Free Republic

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article is about a virulently racist song. Read no further if you wish to avoid racist imagery and slurs. “Ni**er Love A Watermelon Ha! Ha! Ha!” merits the distinction of the most racist song title in America. Released in March 1916 by Columbia Records, it was written by actor Harry C. Browne and played on the familiar depiction of black people as mindless beasts of burden greedily devouring slices of watermelon. I came across this gem while researching racial stereotypes. I was a bit conflicted on whether the song warranted a listen. Admittedly, though, beneath my righteous...

Media analyst Mark Dice created a preposterous lie to see just how witless Californians are. The falsehood, that John Boehner dislikes Mexican food so The Lyin’ King asked him to resign, provided the answer. Very. Labeled “bigotry,” Infowars.com shared responses from those polled: “I think people in his district should consider voting for somebody else” and “(Boehner should be) made an example of, so that other people don’t repeat such comments in the future” to “(calling) for Boehner to resign before stating, ‘hail Obama!’.” Meant to be funny, Dice’s cock-and-bull story illustrates how quickly PC proponents seize the race card...

...a Northern Ireland politician has said. The attraction in Sichuan province, about 930 miles from the sea, will let hundreds of people at a time experience the shipwreck. The Titanic was built in east Belfast. Former Lord Mayor of Belfast Jim Rodgers said he had asked the Chinese firm behind the 1bn yuan (£100.7m) project to reconsider their plans. He said that while it was a "great idea" to build the Titanic replica at the Romandisea Seven Star International Cultural Tourism Resort, "to have a simulation of an iceberg collision is going a step too far".

GEORGE WILL: What we do see here, and this goes to the viewers' question about political correctness, the new biggest American entitlement is the entitlement to go through life without being offended. People think they have a right not to have their feelings hurt, not to have their sensibilities in any way exacerbated. I'd refer them to Jefferson who said, it does me no harm if my neighbor believes in 20 gods or one god, it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. We have forked for millennia to get to a point where we say the law will...

GB Glace launched a new flavor of a classic ice-cream the other week, and were promptly accused of racism. The ice-creams unfortunate name is "Nogger Black" as it is a liquorice flavored version of the classic nougat-flavored "Nogger". A couple of years ago they made a liquorice version of the 88. It had a crunchy outside, liquorice and vanilla inside and was really quite good. However, it failed to become popular and was discontinued. This year GB decided to try their luck with a liquorice version of another classic ice-cream, the nougat covered vanilla and then soft nougat center ice-cream...

... If the language is being used to criticize a black person then we must deem such language to be irreparably and irrevocably racist,” Fudge said. “Every word that is used to disguise the racist intentions of a racist political movement must be deemed a racist code word disguising the true racist intentions of the racists who make use of them.” Congressman Jim Clyburn went even further. “The entire English language was created by slaveowners as a means of oppression. You can’t just say that one word is a racist code word or another. The whole language, every single word,...

Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks. --snip-- In the narrative of history transmitted to schoolchildren throughout the Arab world and reinforced by the media, religious scholars and laymen alike, Arabs were favored by divine providence. They had come out of the Arabian Peninsula in the 7th century, carrying Islam from Morocco to faraway Indonesia. In the process, they overran the Byzantine and Persian empires, then crossed the Strait of Gibraltar to Iberia, and there they...

Verenice Gutierrez picks up on the subtle language of racism every day. Take the peanut butter sandwich, a seemingly innocent example a teacher used in a lesson last school year. “What about Somali or Hispanic students, who might not eat sandwiches?” says Gutierrez, principal at Harvey Scott K-8 School, a diverse school of 500 students in Northeast Portland’s Cully neighborhood. “Another way would be to say: ‘Americans eat peanut butter and jelly, do you have anything like that?’ Let them tell you. Maybe they eat torta. Or pita.”

McDonald's has apologized and pulled an ad that came back to bite it. The ad said eating a Chicken McBite was less risky than petting a stray pit bull, shaving your head, naming your son Sue or giving friends your Facebook password. It enraged pit bull owners and their supporters. The radio ad for Chicken McBites only ran for a few days in the Kansas City area before the complaints started. The campaign against the ad circulated on social media sites, and the apology was delivered the same way. People who called a well-publicized toll-free number got a recorded apology.

One Broward County drug counselor has been fired and another suspended for an incident in which an "N-word" was used. Not necessarily "the N-word," but a word that might have been mistaken for it. The two sanctioned workers told investigators the word was "niggardly." That word, meaning miserly, is of Scandinavian origin and has nothing to do with race, says an attorney for one of the disciplined workers. But the county sided with a substance-abuse client who took offense. He filed a complaint saying a counselor called him "n----- dumb" in a June meeting with two workers at a county...

Diane Schou, who left her home in Iowa to live in West Virginia, said she used to live in a Faraday Cage prior to finding shelter in Green BankThere have been attempts in the not-so-distant past where citizens strapped on their tin foil hats and complained of Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS), which is an illness typically caused by electromagnetic fields created by mobile devices and Wi-Fi. Earlier this year, for instance, some San Francisco, California residents pushed legislators to force cell phone sellers to display labels providing the amount of electromagnetic radiation their devices produce. This law was shelved in May...

Do these stories happen every year? This was posted yesterday at the Daily Caller: A California university says it was bad taste to serve chicken and waffles on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Officials at the University of California, Irvine, say the menu of stereotypical black food was served on Jan. 17 — the first day of the school’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. symposium. The dining hall advertised the meal as an “MLK Holiday Special.” The co-chairman of the school’s Black Student Union and another student lodged formal complaints. University spokeswoman Cathy Lawhon tells the Los Angeles Times that...

So, mean right-winger Tea Partiers are hurting the feelings of our sainted elected officials in Washington. There are rumors of intimidation, death threats and, horror of horrors, inappropriate language. So thin-skinned are these folks that Sarah Palin's simple exhortation, "don't retreat, reload," was referred to as "violent words and imagery." Even dead Republicans are the subject of posthumous excoriation, as in these noble words of Barry Goldwater: "Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice." One wonders what they would make of Thomas Jefferson's observation that, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood...

Atlanta's transit system will rename a train route into the heart of the city's Asian community in response to complaints that calling it the "yellow line" showed a lack of racial sensitivity. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority issued a statement Thursday afternoon announcing it would change the name of the line to the "gold line." "The expressed concerns regarding the use of the phrase 'yellow line' will be addressed in the most expeditious and cost-effective manner possible," MARTA officials said in the statement. The move to change the name to "gold" coincides with the demands of some advocates in...

<p>A special NBC Black History Month lunch spread -- featuring fried chicken, collard greens and black-eyed peas -- sparked a commissary controversy yesterday, but the African-American chef who planned it doesn't understand the fuss.</p> <p>"All I wanted to do was make a meal that everyone would enjoy -- and that I eat myself," NBC cook Leslie Calhoun told The Post last night.</p>

DENVER -- Denver Public School officials are apologizing after a parent complained that a school lunch meant to honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was stereotypical and offensive, reported KMGH-TV. The lunch, planned for Friday, was to include southern-style chicken, collard greens and a biscuit in honor of King. Survey: Lunch Menu Insensitive? Denver Public Schools spokesman Michael Vaughn released a statement that said: "The plan to serve a Southern-style meal in recognition of Martin Luther King Day was well intentioned but highly insensitive in light of certain hurtful cultural stereotypes still harbored in parts of our society." Organizers of...

AN ad by KFC Australia showing a man giving fried chicken to West Indies fans has been labelled racist in the US. In the "cricket survival guide" ad, an Australian fan named Mick asks viewers "Need a tip when you're stuck in an awkward situation?" after being surrounded by cheering West Indies fans. He then shares a bucket of KFC chicken with fans around him to calm the situation. The video has caused a huge stir in the US after it was posted on YouTube. The ad has been seen by some in the US as a reference to racial...

NORTH ANDOVER — First it was the menorah on the town common. Now it's the Merry Christmas sign on the fire station. The town has put an end to a longtime holiday tradition ordering firefighters to take down their homemade Merry Christmas sign from outside the fire station after people complained. The sign had been up for a week before it was taken down Friday. Fire Chief William Martineau said the sign was made by firefighters some 50 years ago and was never an issue before. "I think Christmas is officially a religious holiday. But to all of us, it...

A hospital employee dressed in a gorilla costume and passing out bananas to the sounds of “Hail to the Chief” may have been an effort to recognize employees for a job well done, but some Regional Medical Center trustees are calling the incident offensive and racist. Trustees Betty Henderson and Dr. Oscar Butler Jr. called for greater sensitivity and diversity training opportunities on the part of hospital staff and employees to ensure a similar incident does not reoccur. “I know in the beginning in six days God created the earth and on the seventh day he made man,” Henderson said....

New York - Little people are calling on the Federal Communications Commission to ban the use of the word "midget" on broadcast TV. The group Little People of America said Sunday the word is just as offensive as racial slurs. The request was prompted by an April episode of NBC's "Celebrity Apprentice" that the group said was demeaning. In the episode, contestants created a detergent ad called "Jesse James and the Midgets." The contestants, including Joan Rivers, suggested bathing little people in the detergent and hanging them to dry. Calls to the FCC and "Celebrity Apprentice" host Donald Trump were...