I get to be as self-indulgent as I want without wasting anyone's time. Guilt-free solipsism -- excellent!

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A great piece on Slate about the comedy of my girlfriend Sarah Silverman [via Tim O].

This is the best summation of her approach I've heard yet: she's not just a critic of PC culture: She's a connoisseur. She handles the complex algorithms of taboo—who's allowed to joke about what, to whom, using what terminology—with instant precision: "Everybody blames the Jews for killing Christ, and then the Jews try to pass it off on the Romans. I'm one of the few people that believe it was the blacks." (The joke exposes not the ancient perfidy of any particular race but the absurdity of blaming entire races for anything.) Her best jokes are thought experiments in the internal logic of political correctness: "I want to get an abortion, but my boyfriend and I are having trouble conceiving."

It also uses the term "meta-bigot", which is uncomfortably close to my own coinage (ahem) "meta-racist." The author lumps South Park, Ali G, and Chappelle in with Silverman as meta-bigots, which seems fair. In some ways, meta-racism is strong evidence that the culture has substantially internalized a belief in racial equality.

Can we meta- ourselves all the way back to plain old racism?
| posted by Alex at 5:06 PM