There was a lot of shock and dismay in the US last week when an Australian TV show, Hey Hey, It's Saturday, featured performers in black face. According to a story by Brian Moylan at Gawker.com
Plus you can get superfly advice on how to be a pimp like:
Pimp-in is a mind set... And you need to check yours. When you know you pimp-in, I mean really know
Game or (Pimp Juice) as it is sometimes called, is like your mojo. The kind of shit nigga’s kill fo. So peep the Pimp Game... By now your style should be in order and when you look like a pimp you can start to feel like a pimp.
You keeping up with PC homie? A'ight then... Time to move on to the Ho's.
Just look at those sweet, innocent faces doing the dirty work of blackface.
Still too close to home? Too painful to be just good clean fun? Well, there's always the family pet.
Good Housekeeping encouraging the "ladies" out there to dress their dogs like pimps.
Seriously, the dogs are now forced to put on a minstrel show?
Australian variety show aired a skit with five men in blackface performing as the Jackson 5. And the audience cheered! Thank goodness Harry Connick Jr was there to be the voice of reason.
six doctors performed a choreographed number in blackface and afro wigs pretending to be the Jackson 5. .
In America, blackface is one of those things that you can only show if you're talking about how awful it is because, well, it is pretty awful.Perhaps Mr. Moylan leaves the US and all US media behind every October and vacations somewhere in outer space because Blackface is alive and well in the US, especially on the scariest night of the year, Halloween. Halloween is now scary not because of witches and ghouls, but because it seems to be the Holiday when white Americans feel free to engage in all sorts of race and class based mimicry. How about dressing up like "crack hos" and "pimps" when you're a couple of white college kids (hmm, sounds like an ACORN scandal to me)? Just go on over to www.pimpcostumes.com and you can get this lovely number.
Pimp-in Ho's
With pride you enter a room... Knowing every Ho sees you, and with style you glide through. But pay those Ho's no mind. Cuz as you peeped when you came through, know those Ho’s peeped too. But don’t get it twisted, all that glimmering ice got those Ho’s listen’n. When the Ho’s come to holler, break 'em off Game that’s proper... Pimp-in Ain't Easy But somebody’s gotta do it! Look... you can’t have all the beauty and none of the booty. Like lazy-ass Ho’s or the damn Po-Po. Just when yo spot starts to make a knot, "One-Times" there to kill the whole plot. You gotta deal with the strung and the spun... and believe me that ain’t no fun. But the worst is the time in a cell, cuz you be mad as hell when you ain’t got no bail. If dressing yourself up in blackface is too painful, how about dressing the kids up?
All of these costumes make it quite clear that blackface is alive and well in the US and not limited to those "backward" Australians.
It's also obvious that Halloween is officially the scariest day of the year.