The brouhaha kicked up by the actress Lena Dunham complaining that New York Giants’ Odell Beckham Jr. failed to somehow objectify her is interesting to me because of American history.
The issue of black-male interaction with white females in American history has always been historically problematic—Emmett Till, may God rest his soul, paid for this offense with his life, as have many uppity black men who had to temerity to look at white women and sometimes even talked to them.
Dunham’s apology was as extraordinarily contrite as her initial reaction to Beckham’s apparent inattention to her was obtuse.
Dunham had published on her website Lenny Letter newsletter an interview with comedian Amy Schumer about an encounter with Beckham that did not go the way she would have wished.
The occasion was the 2016 Met Gala and Dunham and Schumer talked about feeling out of place there. Beckham, too, was there and it seemed that he ignored Dunham. This is how Dunham related the experience to Schumer:
You and I were literally sitting across from each other at the Met Ball, and it was so surreal to get to do that.
I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, ‘That’s a marshmallow. That’s a child. That’s a dog.’ It wasn’t mean — he just seemed confused.
The vibe was very much like, ‘Do I want to fuck it? Is it wearing a … yep, it’s wearing a tuxedo. I’m going to go back to my cell phone.’ It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, ‘This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.’
And then, sarcastically, he called for gun nuts to kill his opponent for president before she gets a chance to nominate Supreme Court justices who might overturn gun rights.
First things first, in shirt sales alone, Man U will recoup many times over the $89 million to $110 million that they reportedly gave to Juventus to get their wayward son back.
Questlove ran the following on his Instagram (with the attached photograph): Slavery was inhumane. Slavery was sadistic. Slavery was uncomfortable. Slavery was unjust. Slavery was a nightmare. Slavery was a despicable act. Slavery is the pebble whose ripple in the river still resonates on and on and on and on. I’d like to think most of you have common sense. But there is nothing more dangerous than a man in a suit pretending to be a journalist giving revisionist history on the ugliness that was slavery. What’s so fun and lighthearted about being shackled? being separated from your loved ones? Being molested and raped HOURLY, being branded with hot iron? being property? being castrated? being flogged? being malnourished? living in high stress conditions? forced to lay in your own feces? being sold in a heartbeat? suppressing ANY emotion (with the surprising exception of singing it was illegal —lashes or death–to read, write, “talk back” or “sass”, cry (how many of you heard “you better NOT cry before I give you something to cry about!”), get angry, or even more surprising LAUGHING (a plantation barrel of water was always in proximity to dunk ones head in so one could express emotions and suppress the sound as to not alert your overseer of your “sassing”—deep history I just learned about laughing and the slave period—the first recorded song “The Laughing Song” was the defiant “F%^k Tha Police” of its day (also where the term “Barrel Of Laughs” gets its origin)—I’m getting beside the point. I dunno if that man’s (never say his name) point is to troll at any cost whatsoever but his entire existence is a 5 steps backwards for any progress made in humanity. My dismay is the percentage of people who get their news from memes/headlines/& sources to whom they have 0 clue is feeding them false information. Human Trafficking in any form from today’s underage prostitution, to the private Prison System we exercise here in the US, to the Holocaust to 500 years of Slavery–and all other examples I’ve not mentioned is INHUMANE & Evil. —watch where you get your information from and the company you keep people.
https://michaeloallen.com/ 