Larry and Curly Were Racists, Too

While back home in Kansas City a couple of weeks ago to see family and friends, a mild uproar of jackassicity erupted over the following billboard:

Can you guess what’s wrong with it (no fair cheating, KC natives)? It should be obvious to all enlightened, progressive peoples. This billboard, this posting, this publicly displayed outdoor advertisement promulgates and propagates that most vile of humanity’s offenses: Racism.

I invite you read all about it in this op-ed column from “The Kansas City Star.”

Are you sufficiently educated now? Excellent. I know that I didn’t truly grasp the horrific nature of this ad until Mr. Diuguid enlightened me. I just thought it was a mildly amusing adult-beverage billboard with a fairly worn-out premise. Not a tool of oppression. A tool wielded by The Man himself.

Frickin’ idiot.

Okay, I’ll grant the rhyme’s history isn’t exactly stellar. But how many people remember it? Sure, I’ve heard the rhyme used that way. I believe it was in fifth grade. Because that’s how those things work. Some wisenheimer (that’s right, I said wisenheimer) comes up to you at recess or lunch and whispers some twisted rhyme in your ear. (Years later, he’d do the same thing but ask if you wanted some weed.) So, I associate the racist nature of “eenie, meenie” with a punk from grade school. And I’ll wager that most people of my approximate age feel about the same. In fact, I never would have associated anything negative about the phrase or the billboard if the beacon of truth, justice and all that stuff known as “The Kansas City Star” hadn’t brought it to my attention.

I’ve written before that words have meanings. Likewise, phrases have meanings. And like words, the meanings of those phrases can change over time. And sometimes those changes are actually for the better. So go. Celebrate catching a tiger by the toe with a cold one. (Just make it an O’Malley’s Irish Cream Ale brewed by my buddy Mike – available at Tanner’s, The Peanut, Charlie Hooper’s, etc.)

Granted, now that I really think about it, that same wisenheimer once told me an off-color version of “Jingle Bells.” Guess I’ll have to bypass Holiday Time this year.

Later,

Fox