A couple of things:
For someone who tries to promote the image of "successful black men"
McGruder misses the mark......He misses the mark by a whole bunch.
Is this guy for real?
To: A.D. Powell, this just lends more credence to yours, mine and others pursuit of exposing Aaron McGruder for what he is- an loud, crass, bigoted, and ignorant person.
Furthermore this goes to show that you can take to "thug" out of the "ghetto" but you can't take the "ghetto" out of the thug.
I'm interested to know what people's opinions are regarding this:
Toward the dessert (chocolate torte) portion of the evening, Uma Thurman rose to introduce a special guest: Aaron McGruder, the creator of the popular and subversive comic strip The Boondocks, who, as it happens, had travelled farther than anyone else to be there, all the way from Los Angeles. McGruder, one of only a few prominent African-American cartoonists, had been making waves in all the right ways, poking conspicuous fun at Trent Lott, the N.R.A., the war effort. An exhibition of his comic stripscharacters with Afros and dreadlocks drawn in a style borrowing heavily from Japanese manga,with accentuatedforeheads and eyeswas on display in the Metropolitan Clubs Great Hall. It seemed to be, as a Nation contributor said later, his coronation as our kind of guy.
But what McGruder saw when he looked around at his approving audience was this: a lot of old, white faces. What followed was not quite a coronation. McGruder, who rarely prepares notes or speeches for events like this, began by thanking Thurman, the most ass-kicking woman in America. Then he lowered the boom. He was a twenty-nine-year-old black man, he said, who got invited to such functions all the time, so you could imagine how bored he was. He proceeded to ramble, at considerable length, and in a tone, as one listener put it, of militant cynicism, with a recurring theme: that the folks in the room (courageous? Please) were a sorry lot.
He told the guests that hed called Condoleezza Rice, the national-security adviser, a mass murderer to her face; what had they ever done? (The Rice exchange occurred in 2002, at the N.A.A.C.P. Image Awards, where McGruder was given the Chairmans Award; Rice requested that he write her into his strip.) He recounted a lunch meeting with Fidel Castro. (He had been invited to Cuba by the California congresswoman Barbara Lee, who is one of the few politicians McGruder has praised in The Boondocks.) He said that noble failure was not acceptable. But the last straw came when he dropped the N-word, as one amused observer recalled. He saidbragged, eventhat hed voted for Nader in 2000. At that point, according to Hamilton Fish, the host of the party, it got interactive.
Eric Alterman, a columnist for The Nation, was sitting in the back of the room, next to Joe Wilson, the Ambassador. He shouted out, Thanks for Bush! Exactly what happened next is unclear. Alterman recalls that McGruder responded by grabbing his crotch and saying, Try these nuts. Jack Newfield, the longtime Village Voice writer, says that McGruder simply dared Alterman to remove him from the podium. When asked about this incident later, McGruder said, I aint no punk. I aint gonna let someone shout and not go back at him.
Alterman walked out. I turned to Joe and said, I cant listen to this crap anymore, he remembers. I went out into the Metropolitan Club lobbyits a nice lobbyand I worked on my manuscript.
Newfield joined in the heckling, as did Stephen Cohen, a historian and the husband of Katrina vanden Heuvel. It was like watching LeRoi Jones try to Mau-Mau a guilty white liberal in the sixties, Newfield says. It was out of a time warp. Who is he to insult people who have been putting their careers and lives on the line for equal rights since before he was born?
By the time McGruder had finished, and a tipsy Joe Wilson took the microphone to deliver his New Years Resolutions, perhaps half the guests had excused themselves to join Alterman in the lobby. A Nation contributor estimated that McGruder had offended eighty per cent of the audience. Some people still havent recovered, he said, sounding thrilled.
At a certain point, I just got the uncomfortable feeling that this was a bunch of people who were feeling a little too good about themselves, McGruder said afterward. These are the big, rich white leftists who are going to carry the fight to George Bush, and the best they can do is blame Nader?
He went on, laughing a little, I was not the right guest for that event. Ill be the first one to say that. It was one of those reminders that, yeah, Im not this political leader that people are looking for.
As a talented young black man who is outspoken in his political convictions, McGruder has grown accustomed to inordinately high expectations. The Green Party called him last year, asking if he might like to run for President. He had to point out that he wasnt old enough. I want to do stuff that has a moral centerstuff that I can be proud of, he continued. But Im not trying to be that guy, the political voice of young black America, because then you have to sort of be a responsible grownup, for lack of a better word. And its likeyou know, Flip Wilson said this, he said, I reserve the right to be a nigger. And I absolutely do, at all times.
What a profound thinker McGruder is - My sentiments
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 1763 } Location: Hudson Valley, NY
Posted: Thu 28 Apr 2005 17:18 Post subject:
I think this quote pretty much sums it up:
Quote:
And its likeyou know, Flip Wilson said this, he said, I reserve the right to be a nigger. And I absolutely do, at all times.
He said it, NOT me!!!!
Wortman_J wrote:
Furthermore this goes to show that you can take to "thug" out of the "ghetto" but you can't take the "ghetto" out of the thug.
I see what you're saying, but this little boy is hardly a "ghetto thug", but a mere wanna be ghetto thug. If he went into East New York in Brooklyn, he'd get his ass handed to him at the end of some real thugs foot!!! I think this is why he is so obnoxious, he is desperately trying to be something he is not.
It amazes me that someone would have the audacity to "bite the hand that feeds them". But this is what these people do, not realizing that the people they are offending are potential allies that have money. Nothing like alienating a potential ally!!!
He will most likely alienate his supporters that have money until no one runs his pathetic strip. Ah, but at least he'll be "down" with the homies!!
McGruder is hardly a thug, an definately doesn't come from the Ghetto
There are a lot of obnoxious people out there, who feel it's their right to speak their mind at all times...
I like his drawings though
(Bottom) Aaron McGruder (center), creator of the Boondocks comic strip, lived up to his controversial reputation in his February 4 Voices of Vision Series talk.
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- My sentiments
