We'll pay for the slaves, you get the swastika napkins

You know those moments when you come across something so offensive that you just have to laugh or cry? Check out this link. In short, a couple decided to have a 'Colonial' wedding, where all the white guests were waited on by black serving staff. And where did they hold this celebration of love? South Africa, of course!

I'm almost speechless. So, let me ask you: what is the most tasteless wedding idea you can think of?



FOCUS: Not just wedding, but in general. What are the most socially inappropriate things you've seen or been a part of? What was your reaction? Did you just go with it, say something, or storm off in righteous indignation?

 

In 1989 I toured Europe with a band, literally months before the Berlin wall came down. There was a fairly large Fascist movement in various pockets we went through at the time - parts of Italy and Switzerland particularly.

When we played Cagliari, a little town on the island of Sardinia, the owner of the hotel we were supposed to stay in took one look at us and shook her finger, saying, "No, no." Since the promoter's job was to feed us and put us up for the night, he got this bright look on his face and said, "I know - you can come to my house! My mother will make us dinner and you can stay there tonight!"

We were totally psyched - a home-cooked meal from someone's Mom in Sardinia? Hell, yes.

So we sat down to an amazing feast at this guy's house with his Mom and his little brother, who spent the entire meal raving in absurdly broken English about his amazing guitar that we had to see to believe. After the meal, he ran to his room to get the guitar and show it to us.

This might be a good time to mention that three members of the band were from German Jewish families.

He busts out this guitar case, opens it up and it's a totally stock Gibson Les Paul, stock. And it has a sticker on it with a picture of good ol' Adolf, arm raised high, with the words, "sooner or later the world will realize Hitler was right," in English, around his pretty face in a circle.

No one said a word. I had an entire conversation in my head in seconds: "Call him out. Punch him. Take him by the neck and put him against the wall and then put his head through it. You just broke bread with this motherfucker. You're staying in his home. In a foreign country where you don't speak the language. And it's an island. And you just got kicked out of a hotel because you look like a freak to these people. And there's absolutely zero chance you would even be able to communicate with this guy enough to change his mind or even have a debate with him. Maybe you should just shut the fuck up and let it go right on by."

"Yeah, great guitar, man."

 

I went to a Gone with the Wind themed wedding once where the couple hired a bunch of black people to play "slaves." If you've ever seen the movie, you know the scene in the beginning when everyone goes to that party. These people were basically hired to reenact that party. They walked around serving drinks, fanned with palm fronds while the ladies took naps, and helped the wedding party get into their authentic outfits. They were local actors who got paid extra if they spoke in "authentic slave accents." So basically southern accents with horrible grammar. The worst part is that the wedding took place in New Jersey, not even in the South.

 

I have two friends, one white, one black, who are best buddies but constantly try to one-up each other by being as racially insensitive as possible. So far, the best has been when the white guy had a custom cake made for the black guy in the shape of a KKK hood. He presented it to him at a crowded restaurant during his birthday dinner.

 

Once listened to a guy tell a story about going to Thailand. The details escape me, but the gist of it was:

-staying with a Thai family with his fiance (see: "renting" a Thai family)
-him reading the newspaper with the daughter blowing him in the kitchen
-the daughter's father walking in and saying hello
-his fiance walking in and saying hello
-hoping that the girl was at least 18, although she probably wasn't

Creepy as fuck.

 

"I'm so white, during the riots I went out and bought a television"

 

On a similar note, you may have seen the press that a certain Hobo Wedding has been getting lately. Essentially some people of the not so bright persuasion held a Great Depression themed wedding, where guests dressed as hobos and they cut up vintage quilts to make decorations.The wedding was featured on Etsy, and then on Regretsy. A gaggle of self-righteous folks pointed out that it was in incredibly poor taste to dress up as hobos when people actually lived through that time, and just as America might be entering another depression, and so on and so forth. The bride and groom's families then went apeshit, writing angry, angry screeds to the editor of Regretsy, starting twitter flame wars, threatening to go to the media, etc. Then, the media picked it up, even the WSJ. I've been following this with a sick fascination, as I think it offers many object lessons in the dangers of putting yourself out there for public consumption.

On a more general note, I mistrust outrage, and especially self-righteous outrage. It always feels so good to believe that you're fighting the good fight, and maybe sometimes you are, but mostly I think its an ego boost at the expense of self awareness.

 

I was attending the wedding of one of my dad's best friends. He was a middle aged man whose wife had passed a few years earlier so this was his second wedding. One of his friends gets up on stage and goes on about the usual stuff, how happy he is for him and that. He was a funny guy and was giving a great speech. Then he closes with saying a congratulations but then says that always knew his first marriage wouldn't work out. I guess he was trying to be funny but there was absolute silence. I guess that was his closer because he looked around for a second or two and then lowered his head and quickly left the stage. After sitting around for some time as the party slowly returned to normal with everyone ignoring the elephant in the room, he just got up and left.

The poor bride and groom didn't look normal the rest of the party. Everything just seemed a little subdued and it looked like they were just kind of going through the motions.

I found out later that his previous wife's parents were in attendance and the mother was quite a wreck.

 

One time, in Canada, I was invited to a Bloods v. Crips party.

The party was entirely white kids (there was an Asian here or there) who put on red or blue and pretended to be ghetto, start 'beef,' and blast gangster rap.

I offered $100 to anyone who could tell me who the Bloods or Crips were. No one took that $100 off of me.

But the most egregious part was some of them were wearing red AND blue. Heathens.

 

There's a big difference between "We have the right to-" and "It's a good idea to-"

I have the right to have a slave wedding. Is it a good idea? No, and other people definitely have the right to call me an asshole.

 

Because we become a better society when we call dickwads out on their bullshit. Perhaps if we say to people "Maybe you shouldn't do that fucked up thing you're doing...", they'll do fucked up shit less often.

 

This is a little off topic, but I was looking at the article, and the first comment was this:

Am I just being naive or do people really think like that about Thanksgiving? I know there must be some people who do, but you always have outliers. I can sort of understand where people are coming from when they protest Columbus Day, I don't agree with them but I can kind of follow their logic. I really just don't associate Thanksgiving with any sort of racism, yeah we as immigrants did some awful things to the natives, but I think most people separate Thanksgiving from those atrocities.

As for these two fucksticks in South Africa, apartheid ended in 1994, these motherfuckers were alive for it. They can burn.

 

Lots of 'traditions' are creepy if you think about them as abstracts. Easter? We're celebrating the time some Italians and some Jews tortured a couple of criminals and another jew with some unpopular ideas to death. And to celebrate that tradition, we tell kids that a either a trespasser left candy in the yard, or a bunny somehow shit out chocolate eggs, but either way, they should totally eat them.

Your brother punched out one of your teeth? Leave it under your pillow so that a burglar who somehow just fucking knows that your brother punched you in the face and you have a tooth available, can break in over night, steal that tooth and leave you some change and do god knows what with your fucking teeth.

Ring a ring o rosies? Oh, that's a game where children sing about the skin blotches of the bubonic plague, and then sneeze and fall down like plague victims dying. Yay!

How fucked up these things are have more to do with how long they've been a tradition. I mean fucking over native americans has been celebrated for a while now. And it's been a long time since the depicted atrocities. In a few hundred years, we may well have a children's game where the 'jews' have to play keep away from 'The Germans' until the bomb goes off 'In Japan' and if 'The Germans' catch all 'The Jews' then they win, but if the jews escape, they get candy! But it's going to be a while before we can remember the holocaust with a cute game. I think Apartheid themed parties will probably take a few years before they start being kitsch and stop being repugnant.

 

FWIW, my parents don't celebrate Thanksgiving anymore for pretty much that reason.