Build Date: Sat Feb 22 05:50:27 2025 UTC
When putting someone into a killfile, one should do it without hesitation, and without bringing attention to the fact. Killfiling someone and telling them beforehand is on par with running around with your fingers in your ears while screaming LALALALALALA
-- Poindexter Fortran
Barbershop
2002-10-12 00:49:41
I recently went and saw the movie Barbershop. For those of you who don't know, it's a PG-rated comedy about a barbershop in Chicago's South Side run by Ice Cube. It's not going to win any Academy Awards, but it's fairly funny and it has some good performances. It also pissed off Jesse Jackson, who asked producers to delete scenes from the film's future videotape, DVD, and cable releases. The scenes Jackson wants removed question the "sacred" status of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks and Jesse Jackson himself.
Jesse Jackson hasn't actually seen the movie, but he says that he did read a copy of the script and that the parts he wants removed "crossed the line between what's sacred and serious and what's funny."
Since I've actually seen the film myself I can say that Jesse Jackson has crossed the line between being a tolerant human being to being someone who believes in thought control and censorship, especially if that censorship will stop people from questioning his status as the Voice of Black America.
Most of the humor in the movie revolves around the banter in the shop, the back-and-forth joking, teasing and debating that goes on between the employees and the customers. Towards the end of the movie, the character Eddie, played by Cedric the Entertainer, starts in with a monologue about how the barbershop is the one place where black people in the community can come together and talk, that all viewpoints can be heard, and that no one can be silenced. He then goes on to make the point that many people worked hard to get equal rights for blacks, but not all of them got famous for it like Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Jesse Jackson. He is shouted down by every other person in the barbershop. They don't keep him from making his point, but none of them agree with him.
OK, he also uses the word "Fuck" a lot, as in "Fuck Jesse Jackson", but the entire point of the scene is that free speech needs a place to exist, and that unpopular views need to have a place where they can be discussed openly, and in the South Side of Chicago, that place is a barbershop.
Civil Rights includes the right to free speech. Remember that, and go see Barbershop.
Oh yeah, and "Fuck Jesse Jackson."
T O P S T O R I E S
The Future Ain't What It Used To Be
Ideas have taken horrifying shape and rooted into our modern reality. (More...)
The Once & Future King of Dust
Only The Onion could have acquired Infowarts. (More...)
Another Nobel Prize-Winning Author Describes Drunkenness
This book won a Pulitzer Prize. Here's its famous paragraph on getting drunk... (More...)
Why I'm pretty sure JD Vance had sex with a couch
True or false? The answers await us in that magical land where all truths are revealed -- the internet. (More...)
In 2010 Dr. Cheng-Huai Ruan discovered a way to cause a patient with an abnormal heartbeat to get back into a normal rhythm by sticking a finger up the patient's ass. (More...)
WKRP in Cincinnati aired from 1978 through 1982. Howard Hesseman played Dr. Johnny Fever, a DJ from Los Angeles who was fired from his previous job for saying the word "booger" on the air. In the show Hesseman would do some dialogue, introduce a song, and start the song. You'd hear a few notes, but never the whole song. (More...)
C L A S S I C P I G D O G
It was the night of the Leonid meteor showers -- the perfect opportunity to break out the evil opaline liquor, get madder than hatters, and test wireless ethernet hardware... Would the plunging meteorites interfere with the 2.4GHz band? What about our delicate brain waves? (More...)
A Day in the Life of a Beverotologist
It was starting to look like a very boring Saturday, trapped as I was in the suburban wastelands of the outer Bay Area, so I called my Able Assistant (AA) and proposed that we perform some Spocktail field tests. For some time I've been working on creating the quintessential cinematic beverage and even tho' SMRL does most of its testing during nocturnal hours, this seemed an opportune time to roll up the sleeves of our labcoats and get some science done. While the beverotology creation tested this day (The Neurotoxin) must be deemed a success, this article focuses more the journey of the experimenters, rather then the science of beverotology. (More...)
40 Acres, a Mule, and a Crummy 90-Second Spot on Weekend Update
Consider the plight of the Black Man. The Black Man on "Saturday Night Live," I mean. Has there ever been a more pathetic thing than a token unredeemed for 28 years? Where is the NAACP when you really need them? (More...)
Songs Of Love And Special Things
Well, dear reader, there's no denying it: Spring has sprung. The air is pungent with the fertile aroma of Romance. And you know what goes with Romance, don't you? That's right, Lover, porn. And not just any porn, but the kind you can sing along to. (More...)
The Deep Dark Underbelly of the Star Wars Myth, or Ramayana Remembered
It's a fact: Star Wars is a blatant plagiarism of an ancient Asian legend, and the long lines of devout Star Wars freaks are really unscrupulous Asian copyright busters. From Indonesia to Thailand to Nepal, videos are available for sale or rent before they're even released in the US and UK due to this nerdy camcorder-clutching bunch. (More...)
