Dan Rather: Obama couldn't sell watermelons

[DarrinS]

Can you imagine if a conservative said this?

XQS1XhULT-g

[ChumpDumper]

Can you imagine if someone beat you to posting this YouTube?

[Wild Cobra]

OK, here is something I claim ignorance on. I have heard references before, but...

What is the intended slur between watermelons and black people? Must be a regional thing.

[boutons_deux]

Popeye's TV ads uses a black lady with all the cool urban tics to flog Popeye's shit.

Where's the outrage?

[cheguevara]

I disagree

watermelons are delicious

[jack sommerset]

A black man who can't sell watermelons, that's a bad salesman.

[Viva Las Espuelas]

If all this "didn't matter" Jesse Jackson and al sharpton would be on welfare. Ahem.

[SouthernFried]

It really only matters if a conservative said this. They're all racists.

[Stringer_Bell]

OK, here is something I claim ignorance on. I have heard references before, but...

What is the intended slur between watermelons and black people? Must be a regional thing.

I don't understand it either, maybe the conservatives are making an issue out of a non-issue to create the impression of liberal bias? Watermelons are delicious, they shouldn't be politicized.

Also, Dan Rather had a Houston police officer shoot him up with heroin for a story, so I can't hate on him until I get to sit down 1 on 1 with him and get to know him better as a person.

[MiamiHeat]

http://i283.photobucket.com/albums/kk287/Haldamir123/5748366b98c78053e85aa9470a52df41_64.jpg

[Winehole23]

This wino wonders whether watermelons are racially radioactive per se, or whether racial derogation was at work at all in what Dan Rather said.

It is urged, I suppose, that mentioning Obama in connection with watermelons at the very least discloses an unconscious racial animus, if it is not an overt slur.

Short story: I'll take or leave the free psychologizing as I please. It's free. Plus, the fake outrage over Rather's "racist" remarks is not too convincing.

As to Rather's overt slur that the MSM supposedly missed?

There wasn't one.

[Wild Cobra]

I don't understand it either, maybe the conservatives are making an issue out of a non-issue to create the impression of liberal bias? Watermelons are delicious, they shouldn't be politicized.

Also, Dan Rather had a Houston police officer shoot him up with heroin for a story, so I can't hate on him until I get to sit down 1 on 1 with him and get to know him better as a person.
The thing is, there is some derogatory connotation between blacks and water melons. I just don't know what it is.

Maybe those who made "tea bagger" a derogatory term knows?

[SnakeBoy]

The thing is, there is some derogatory connotation between blacks and water melons. I just don't know what it is.


I'm guessing it started back when one of the more popular varieties was the ######head watermelon.

New York Times 6 July 1895...
http://edgeofthewest.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/######head.jpg?w=355&h=743

[Trainwreck2100]

i miss him, fuck katie can't report for shit courick

[doobs]

It doesn't even make sense. Who cares what the seller's race is? It's the consumers. It's not "An Eskimo could sell ice to . . ." It's "he could sell ice to an Eskimo."

So it would have made more sense if Rather had said, "he couldn't sell watermelons to blacks." Obviously racist, but definitely makes more sense. The way he put it makes me scratch my head.

Maybe he was saying, "Obama can't even sell delicious, wonderful watermelons, which practically sell themselves." I don't know.

[Marcus Bryant]

I think it's more Rather's age than anything else. Not to mention that part of his schtick is including forced colorful provincial metaphors in his reporting. I'm not exactly a fan of Gunja Dan, but this doesn't really merit a racial witch hunt.

Yes, I do agree that had a "conservative" media figure uttered this, it would have been perceived differently in certain quarters.

Still, much ado about nothing.

[Winehole23]

What is the frequency, Kenneth? is gettin ol' for sure.

[Winehole23]

But the spoons in the pot haven't created a tempest, yet.

[Creepn]

The thing is, there is some derogatory connotation between blacks and water melons. I just don't know what it is.

Maybe those who made "tea bagger" a derogatory term knows?

Watermelon is native to Africa.

Slaves ate watermelon because of the water.

Watermelon was an easy crop for poor southern blacks to grow so it was a favorite. Also the same goes for chicken.

Take your pick.

[Oh, Gee!!]

poor word choice but I'll let it slide because he's not a republican

[SnakeBoy]

Watermelon is native to Africa.

Slaves ate watermelon because of the water.

Watermelon was an easy crop for poor southern blacks to grow so it was a favorite. Also the same goes for chicken.

Take your pick.

I learn so much from this forum. Chickens are native to Africa, are an easy crop to grow, and slaves ate them for the water.

[boutons_deux]

"derogatory connotation between blacks and water melons"

water melon is cheap/sweet carbs (95% water and the rest is sugar), grows reliably just about anywhere in the US where there were slaves, right next to the cotton ("your cotton-pickin' hands" is racist).

probably all the world's poor raise "free range" chickens wandering around their little patch of property eating bugs, pretty much self-maintaining.

Frying chicken in peanut oil, another slave-region product, was cheap cookin.

same with non-muscle animal food like chitlin (pig tripes), pigs being another cheap, self-maintaining, whatever/garbage-eating food source for the world's poor.

"Chickens are native to Africa"

IIRC, they have been genetically traced back to South Asia aka India

[spursncowboys]

I need to learn how to grow chicken. jk

I agree. I don't think Obama could sell watermelons.

[Winehole23]

I agree. I don't think Obama could sell watermelons.If you were a conservative, you'd be crucified for saying that. Or so I've heard.

[spursncowboys]

that only works if it's original. Re: Rush v. Reid case of 2010.

[Winehole23]

You can keep your victimization sweepstakes notification, SnC. I would never seek to deprive you of it.

Go ahead and have a big cry with Yoni and DarrinS that the hypocrite Dems are not blacklisting Dan Rather for having a senior moment. You might feel better. The controversy you guys tried to stir in two threads, is gittin too thick for dippin chips.

Col' beer?

http://www.geekologie.com/2007/08/20/Mac-G3-Beer-Server.jpg

[spursncowboys]

I don't see anything wrong with what rather said. The point of the op is that libs would if a conservative said it.
once again wh, whooooosh... over your head.

[Winehole23]

You're still crying.

[spursncowboys]

I was watching home alone and the old man got to me.

[Blake]

Maybe he was saying, "Obama can't even sell delicious, wonderful watermelons, which practically sell themselves." I don't know.

that's what I took it as.

[spursncowboys]

that's what I took it as.

I also

[doobs]

that's what I took it as.

Well it's kinda ridiculous. Why watermelons? I mean, I freaking love watermelons, don't get me wrong. But I've never heard anyone say so-and-so can't even sell watermelons.

I have heard about how much black people love watermelons, though.

I think Dan Rather was clumsily making a reference to blacks' affection for watermelon . . . but I don't really care. It's a harmless racial stereotype, IMO.

[Winehole23]

Good-natured racism, sorta like?

[Blake]

Well it's kinda ridiculous. Why watermelons? I mean, I freaking love watermelons, don't get me wrong. But I've never heard anyone say so-and-so can't even sell watermelons.

I have heard about how much black people love watermelons, though.

I think Dan Rather was clumsily making a reference to blacks' affection for watermelon . . . but I don't really care. It's a harmless racial stereotype, IMO.


Clumsy reference to be sure, but I dunno, I associate watermelon sales to the guys selling them out of the back of their trucks on the side of the road regardless of skin color.

To each his own stereotype I guess.

[spursncowboys]

He should have done the ol water to a drowning man line.

[spursncowboys]

Was going to edit it, but nah.
I'll leave it.
But I realize that is reference for a good salesman.

[doobs]

Good-natured racism, sorta like?

I guess so. The more I think about it, the more I realize his quote doesn't make sense without the racial element.

But of all the racial stereotypes in the world . . . blacks liking watermelons is pretty dang tame.

[Winehole23]

I guess so. The more I think about it, the more I realize his quote doesn't make sense without the racial element.Really?

Rather's invocation of the roadside fruit-stand was palpable for me. It's a weird metaphor for *retail politics* and salesmanship, but it's the exact image that occurred to me as I watched the clip.

I suppose there might be something vaguely slighting about picturing Obama as a guy at a fruit stand, and giving him a watermelon to sell was just bizarre.

Unless, as you say, certain inferences are furnished.

[Creepn]

I learn so much from this forum. Chickens are native to Africa, are an easy crop to grow, and slaves ate them for the water.

Oh god. Ya I learned some people have to be spoonfed here. I obviously typed in list form.

I never said chicken was native to Africa. Chicken were easy food to raise and cheap.

Watermelon has high water content, slaves didnt have much access to water, put the two together.

Its a very stupid stereotype. Whites consumed just as much watermelon and chicken back then and still do today.

[Darrin]

Fuck You Dan Rather.

[Winehole23]

How'd he piss you off, Darrin?

[boutons_deux]

Vintage postcards the Repugs, BecKKK, and conservatives would love today:


http://cdn.guyism.com/wp-content/uploads/racist-postcards-are-racist.jpg

[EmptyMan]

Baby Black Tibetan Monk?

[SnakeBoy]

Well it's kinda ridiculous. Why watermelons? I mean, I freaking love watermelons, don't get me wrong. But I've never heard anyone say so-and-so can't even sell watermelons.



Apparently it is one of Rather's trademark sayings that he has used in the past only the person in question wasn't black so nobody cared. In any event here is Rather's response...


I was talking about Obama and health care and I used the analogy of selling watermelons by the side of the road. It's an expression that stretches to my boyhood roots in Southeast Texas, when country highways were lined with stands manned by sellers of all races. Now of course watermelons have become a stereotype for African Americans and so my analogy entered a charged environment. I'm sorry people took offense.

But anyone who knows me personally or knows my professional career would know that race was not on my mind. Reporting on the injustices of race was part of the reason I became a reporter. I grew up in segregated Texas on the same side of the tracks as the African American community. At the time, enlightened people called them Negros. Many people called them much worse. When I covered the Civil Rights movement, I saw sheer hatred in ways that still haunt and shock me. For doing my small part in reporting on the South in the 1960s, I was called a traitor to my roots and other names not fit for print. I was threatened with death by people who would have welcomed me to their church on Sunday on account of my white skin if they didn't know what I was there to do. I do not take this issue lightly.