British Stereotypes

Yeah, I can't honestly believe that there are actual stereotypes against people from England. They're all rude and nasty things against the people from the UK. Now mind you, I don't follow this kind of mindset about things. I mean, what kind of girl who watches Top Gear and Mr. Bean and listens to the Rolling Stones nonstop would think this? Well, obviously someone out there has a little too much time on their hands to start insulting others!!!!!!!!!!!

Here are some of the very rude stereotypes:

• Bad teeth, yellow teeth, big teeth in general


• Snooty, stuck up


• Bad hygiene


• Boisterous


• Obsessed with soccer


• Obsessed with the Queen


• Heavy smokers/drinkers


• Tight fitting Beatle-like clothing


• Very mouthy


• British men are gay. (i.e. Mick Jagger dancing around like an idiot level gay). Mick Jagger ain't gay, believe me, I know about the Stones.


• Suave romantic lovers


• All British men will have the word Sir in front of their names (i.e. Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Michael Caine), or British women wil have the word Dame in front of their name (i.e. Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Helen Mirren, Dame Judi Dench)


• All Brits walk around wearing bowler hats, carrying umbrellas, saying things like "Pip pip, Cheerio!"

Media stereotypes
Here are some stereotypes that many Brits may fall in to in the media:

• Prudish, proper, bad teeth in general


• In American films, the villains will always strangely possess an English accent.


• English people will be shown as having upper class accents (i.e. Hugh Grant), or be shown as being gay/homosexual


• In movies, Brits will always be a gentleman or butler


• Disney movies are notorious for the 'Bad Brit' stereotype. Here are some examples:


• Judge Frollo(Hunchback of Notre Dame). Supposed to be a French character, but voiced by Tony Jay, a British actor


• Jafar(Aladdin)


• Maleficent(Sleeping Beauty)


• Professor Ratigan(The Great Mouse Detective)


• Lady Tremaine(Cinderella)


• Scar(Lion King). Voiced by white British actor Jeremy Irons


• Mrs. Trunchbull(Matilda)


• Count Olaf(Series of Unfortunate Events)

Famous people:

The Rolling Stones

Mick and Ronnie my faves!!

Hugh Laurie

  

Helen Mirren

She is so sophisticated and elegant. 

Helena Bonham-Carter

  

Daniel Radcliffe(cutie!)

Emma Watson 

Rupert Grint(very handsome! He's starting to become another favorite!)

Def Leppard

Judas Priest

Richard Hammond(Top Gear)Cutie!!

Jeremy Clarkson(Top Gear)

James May(Top Gear)

Gary Oldman

Parminder Nagra

Naveen Andrews

Steve Valentine

Rowan Atkinson

Cilla Black

Marianne Faithfull(I would give my left arm to be her in the 1960s!!!!!!!!!)

Lynn and Vanessa Redgrave

Natasha Richardson. I think Natasha is somehow related to Vanessa

 

Colin Firth

Maggie Smith

                                                                                                         Orlando Bloom. OMG! What a hottie!

Michael Caine as Jack Carter in Get Carter

White People Are Funny..

I laugh at that, he was in total panic...or a civil war reinactor.

President Obama will never be American enough for Trump and the Birthers

By R.K. Barry

Andrew Sullivan wrote recently about a new CBS/NYT poll which found that 47% of Republicans think Obama wasn't born in the U.S and that another 22% aren't sure. He cited Steve Kornacki, who said that this "doesn't mean they've thought things through and believe an elaborate plot has been carried out, and it doesn't mean that being told actual facts about Obama's birth will sway them."

[Donald] Trump's message may be resonating with so many Republican voters simply because it represents the most blunt and unrelenting attack on Obama's "American-ness" that they have heard from a major Republican. In other words, it may not be the specifics of Obama's birth certificate and hospital records that excite them, it's the idea that someone so prominent is willing to stand up and take so much heat for saying, essentially, "Barack Obama is not one of us."

As a non-white president with ties to places like Kenya and Indonesia, he represents, for many, the fact that the American Century is over -- finally and completely. Because even if these people believe in their heart of hearts that they are not racist, or sexist, or homophobic, or xenophobic, they have decided that a country that embraced these sentiments was at the top of its game in parts of the 20th Century and that this is the country they want back -- a country where a non-white person with a non-traditional life story could not be president, a country in which only those who can "prove" they are "like us" are allowed to be hold the highest office in the land.

When reporters hold up copies of Obama's birth certificate only to be met by non-specific counterarguments from Trump and other Birthers, it is clear that the interlocutors are arguing past each other. Needless to say, when you are having an argument with someone, it's always useful to make sure you are actually in the same discussion.

The good news is that the bigots amongst us know they cannot directly argue their case and so they need devices like the birth certificate issue to give them credibility. The bad news is that when people won't say what they mean it confuses things significantly.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Racism in Republican Mississippi

By Michael J.W. Stickings

What, goes the old joke, has for 'i's and can't see? Mississippi.

It's not exactly the most progressive place:

Americans nationwide are evenly divided over the issue of same sex marriage. But Republicans in Mississippi are divided over a wholly different wedlock issue: interracial marriage.

In a PPP poll released Thursday, a 46% plurality of registered Republican voters said they thought interracial marriage was not just wrong, but that it should be illegal. 40% said interracial marriage should be legal.

It's easy to forget, given how far America has come, that such racism thrives all over the place, and not just in the overtly racist/Republican bastions of the Confederate Deep South.

But obviously it's pretty bad in Mississippi, or more specifically among Republicans in Mississippi (I shouldn't impugn the entire state, I suppose), and it hardly comes as a surprise that the leading Republican in that state is Haley Barbour, whose views on race are a tad, well, old-fashioned.

For more, see:

-- Haley Barbour, Jim Crow Republican; and

-- Haley Barbour and the KKK: A perfect Republican match?

Haley Barbour and the KKK: A perfect Republican match?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The other day, I withdrew my support for Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination.

It was a difficult and sad thing to do, and it's not a decision I made lightly. I came to it only after serious reflection and delirious soul-searching. I want what's best for the Republican Party, after all, and I really thought that Barbour, the seemingly perfect Republican, was the best.

But, you know, if you support and lobby for amnesty for illegal immigrants, if you show even the tiniest speck of humanity towards the many hard-working people who just want to make a better life for themselves in America, as well as for their children, you're just not a good enough Republican, and you certainly don't deserve the lofty, Reaganesque honor of being your party's nominee for the highest office in the land.

But maybe I was too impulsive. Maybe I didn't think the thing through. Maybe I didn't give Boss Barbour enough credit.

Maybe -- yes, maybe -- I was wrong. And maybe I need to send him a big fat apology.

Because he really is a great Republican, and it took something he said just this week to remind me of that:

Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour said Tuesday he won't denounce a Southern heritage group's proposal for a state-issued license plate that would honor Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, who was an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Barbour is a potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate.

Questioned by reporters Tuesday after an energy speech in Jackson, Barbour said he doesn't think Mississippi legislators will approve the Forrest license plate proposed by the Mississippi Division of Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The group wants to sponsor a series of state-issued license plates over the next few years to mark the 150th anniversary of the Civil War - or in its words, the "War Between the States." The Forrest license plate would be slated for 2014.

Mississippi NAACP president Derrick Johnson said it's "absurd" to honor a "racially divisive figure" such as Forrest. Johnson has also called on Barbour to denounce the license plate idea.

Asked about the NAACP's stance Tuesday, Barbour replied: "I don't go around denouncing people. That's not going to happen. I don't even denounce the news media."

As Jonathan Chait notes, it would appear that, for Barbour the news media are even worse than the KKK. Such crazy anti-media sentiment certainly reinforces his Republican cred.

But it's also his refusal to denounce the effort to honor not just a major Confederate figure but a leader of the KKK that really sends his star back into orbit. While he said that "there's not a chance it'll become law," and hence that there won't be a state-issued licence plate (though it's not clear if he himself supports the idea or if he just thinks the Mississippi legislature won't approve it), it's that refusal that supersizes his Republican cred.

No, he's not perfect. Alas. There's still that "amnesty" blip, and he won't be able to run away from that, just as Romney won't be able to run away from health-care reform in Massachusetts.

But he's a good Republican, a very good Republican, and very much a model for how Republicans should conduct themselves. I doubt he'll run, and maybe he's not Teabagger enough for the far right, but the party could do a lot worse, and I really hope all Americans, especially independents who may need some help deciding between the two parties, come to identify him with the Republican Party.

He deserves no less. And neither does the GOP.

(photo)

Craziest Republican of the Day: Connie O'Brien

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Even when we expect the worst, Republicans somehow seem to keep amazing us with their capacity to scrape more and more off the bottom of the barrel. Take, for example, the astonishing racist ignorance of Connie O'Brien, a Kansas Republican:

One week ago, the Kansas House Federal and State Committee held a hearing about in-state tuition being granted to the children of undocumented immigrants, which has been the policy in the state since 2004.

Speaking in favor of repealing the law, Rep. Connie O'Brien (R-KS) began telling an anecdote at the hearing about how her son had difficulty in getting financial assistance to attend college. She explained that she took her son to a financial aid office, and as she was waiting in line, she believed there was a girl waiting in line with them who was "not originally from this country." Fellow committee member Rep. Sean Gatewood (D-KS) asked O'Brien how she knew this student was "illegal." O'Brien replied that she knew because the student "wasn't black, she wasn't Asian, and she had the olive complexion": 

REP. O'BRIEN: My son who's a Kansas resident, born here, raised here, didn't qualify for any financial aid. Yet this girl was going to get financial aid. My son was kinda upset about it because he works and pays for his own schooling and his books and everything and he didn't think that was fair. We didn't ask the girl what nationality she was, we didn't think that was proper. But we could tell by looking at her that she was not originally from this country. [...] 

REP. GATEWOOD: Can you expand on how you could tell that they were illegal? 

REP. O'BRIEN: Well she wasn't black, she wasn't Asian, and she had the olive complexion. 

The olive complexion?

Yes, watch out, all you Olives, they're gonna getcha, because you're the wrong color, and you clearly don't belong.

Yes, anyone with an "olive" complexion is an illegal Mexican immigrant, no questions asked. Wow. How do you even deal with that sort of stupidity?

I bet her gaydar is fantastic, too.

Racism

I know I probably already did a previous blog on my thoughts and opinions of racism, but I really need to get my opinions out.


I have a computer class here at Gateway and recently had to do a PowerPoint presentation on something, so I did mine on racism/discrimination. It horrified me to see and read what stereotypes people have for everyone. It horrified me to read that some people assume bad things about others. Thank God I'm not like this, I'm very tolerant of EVERYONE! I did a slide about stereotypes from one place where I didn't think stereotypes existed- England! Yeah, there are mean stereotypes of the nice and lovely people of this awesome place. For some reason, my dad always assumes people from England got bad teeth like Michael Caine, no one from England has bad teeth. I do not assume this. My dad does. I hate racism as I've said in blogs before.


In high school, I had to deal with the issue of discrimination. This one classmate had thought that it was funny to do the Nazi salute to everyone. OMG! He did it to me and I almost knocked his lights out right then and there. You see, I'm part Jewish, very small part, and even that's enough to know I don't like people Nazi saluting everyone. They think it's funny, but it's not. This classmate also had thought it was funny to racially insult my step dad because of his Italian ancestry. He knows it gets a rise out of me to insult him, he knows I love my family very deeply and he has he balls to insult my step dad? NO WAY!


And my aunt, don't even get me started! She is nice, but very biased about people. But she can be very rude and mean towards people. There was this one guy she usually went out with, he was a nice older man named Roger, he was a nice older Italian gentleman, he was sweet as could be, and when he dressed up, nothing against him, but he always wore pinstripe suits that made him look like a mobster. Anyway she didn't want to go out with him anymore when she found out that his mother lives with him so he can take care of her. How ridiculous is that? But she's the type of person who will openly speak her opinion and not care who she hurts. When me, my sister, dad and her went to Cynthiana, Ky, for a family reunion, omg, it was like the Deliverance Family Reunion. Funny name, huh? Anyway, my dad has family down there and nothing against them, they are nice, but they are pure country and hate anyone of another race/ethnicity. Anyway, we went to see them and I think maybe I made the mistake of wearing a Rolling Stones tee with their picture on it. About an hour into this literal racist nightmare, people start talking about how we have to learn Spanish in school. I hear various comments like "This is America! If those illegal immigrants want to come into our country, then they better learn English" or "I don't get why we have to learn Spanish". Then they started talking about stuff they seen in People Magazine, and unfortunately, they started talking about this picture of Jet Li that was in there because this was right around the time The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor came out and my aunt Lois said they should ship him back to China. How rude is that? And then they started talking about this picture of Mick Jagger that was in there because it showed him walking around with his son Lucas and daughter Georgia, my aunt Lisa said he's the most hideous man she's ever laid eyes on. I actually had to sit there and not say a thing. If I spoke my mind about what I thought about this, I'd get a dirty look from my dad or aunt, like I just committed murder or something,  my life is almost controlled by my dad or aunt.


But basically racism is something I hate. I thought we were all past the point of hating others because of skin color or race? It's not the 1950s anymore, no one cares about the fact that someone is black, Asian, Italian, Jewish, British, etc. We all need to MOVE ON! 

They call me Mr. President

By Capt. Fogg

There's a difference between comedic impersonations and bigoted mockery; between comedy and things that make racists, bullies, mean spirited, angry people laugh. One could invoke the German Schadenfreude, yet the laughter when a clown slips on a banana peel isn't quite the same and isn't as universal as the sound that comes from the man in the white sheet laughing at the humiliation of another man.

I've seen enough bullies in my day. I've seen some of them confronted and heard the common refrains of "I'm the victim here" and the almost inevitable "didn't you know I was joking?" So I wasn't surprised to hear Glenn Beck whine to Meredith Vieira that his detractors didn't have a sense of humor adequate to know that when he advocates beating a public official with a shovel or tells us of the need to shoot Democratic leaders in the head, it's those dumb liberals who are humorless.

For the most part, the law has never found incitement amusing: shouting fire when there isn't one - for laughs. Even those orating innocently about a strike have been punished in America because someone used the occasion to toss a bomb. You don't make bomb jokes in the airport and you don't joke about killing democrats to an audience you know to include deranged and armed enemies of Democrats, even if for no other reason than avoiding making yourself look bad. But looking bad is just what many of these frustrated losers want to do.

But times seem to be changing and that old time evil is bubbling up again, or at least some groups now have enough power to make the clowns take off the blackface and to think twice about anti-Semitic rants and maybe be a bit more circumspect before going after homosexuals, women, and all the other pet victims of the Right.

Mexicans? Chinese? Well they are still targets of opportunity for those willing to descend that far. Some comedians don't realize they're being offensive to people who don't deserve it, some of them don't care as long as they get an audience and others couldn't get a job unless it was entertaining bigots. So if Margaret Cho makes jokes about her Korean family, we don't cringe, unless we are her relatives. When Michael Richards goes on an N-word binge, we question his sense of decency -- to say the least.

Watching Dennis Leary's charity benefit the other day, I was appalled at his crude attempt to make fun of the world's most widely spoken language. No, not the real difficulties of speaking, it but with facial contortions and weird sounds that didn't seem funny or sound anything like Chinese to one familiar with the language. Bad taste I think, and enough to alienate a lot of people to the objectives of his charity.

And then there's Limbaugh.

What is an American president called when he visits China? They call him Mr. President. He's only called a Marxist tyrant by detritus like Limbaugh and the lumps of fecal matter that follow in his wake. We employ a host of people to promote American interests, to show the world our best face and we have this inflated rubber gasbag mooning them.

What is Chinese President Hu Jintao called when he's a guest here? The "Chicom Dictator " says Rush. "Ching chong, ching chong, chong" mocks the flatulent Palm Beach Bastard Billionaire, who makes a living lowering the estimation of my country in the eyes of the world. Condescending, contemptuous and contemptible: "Ching chong, ching chong, chong" while millions of Americans, with or without Chinese origins cringe.

No, presidents from Nixon onward have been treated well in China, it's only in the sewers of the American Right that President Obama is called a Marxist tyrant by detritus like Limbaugh and the lumps of fecal matter that follow in his wake. We employ a host of people to promote American interests, to show the world our best face, to induce them to trust our intentions and yet we have this inflated rubber gasbag mooning them while his adolescent friends laugh and mock.

Of course he knows what he's doing, and of course he doesn't care if he puts a white sheet on Uncle Sam and confirms the belief of billions that we are a nation of snarling pirates who don't deserve respect or trust or cooperation. He'll keep doing it as long as we let him, support him, laugh at him, watch him and patronize his unworthy, unscrupulous and unAmerican sponsors.

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Haley Barbour now says racism is bad

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Jim Crow Republican Haley Barbour now says those pro-segregation, white-supremacist Citizens Councils in the South, including in his hometown of Yazoo City, Mississippi, were "indefensible":

It was a difficult and painful era for Mississippi, the rest of the country, and especially African Americans who were persecuted in that time.

It was, to put it mildly, but you'll excuse me if I don't believe a word this racist blowhard says.

At Slate, David Weigel writes that "[t]he pattern revealed by his "gaffes," though, is of a politician who thinks racism isn't really a problem anymore, and that liberals get too much political leverage from the memory of the Civil Rights era."

I think that's understating, and somewhat misrepresenting, Barbour's race "problem." This is a man, after all -- Barbour, not Weigel -- who has a Confederate flag signed by Jefferson Davis in his office, a man who in 2003 attended a fundraiser for the Council of Conservative Citizens, a pro-segregation, white-supremacist group, a man with a long history of playing the race card to win white votes.

Is he an out-and-out racist? Maybe not -- at least not anymore. But he's certainly enough of a politician to know when to correct himself and to say what has to be said (particularly when eyeing a presidential run). Which he did. He just doesn't have any credibility. You'd have to be a fool to believe him.