[PEN-L:8349] Re: Re: racism

[Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I hesitate to get into this, but I'm on record as having posted that
Brad's satire was hilarious.  Which it was.  The humor has nothing to do
with Chinese culture; it is a spoof of a certain type of Marxism known
all over the world.  Have you ever seen Jessica Mitford's
"Lifeitselfmanship"?  Same object, same humor, also very funny.  Does
appreciating her stuff make me a self-hating Euro-American?

FWIW, the writer who had the most effect on my political thinking when I
was in high school (a very long time ago) was Mo-tzu (old spelling?),
whom I had read in translation.  This guy towers over any other
intellectual or activist figure on the left until modern times, IMO.
Imagine a Plato who is also a communist and who leads a band of warriors
that struggles defensively against military aggression wherever it
occurs.  (He was a rough contemporary of the golden age of Athens.)  His
prose (in translation) has a simple, rather formal cadence, but there is
no silliness to spoof, as there is with Mao.

Peter

ps: Often I think of a particular passage from Mo-tzu: There is a great
conflagration, so great that no one can put it out.  One person is
adding fuel, another is pouring water.  Who do we praise and who do we
blame?

The real world is often like this.

Charles Brown wrote:
>
> In the particular instance you are talking about, Henry pointed out that Brad and Max's comedy post was mocking a fomality of Chinese culture which translated into English as something different in a cultural sense. Then Max started spelling "Mao" as "Wao". A fundamental anti-racist sense tells one not to mock other cultures, exactly because something can get lost in the translation, but this is especially true concerning members of a European nation making fun of non-Europeans.
>