(Source: Spotify)

Amateur linguists will recognize the phenomenon Carlin describes as the “euphemism treadmill,” in which new words are invented to avoid the negative connotations that the old ones have taken on. 

Yeah very honestly America I’m not follicularly challenged and round or robust. I’m bald an fat and I’m ok with it and I’m getting older which makes me closer to death and it’s fine. Things aren’t better if you call them with a better name.

thepeoplesrecord:

The troubling viral trend of the “hilarious” Black poor person
May 7, 2013

Charles Ramsey, the man who helped rescue three Cleveland women presumed dead after going missing a decade ago, has become an instant Internet meme. It’s hardly surprising—the interviews he gave yesterday provide plenty of fodder for a viral video, including memorable soundbites (“I was eatin’ my McDonald’s”) and lots of enthusiastic gestures. But as Miles Klee and Connor Simpson have noted, Ramsey’s heroism is quickly being overshadowed by the public’s desire to laugh at and autotune his story, and that’s a shame. Ramsey has become the latest in a fairly recent trend of “hilarious” black neighbors, unwitting Internet celebrities whose appeal seems rooted in a “colorful” style that is always immediately recognizable as poor or working-class.

Before Ramsey, there was Antoine Dodson, who saved his younger sister from an intruder, only to wind up famous for his flamboyant recounting of the story to a reporter. Since Dodson’s rise to fame, there have been others: Sweet Brown, a woman who barely escaped her apartment complex during a fire last year, and Michelle Clarke, who couldn’t fathom the hailstorm that rained down in her hometown of Houston, and in turn became “the next Sweet Brown.”

Granted, the buzzworthy tactic of reporters interviewing the most loquacious witnesses to a crime or other event is nothing new, and YouTube has countless examples of people of all ethnicities saying ridiculous things. One woman, for instance, saw fit to casually mention her breasts while discussing a local accident, while another man described a car crash with theatrical flair. Earlier this year, a “hatchet-wielding hitchhiker” named Kai matched Dodson’s fame with his astonishing account of rescuing a woman from a racist attacker. But none of those people have been subjected to quite the same level of derisive memeification as Brown, Clark, and now, perhaps, Ramsey—the inescapable echoes of “Hide yo’ kids, hide yo’ wife!” and “Kabooyaw,” the tens of millions of YouTube hits and cameos in other viral videos, even commercials.

It’s difficult to watch these videos and not sense that their popularity has something to do with a persistent, if unconscious, desire to see black people perform. Even before the genuinely heroic Ramsey came along, some viewers had expressed concern that the laughter directed at people like Sweet Brown plays into the most basic stereotyping of blacks as simple-minded ramblers living in the “ghetto,” socially out of step with the rest of educated America. Black or white, seeing Clark and Dodson merely as funny instances of random poor people talking nonsense is disrespectful at best. And shushing away the question of race seems like wishful thinking.

Ramsey is particularly striking in this regard, since, for a moment at least, he put the issue of race front and center himself. Describing the rescue of Amanda Berry and her fellow captives, he says, “I knew something was wrong when a little pretty white girl ran into a black man’s arms. Something is wrong here. Dead giveaway!”

The candid statement seems to catch the reporter off guard; he ends the interview shortly afterward. And it’s notable that among the many memorable things Ramsey said on camera, this one has gotten less meme-attention than most. Those who are simply having fun with the footage of Ramsey might pause for a second to actually listen to the man. He clearly knows a thing or two about the way racism prevents us from seeing each other as people.

Source

Now that you know this is a thing, please stop sharing these memes. Poor Black people speaking candidly about various serious incidents isn’t a hilarious joke.

We joke about it because we wanna push it away. Don’t feel. As humans we need to feel the pain to understand it, death is death and atrocity is there and won’t go away. That’s how we know that there is the opposite, life and happiness. If we turn off our feelings off we stop being human, we become desensitized containers of brain. 

It is a very dangerous thing to hide your feelings to push away the pain one day you might realize that you can’t feel anything anymore. Just like those 3 people, that were unable to see 3 human beings in those girls and kept them locked into a room for 10 years like farm animals.

We should feel bad because it is bad, we should feel pain because it’s horrible. We should listen to Charles Ramsey and pay attention.

(via potoman)

propublica:

Federal data released for the first time shows the wildly different amounts hospitals are charging Medicare to perform the same procedure.

See how hospitals near you are charging with this New York Times interactive.

This chart from the Washington Post lets you compare the highest and lowest averages in your state. 

(via markcoatney)

hyperboreanhorror:

Ga’an or Crow Dancers of various Native nations (the last photo by Edward S. Curtis showcases Apache Ga’an or Gaun). They honor their traditions and evoke blessings and ward off evil spirits.

“The creator sent the Ga’an (Spirit People) to guide the people, teaching them how to walk in the Holy Life Way, to be kind to each other, and to live in harmony with each other and the land.”