The Thin Skin and Dour Persona of Popular Culture

    I miss the days when it was okay to celebrate caricatures.  Not stereotypes... not bigotry... not insensitively mocking or shaming others... just being okay with caricatures of people.  Hooting Indians, gun slinging bowlegged cowboys, air headed gum chewing blond showgirls, sombrero wearing Senors, sassy "honey-chile" drawling big bottomed black ladies in big church hats, or hysterically flamboyant gay men.



    The vein of offense that runs like a raw nerve through our cultural discourse makes it a capital offense to poke good natured fun at any of the myriad humorous characteristics common among any particular demographic. 


    In the 60s and 70s Chief Nock-A-Homa was a fixture of Atlanta Braves baseball who would come out of his tepee in full feathered headdress and buckskin regalia to dance a war dance each time a Brave hit a home run.  He's long gone because it was offensive to some. 


    Aunt Jemima pancake syrup bottles used to be shaped like a glass depiction of a large black woman in a kerchief.  That went away as racial stereotyping.


    I remember a Little Golden Book called "Little Black Sambo" that was a favorite of American children in the 50s through the 70s.  So popular it spawned a home cooking restaurant of the same name.  Now it is even hard to find any record that the book even existed at all; let alone a copy of it. 


    Johnny Reb's chicken and barbecue was an icon on Hwy 19 in Union City Georgia in my childhood. The 30 foot talk Confederate soldier holding the Stars and Bars could be seen from a mile away.  Torn down as horrific and offensive.


    Uncle Remus characters where a staple of Six Flags over Georgia when I was a kid.  The Disney classic film depiction has been locked away in the vault forever.  Obtaining a poorly duped copy of it is like buying black market silk stockings during the Great War with lost of low voices and winks and nods as money is slipped into palms and a bootleg DVD is slipped into a plain paper bag and placed under your coat as you slip out the back door of the bookstore.


    All these things are gone now... sacrificed on the altar of political correctness.  We've become so conditioned to assume the most negative possible intent in every interaction with our fellow man that we have made our imagery bland, banal, and innocuous... and the world is a more homogeneous, less colorful, less vibrant place for it.