Urlesque, purveyors of teh funnays, tackles a little more serious fair in the midst of their typical format.
http://www.urlesque.com/2010/08/06/antoine-dodson-bed-intruder-meme/The article brings up the "rape is not funny" issue, siding firmly in the affirmative. The auto-tuned, song parody of the video falls into the category of "rape joke", but it's not about the rape, it's about the flamboyancy of Dodson. When he says, "hide your kids, hide your wife, and hide your husband, they rapin' everybody out here", it's not funny because "everybody" is getting raped, it's funny because he suggested hiding your husband! Anyway, I don't want to go too far down this road, because the article is much more about race than it is about rape.
They're fairly critical of Ed Bassmaster -- a comedian who has successfully turned his popular YouTube in-character-prank-calls into paying acting gigs -- and his parody of the original video. They say he "Needs more blackface, bro!". I think that's pretty unfair, Ed is basically adapting one of his more popular characters to this meme. But whereas Ed can't parody the video because he looks white, apparently the last video in the list is okay, because it's made by an obviously-black-man. I'm really not sure what Ed's race is, and I don't think it should matter in this case.
The hand-wringing over whether or not it's racially appropriate to laugh at Dodson or the parody videos seems to me to be a tad hypocritical. If race shouldn't be an issue, then don't let it be an issue. Enjoy a ridiculous video for what it is. It just feels more like people jumping over themselves to declare their "sensitivity" to the "issue". Really, it's a hypersensitivity to race that is actually just patronizing. I like the news station's answer to the issue, would it have been better if they didn't let him voice his opinion at all?
Those are my two cents on a completely inconsequential topic. Thank you.
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