The drawbacks of being famous
Like I said last week, it’s kind of fun when I’m linked to as an authority on ‘black stuff’ like gratuitous hair petting and whatnot. But all this fame comes at a price. I might also be linked to by a bunch of unabashedly racist bastards like the folks on The Phora Forum. Apparently this is where white people come to exercise ‘free speech’. For them, free speech means using racist slurs and being ignorant. While I shall not deny that this is, indeed, one facet of free speech, I must point out that another facet of free speech allows me to call out their cracka asses for what they are: dirty scumbags. Exercise your free speech in the comments. It’s fun!
Now, back to our regular programming.
I taught citizenship for a while last year, and I thought I’d teach a lesson on MLK for a class or two. So I scoured the internet for biographies and copies of his famous speech, etc. And I found this site, which I’m sure you probably have heard of:
http://www.martinlutherking.org/
At first blush it appears to be a tribute to the man (especially if one speed reads while browsing the internetm as I often do). So I started reading the articles and it slowly dawned on my cracka brain that this was in fact a site owned by “Storm Front,” a white pride website. (I probably should have been tipped off by the “Repeal MLK day” subheader, but again, I was speed reading.) Anyway, it’s free speech, first amendment and all that, but what pissed me off is that the website tries to pass itself off as an “official” site and had me fooled for a moment.
What about a gullible kid from the suburbs who is doing a book report on MLK and comes across this site? They want to express their hatred, fine, but don’t do it in such a way as to disguise the site as honoring the man.
WTF?? No, I did not know about that. Now I’m pissed!
For about a week last December, every search I did on Google, from “itchy toe” to I dunno what, got at least one first page result that purported to be an informational site on the topic I’d searched, but ended in a pitch for me to come to Jesus and that would fix my troubles. The itchy toe search actually listed a few possible cures, then said the very best cure was God, who would fix my itchy toe if I just joined his flock.
I laughed til I cried at that one. But seriously: WTF? I guess some evangelist webmasters had optimized their sites for that to happen. Google caught on quick, thankfully.
Hope Jesus did, too. ;)
Well, that website is fairly disturbing. A whole forum of people talking about ‘feral’ … I can’t even type that word.
I wonder if that site’s ISP knows what kind of content is on there?