Sarah Silverman and the 'mega-bigots'. At
Slate.
Through her stand-up, however, Silverman has become an important member of a guerrilla vanguard in the culture wars that we might call the "meta-bigots"—other members include the South Park kids, Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G", and the now-AWOL Dave Chappelle. The meta-bigots work at social problems indirectly; instead of discussing race, rape, abortion, incest, or mass starvation, they parody our discussions of them. They manipulate stereotypes about stereotypes. It's a dangerous game: If you're humorless, distracted, or even just inordinately history-conscious, meta-bigotry can look suspiciously like actual bigotry.
The bolded part is something I think a lot about. It's the reason why one episode of
Family Guy makes me laugh until I cry, but three just makes me want to kill myself.
I suppose it truly is a dangerous game.
# posted by
Gerry Canavan @ 3:12 PM
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