade against the Catholic Church,” and noting, “Vengeful crusades? Kind of our thing.”

It’s clear already that television without Colbert – even for a mere two episodes – creates a keenly felt absence. But a guy absurd enough to wear star-spangled pants also knows that there are moments in real life when the best thing you can say about what’s going on is nothing at all.

: Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams