Have you heard about the "Lil' Monkey" doll controversy yet? RAAAAAAACISM!
Yesterday, we were watching CNN for what was probably the first time in at least 5 months. During a segment on Campbell Brown’s show (America’s Favorite Robot), they ran a bit about the “Lil’ Monkey” dolls that Costco had been selling: these are dolls that come in three different skin tones, white (Caucasian), brown (Latino/a), and black (African). The dolls, while differently skin-toned, all come with a little toy stuffed monkey, a stuffed banana, and a little pink outfit with a sweat band and sweatshirt that says, “Lil’ Monkey” on it.
Cue the wails and cries of RAAAAAAACISM! here.
Henry Gates, prepare your dydee for rolling on the floor soiling!
If you are in any way even remotely between Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson and a camera, get out of the way now!
In reality, this is a case of toys being manufactured in Asia where the design and production teams have no idea what’s appropriate for the American market. What we think happened here is that someone at a toy company had a bunch of stuffed monkey dolls leftover from something…perhaps the Chinese zodiac year of the monkey. What are we going to do with all those stuffed monkeys? Well, we also have a bunch of baby dolls lying around the factory. And we have those fertility symbol, stuffed bananas leftover from Fertility Day, too. We could cheaply make up some little pink outfits and write something in English on them that none of the Asian executives will bother to have translated and then we could sell the monkeys + babies + phallus symbols + English writing to Americans…who buy just about any crappy toys Asians make for discount stores!
If you ever travel in Asia, you see crazy things like this all the time. Young Asians walk around with tee shirts that read WHORE on them, and they have no idea what message they’re sending (and we are talking about 5-6 year olds, whose PARENTS dressed them in this, not having a clue what the word “whore” means in English…they just think the western writing looks pretty, the way bid, muscled studs get random Chinese words tattooed on their big bulging biceps, not realizing the characters really mean “little girl” or “ladybug”). Sites like www.Engrish.com are chock full of this kind of thing.
No one who manufactured these dolls intended anything RAAAACIST! with the monkeys…but the Costco buyers sure were stupid to purchase these dolls.
But, the more we think about it, the more it feels like some Costco purchasing requirement automatically built into contracts caused this. When buying dolls, we bet purveyors are automatically obliged to provide Costco with dolls in three skin tones: white, brown, and black. Any dolls bought by Costco must, we speculate, be “diverse” in skin tone. We can easily imagine the PC-police lawyers working that into all the contracts with manufactures. ”You must give us white dolls, brown dolls, and black dolls, no exceptions!”.
They really should just stop selling anything with monkeys on it, period, because then there would be no way anything like this could ever happen. It feels like the company didn’t see a problem with a white or brown doll having the toy monkey paired with it…and it didn’t occur to them that the black doll varient would cause Al Sharpton and Henry Gates’ ears to prick up and eyes to sparkle, delighted at the chance to shout RAAAAAACIST! from the nearest mountain tops.
Sometimes, when we hear about things like the “Lil’ Monkey” controversy, we just wish there were no monkeys around, period. Get rid of all the primates at the Lincoln Park Zoo. The ones with the red butts are gross to look at anyway. Planet of the Apes is poorly made and irritating to watch, so let’s just ban that. We hate seeing President Reagan in those old movies with Bonzo, so unpresidential, so those should be banned too. We’ll kind of miss King Kong, but can live without it. Maybe they could remake it with a giant squirrel or something.
Getting rid of all monkeys, from zoos, from cartoons, from movies, from banana advertisements, whatever, would solve so many problems it seems.
And we, as gay men, tried thinking about how we would feel if we ever saw a doll sold at Costco dressed up in rainbow colors, clutching a pineapple (or some other fruit), with “Lil’ Faggot” written on its sweatband.
Are we bad people because we think that would be fabulous and hilarious and would probably buy the lot of them to give as Christmas presents? ”Lil’ Faggot” would be roll-on-the-floor ridiculous, covetable, and collectible in every way. We’d love it.
But, it’s obvious we as a minority have different perspectives on this kind of thing than black people do. We also have a better sense of humor and irony, with much less opportunism in making wailing, rolling around the floor, messing our dydees issues about things.
Yes, black people had a raw deal for many years and were called all sorts of ridiculous and awful names while enduring unimaginable violence, discrimination, and ridicule.
Sounds a lot like growing up gay in Cleveland or Pittsburgh. ”Lil’ Faggot” or “Lil’ Sissy” would actually have been terms of endearment compared to what some of us got as little boys clearly destined for showtunes night at Sidetracks. There were so many jobs back in Ohio or Pennsylvania we just KNOW we didn’t get because the old-school, Mad Men-styled employers didn’t want a “faggot” on the team. The black community’s got Emmett Till. We’ve got Matthew Shephard. The only gay bar in Cleveland, The Grid, was located directly across the street from The Crazy Horse Saloon, a venue for female strippers and the drunk, something-to-prove, frat boys who patronized it. Try going out for a night to be yourself and let down your guard in the only place you could in a city that felt like it actively hated you…only to live in terror knowing you had to pass within the Crazy Horse’s orbit to get there, or get home afterward, always aware there’s frequently baseball bats in frat boys’ cars…which might as well have had “Fag Basher” burned into them.
This kind of stuff has been on our mind since the black community in California pushed Prop-8 through last November, and since black thugs from the Southside of Chicago started coming up to Boystown at night to beat and rob gay men at gunpoint in recent months. The MSM treats every imagined slight against black people as if it is the very end of the world…while completely ignoring evil things the black community does, and does to the LGBTQ community in particular. Black thugs pass their gay-bashing tricks down from generation to generation here in Chicago. When we talk about the robbings going on in Boystown right now, we’re told by guys who’ve lived here for 20 years that this comes in cycles…like wolves in the wild teaching the new litter of pups where the best hunting is…and it looks like a new crop of thugs has taken over the Boystown hunting ground from their older predecessors. It sure feels like there’s a story here for journalists to go after…this hatred against gays in the black community that prompts them to GLEEFULLY vote for something like Prop-8 while teaching their younger brothers or proteges how best to gay bash and rob the LGBTQ community.
But, will the MSM ever run a piece on this?
Nope.
Will they jump up and down, roll on the floor, and wail to the Heavens about dolls clearly made by oblivious manufacturers in Asia and stupidly approved by diversity-mandated purchasing agreements in corporate America?
You bet your stuffed bananas they will.
Ridiculous.
As always.
PS — the ironic thing about the “Lil’ Monkey” dolls is that whenever some product is taken off shelves in the States, it’s shipped overseas to Africa or the Pacific to be sold for pennies. This happens with all the sports merchandise made up for sale the day after the Super Bowl…they make up GIANTS WIN! and BROWNS WIN! jerseys, shirts, air fresheners, whatever…knowing full well they’re going to take a loss on 1/2 of what they print up, because only one of those teams will win. The BROWNS WIN! materials forever end up being sold in Cote D’Ivoire or Ghana, somewhere that people have no idea what the shirts are talking about. It’s like an alternate universe in Botswana where the Chicago Cubs or Cleveland Indians win the World Series, according to shirts people are still wearing, all because these things have to be unloaded SOMEWHERE since they can’t be sold in the US.
That’s EXACTLY what’s going to happen to the Lil’ Monkey dolls. They’ll be sold in Kenya or Zaire and no one will think anything’s wrong with them. No one will be offended by a doll, or see it as RAAAAAACIST! They’ll just buy a cheap doll for their kids with a little stuffed animal in it and the kids will play with it and never suffer any Sharpton-worthy emotional distress over it.
UPDATE:
Today was also the beginning of the trial of a black man accused of raping, murdering, and mutilating the bodies of a white couple in Tennessee. Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian were BOTH tied up, raped, murdered and in Newsom’s case was covered with gasoline and set on fire. Why? Because they were white and their black attackers hated white people and so they raped and murdered them.
Where’s Henry Gates, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, Jesse Jackson, Spike Lee, John Lewis, James Clyburne and the rest of the race-baiting brigade when black people seek out white victims for hate crimes? Where’s the distinguished and loquacious Henry Gates when blacks from the Southside come up to Boystown in Chicago for some good, old-fashioned hate crimes and gay-bashing?
Black people can be RAAAAACISTS! too. Black people can commit hate crimes too.
Christopher Newsom and Channon Christian should remind everyone of that.
Because this sure as Hell is a lot more serious than some stupid, poorly made, and idiotically packaged doll with a monkey.
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These lil’ monkey doll are a do over of the ever popular “Monchichi” dolls that were around in the early 80′s. (No cries of racisim them, but the world is different now.) They could put their big toe, pacifier, banana, baby bottle, or thumb in their mouth. Very popular back then.
But what the hell, I’m told we are all descendants of apes, aren’t we? Or is it only blacks?
There’s another case thats are finally on trial.
I hope the barbarians who committed this atrocious act of violence meet their maker very soon followed by a quick detour south.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/us_world/2009/04/03/2009-04-03_grim_twist_in_tortureslay_of_marine_sgt_.html
oops, “are” should be “is”.
check out the Monchichi’s here:
http://www.monchhichi.eu/
scroll down the catalog and you’ll see different color flesh tones.
They’ve been around since 1974 according to the webpage. This is the sort of thing that people who are looking for evidence of racisim find racisim everywhere they look. I boldly claim because they themselves come from a racist point of view.
Sometimes I think we’re living in an Ally McBeal-esque litigious world. Remember the guy who said “Devil’s Food Cake” as opposed to “Angel’s Food Cake” was racist?
Someday, I’m wondering if one of these cooks will sue dirt for being brown/black, as “dirty” is a pejorative description.
The law firm of Cage & Fish will no doubt be on the case. Dancing babies, face bras, and all.
I was talking about the Newsom/Christian case yesterday at work. My co-workers just shook their heads, in disbelief. No outrage — just a “how horrid; I don’t want to talk about it.” look.
Says a lot.