The guy acted like an ignorant douche, putting on a cliched minstrel show. I think you're giving him too much credit calling him hilarious or even cruel . . . try pathetic.
It’s easy to make a self-righteous anti-racist statement. They bore me, and I am mystified as to why everybody rushes to be the first to condemn someone whenever they step over a racial line. The correct response to an unfunny idiot performance is to ignore it, not to seize the opportunity to proclaim loudly how non-racist you are.
Also, I don’t think it’s wrong to joke about race. By joking about racial stereotypes, people are more comfortable discussing and confronting the uneasiness they feel when interacting with people from other races, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds. Plus, race jokes are probably more funny because they are so taboo, see Chris Rock, Dave Chappel, et al.
This dude has an execution and taste problem, that’s the story.
It's not self-righteous, it's personal. I'm black and I personally find it offensive.
And it's not easy to take a stand against it around here - more often than not, criticizing this sort of thing gets you a lot of anonymous downmods. I'm willing to say something about it, put my real name behind it, and take the downmods. That's fine.
As I said before, I'd much rather these things don't get posted at all on a site I go to for Hacker News, but if they're going to be posted, I'm going to make a comment about it. Staying quiet on it is the same as saying that it's acceptable to you. If others want to do that, fine, but there's no way I'm going to do that. Sorry.
Also, I don’t think it’s wrong to joke about race. By joking about racial stereotypes, people are more comfortable discussing and confronting the uneasiness they feel when interacting with people from other races, nationalities, and cultural backgrounds. Plus, race jokes are probably more funny because they are so taboo, see Chris Rock, Dave Chappel, et al.
Interestingly, I mostly agree with you. If you read what I said carefully, I didn't call the guy a racist and I specifically said the headline calling him "cruel" was too much. That'd imply that he went out of his way to try to hurt people with what he said. Hell, I mostly like the guy and have posted some of his stuff on News.YC myself.
I think that if you reread my comment, you'll see that even Loren Feldman himself would probably agree with what I said. What he did was a cliched minstrel show. He tried to be funny, but instead he ended up being hurtful and looking like a racist douchebag. He's essentially said as much himself in subsequent postings.
The bigger question is why the black guy is being attacked for commenting on the original video. ;)
Just imagine 20 more one-line posts like yours that call him a "douche" and you can see how it'd fit right in on Digg.
You seem pretty interested in arguing with someone about this guy. I think it's pretty obvious to most people that this guy just isn't worthy of discussion. He's clearly an asshole, what's there to talk about? (that's a rhetorical question).
Actually, arguing with anyone about this is a waste of time. I made one post deriding it, people started criticizing me, so I'm answering them. End of story.
I post technical articles here and contribute tips to other hackers every day; I really don't need you to lecture me about the quality of my posts.
I love the people who anonymously downmod me for criticizing this crap without having the stones to say why they're doing it. Keep 'em coming, I've got karma to spare.
There is nothing wrong with downmodding something without also commenting. I do it, and you probably do it too. It's not so much lack of stones as lack of time. It is, however, wrong to complain about it and to insult other users.
Fair enough on complaining about it. 9 out of 10 times when it happens, I avoid complaining, but I wasn't able to resist this time around.
I do notice a definite pattern with respect to this sort of thing on race related issues -- some people are quick to downmod, but slow to put themselves out there and have a real debate on the issue. It gets annoying and I'm commenting on it. If people want to downmod for that, you're right, it's their prerogative, but to me it's more likely that they don't want to publicly touch a radioactive issue than that they simply don't have time to comment.
As far as insulting other users . . . who could be insulted? They're anonymous so there's no damage to their reputation. If they took personal umbrage, well, what can I say? They can feel free to say something about it, just like you did.
Anyway, I'd much rather not deal with race related stuff on this site period, but if people are gonna post it, I'm probably going to comment on it. I posted a related story and then deleted it because I'd rather not see a rash of threads on this.
Wow. That was truly horrible. I'm shocked that this crap is getting played. I'm also really surprised that there were people who up-modded this to the front page.
I'd like to make a motion to move this post to [dead].
I think the real problem here is: bad submission headline, "Loren Feldman is hilarious but cruel at the same time".
The link goes to a blog post where a software hacker -- the creator of a early piece of Mac software I really liked, DayMaker -- comments on Feldman's work and Feldman's inclusion in a tech industry panel. By mere virtue of having open comments, that was an invitation for other discussion. And, as the issue relates to tech bloggers and the online video market -- popular topics here -- it arguably fits at HN.
But the submission headline injects a strong opinion -- that the Feldman work is 'hilarious' and 'cruel'. (Even 'cruel' can imply some level of affirmation; nonsensical insults like "your mama wears combat boots" aren't 'cruel'.) That initial spin has polluted the later discussion.
At the risk of offending another group, I will also point out the original submitter does not reside in North America. He may not be familiar with North American sensitivity taboos, and may mainly know about American race relations and ethnic groups through the distorted lens of exported entertainment mass media.
I've got to go along with pius on this one. This offends me. It's that smarmy, ingratiating racism that seems to be all over the internet. It's not funny, it's not clever.
The guy acted like an ignorant douche, putting on a cliched minstrel show. I think you're giving him too much credit calling him hilarious or even cruel . . . try pathetic.