Posted on 12/31/2005 5:11:20 PM PST by governsleastgovernsbest
by Mark Finkelstein
December 31, 2005 - 19:48.
When a few years ago Rush Limbaugh suggested that the media, hoping for a black-quarterback success story, had over-rated Philadelphia Eagles QB Donovan McNabb, ESPN fired him from its Sunday night football show.
Can you imagine what the media would have done to Rush had he dared to employ the classically racial "feets don't fail me now" line?
Yet that is exactly what major ESPN personality Chris Berman did a few minutes ago in introducing coverage of this afternoon's Denver Broncos game.
He apparently said it vis a vis white Denver Broncos QB Jake Plummer.
Berman's co-host, black former Denver linebacker Tom Jackson, gave what seemed a rather forced laugh in response.
Odds that Berman, who has described himself as a "New England Democrat," will face any discipline? Slim, IMO.
Are you all that young? It is a quote from old movies where StepinFetchit (a very stereotypical black character) would be in a dark room in a spooky house and hear a strange noise or see some vague ghostly movement and his eyes would bug out and he's say, "Feets, don't fail me now!" And then he'd run like crazy.
I think most people over the age of 18 would realize the phrase was not originated in a Little Feat song.
True, see post 22...
Amen ... this is the kind of crap that comes from the DU crowd.
I take it you have never watched a lot of movies from the the 30s and 40s. It was used commonly, usually a black actor would be scared of his/her shadow and when something scary would happen would come out with the expression "feet(not feets) don't fail me now" with his/her eyes bulging out, before running like a scared rabbit(not bugs).
I'm old enough to realize that but frankly I don't think most people, even those old enough to vaguely know the origin, think of it in a racial sense. Frankly, to me it also seems like the kind of thing Lou Costello would have said in "Hold My Ghost" or one of the old Abbott and Costello movies, when confronted by the Invisible Man or whatever. If you had asked me I would have vaguely remembered it in that kind of context (silly, scared guy trying to run away) but wouldn't have immediately associated it with a black character necessarily.
I just don't think anyone saying it these days would do so with a racist intent or even knowledge.
Have to bump that by a few years. "Feats Don't Fail Me Now" was released in 1990. That would make an 18-yo 2 when it was released.
That being said, "Feets don't fail me now" is a racist statement for anyone who knows about early Amos n Andy and the like.
Ok, I missed that post. Thanks for pointing me towards it. It is amazing what young people don't know!
The only movies I watch that are over twice my age are film noir, they don't tend to use comedy catch phrases.
I don't buy that as making a phrase "racial" or more importantly offensive 70 years later.
The gold-selling "Feats Don't Fail Me Now" reached No. 36 on Billboard's album chart in the fall of 1974. (I know my pop music; I own Billboard chart books.)
Well, personally, I believe it’s a touchy point to some older Afro-Americans…
Huh? Talk about your lame attempt at manufactured controversy. I doubt that anybody other than the author of this piece is "aware" that the allegedly racist 'feets don't fail me now' has any origin outside of a Hanna Barbera cartoon.
You're welcome - and I know that some older blacks still take offense at the phrase.
Wrong - post 22.
You're wrong.
I guess I tracked the re-release.
I knew it was old. But I didn't know it was my era (I think I get them confused with the one-hit wonder Firefall).
Frankly, folks, I thought it was a Brooklyn-ism.
When said about a white guy? By someone who obviously didn't mean it in a racist context? And after decades of the phrase being appropriated in other contexts (cartoons, etc.), entering the common vernacular and being stripped of any original racial connotations, for all intents and purposes?
If someone's truly upset by the use of this phrase in this context, they're too touchy.
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