tirade about really offensive MADTV skit
Jun. 4th, 2005 11:30 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmDid anyone just see that unbelieveably offensive skit on MADTV? I'm really appalled and may even write a nasty letter.
The gist of it was an Al-Jazeera version of the Price is Right.
And it was the most shockingly ignorant and anti-Muslim thing I've ever seen.
I can't even really begin to list the ways in which I was appalled right now because I am so shocked, but among other things it made a really crappy joke about female genital mutilation, and attributed the practice to the Arab world.
FGM is mainly performed by _Christians_ in _Africa_. And has abhorent as the practice is, it is not done to punish women. And somehow the skit misunderstanding these two things, and deciding it didn't need to try to be funny, because blaming Muslims for stuff is just funny in and of itself, just made me insane.
When I was in 6th grade I had an elderly white British woman as my sixth grade homeroom teacher who taught us about Islam because she said that as the world got smaller we'd eventually understand that we were and had alays been the minority. She explained to us about Islamic art, the reasons for Islamic dress and the Arab world's contributions to math and science. In everything that has happened in these last four years I have never forgotten learning as a child of these things and having affection for them -- and that's not been easy to express a lot, as someone who is also a Jew and a New Yorker and isn't supposed to feel or say certain things. I expect people to holler at me, and it makes me sad.
But... fuck. MADTV just stepped so far over the line, and I am someone who can get into equal opportunity racial/religious/cultural humour, but... that was disgusting.
The gist of it was an Al-Jazeera version of the Price is Right.
And it was the most shockingly ignorant and anti-Muslim thing I've ever seen.
I can't even really begin to list the ways in which I was appalled right now because I am so shocked, but among other things it made a really crappy joke about female genital mutilation, and attributed the practice to the Arab world.
FGM is mainly performed by _Christians_ in _Africa_. And has abhorent as the practice is, it is not done to punish women. And somehow the skit misunderstanding these two things, and deciding it didn't need to try to be funny, because blaming Muslims for stuff is just funny in and of itself, just made me insane.
When I was in 6th grade I had an elderly white British woman as my sixth grade homeroom teacher who taught us about Islam because she said that as the world got smaller we'd eventually understand that we were and had alays been the minority. She explained to us about Islamic art, the reasons for Islamic dress and the Arab world's contributions to math and science. In everything that has happened in these last four years I have never forgotten learning as a child of these things and having affection for them -- and that's not been easy to express a lot, as someone who is also a Jew and a New Yorker and isn't supposed to feel or say certain things. I expect people to holler at me, and it makes me sad.
But... fuck. MADTV just stepped so far over the line, and I am someone who can get into equal opportunity racial/religious/cultural humour, but... that was disgusting.
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no subject
Date: 2005-06-05 05:55 pm (UTC)Check it out if you want a bit of another angle.
And that Anon. commenter needs to take a class in reading comprehension from your old teacher... Among other things.