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For those considering it. Fargo is a caricature. Beware.

I've lived in the Minneapolis/St Paul area my entire life and have rarely ever heard anyone talk like that. Weather wise, around minneapolis (where the vast majority of the tech workers will be found) the temperature varies from a windy around -20 F in the deepest part of winter to around 100 F & high humidity in the hottest days of summer.

They keep trying to make "Dungeons and Dragons" movies, when they should really be trying to make a "good" movie. They sacrifice good story in order to pack in more heavy handed references to certain character classes and rules. Right off the bat that makes the characters seem like ridiculous caricatures. Just make a good movie. Just make a good movie and let the references fall where they may. But for god's sake, please don't give me a party with a Paladin, a rouge, a pure caster, and a priest just because you feel you had to.

Or, they are an email, phone call or sms away from being able to threaten anyone in the world. Lots of muslims support IS covertly. It's just not a high priority to make martyrs out of Westerners in their home countries, yet. Probably due to the very low concentration of extremists.

See: Paris massacre, caricature threats, etc.

So far, nobody ever got killed by embarrasing ISIS from locations in the west. You CAN get them to send assassins - by hosting a Mohamed caricature exhibition or similiar. But they have not bothered with people who merely speak ill of their fighting organization - which is something lots of journalists do already. After all, they want to be known as this fearsome gang who execute war prisoners and children.

And if you ask them, I bet they will claim it wasn't ISIS money that was lost - but the private money of some horny idiot that perhaps is being punished already.

Do you think that calling something "i" as in "myself" plus "general name for the product" isn't ridiculous? Why not? Do you perceive it as mature (adult-like)?

LOL!

The "i" prefix on Several Apple products in the late 1990s and early 2000s is not indicative of the personal pronoun "I" (notice the capitalization), as in "I, Robot", but rather, the "i" in "Internet" (small "i"). Silly as it seems now, the fact that, in 1999, you could take an iMac (the first "i" Product") out of the box and connect (via dialup, using the iMac's built-in MODEM) to the interwebs in two easy steps in about five minutes was quite a revelation. Apple even had a popular TV ad and a catchphrase ("There is no step 3") revolving around this.

After the iMac single-handedly put Apple back on the map (and launched the USB peripheral industry), Steve Jobs and Apple used the name recognition of the "i" in "iMac" to cause consumers to identify "i" products as Apple products. And Apple products were (and are) "cool" products in the eyes of most consumers. Not making any judgments here, just observations. And the fact that, to this day, many, many other companies have named goods and services with the "i" prefix, despite Apple's efforts to the contrary, clearly shows the power of that simple, one-character "branding".

Of course, all successful marketing gimmicks eventually become a caricature of themselves, and so Apple has all-but abandoned the iconic "i" prefix on newer product lines, such as the Apple Watch. But as brand-identity goes, that little "i" has served Apple QUITE well; but it has nothing to do with conceit ("I, Phone!"), but rather, harkens back to a time when painless internet connectivity was a big selling feature.

the screenwriters. The comic-book portrayal of a Christian with no rational response to his out-of-context abuse of scripture is clear evidence to any actual Christian who has read a Bible that the screenwriters are either idiots who have no reading comprehension skills, or extremely dishonest propagandists. The West Wing clip is a classic example of the logical fallacy known as the straw man argument: The West Wing scene presents a highly edited, distorted version of its opponent's views, then presents a caricature as a stand-in for the opponent (the straw man, in this case an actress) and shows that caricature having no good response to the distorted attack - leaving the audience to think the distorted arguments are legit and that any opponents have no legitimate response. The truth is that the West Wing people had no honest path of attack, so they had to use a dishonest one. After all, why waste time and energy constructing an elaborate deceit if the straight-forward truth will set you free?

Bible haters have long used revolutionary reforms demanded by the Bible to mislead the ignorant into thinking the Bible calls for (or actually created or advocates for) evil institutions, just as the people of the West Wing did in this blatantly dishonest video clip. Examples:

The Bible instructs against many evils, like slavery, but then says (to paraphrase) "if you people are going to do this evil stuff, at least reduce it in the following ways..." and then rules and laws are laid down to make an already evil and preached against thing mildly less bad for its victims. Dishonest anti-Bible people turn these things around and present them to an ignorant audience out out context with no other reason then to mislead that audience.

With severe punishments for crime, which pre-Bible tended to be really over-the-top tribal vigilante stuff, the Bible comes along and says "eye for an eye" (proportional justice replacing things like "you and your family must die because you poked out somebody's eye"). Bible haters turn this around these days and present the Bible's call for proportional justice as a backward barbarism, usually with the old quote about everybody ending up blind. The doofuses in the audience are not supposed to notice that the pre-Bible outcome was NOT "everybody lives happily ever after" but rather: "all the weak people end up dead and the thugs rule".

The Bartlett slavery crap is similarly dishonest. The Bible does not ADVOCATE for slavery - it argues for minimal improvements in an already bad situation which humans created contrary to God's laws. When the Bible instructs slave owners to treat their slaves better, and (in the new Testament) slaves to behave better toward their masters, the Bible (which has already instructed people to not even have these slave/master relationships) is instructing humans in every walk of life to behave better towards each other. The Bible-haters use this stuff to mislead the ignorant into thinking the Bible is advocating for slavery to exist, when it is actually arguing to reduce it and its effects.

The lines about the Bible ordering death for working on the Sabbath, handling pigskin, and crop planting are more intentional deceit. These confuse Biblical laws that are God's commands for all mankind for all time (like bans on murder and adultery) with the also-in-the-Bible civil laws which applied to ancient Jews. The people who love to abuse this stuff, either are ignorant and just plucking individual verses from the Bible they think will help their particular political cause, or worse, they are completely aware of their extreme deception of their audience. They fool their ignorant listeners into thinking it's common for Christians to randomly pick-and-choose what parts of scripture to ignore, so therefore it must be OK to ignore bits like the absolute condemnation of homosexuality and Jesus' own re-affirming that the old Testament rules of marriage and bans on adultery still apply. The truth is that the reason so many

His belief system is based on the notion that the government rules and fuck individualism.

If you have to stoop to telling people that their belief system is some absurd caricature of the politics you disagree with, most people will usually interpret that to mean that you don't know how to form a coherent argument. There are lots of free-market cases against government regulation. Why don't you go learn about them before you continue commenting about politics?

If the U.S. government wants a server to be secured it is, as designed, run, used.
The US lectured its more trusted allies in the 1950-2010's about keeping their own and all shared projects very secure.
The Soviet Union, Russia, China did not get far when trying to look into real US networks, systems without the direct help of local staff who had turned or where deep cover.
So the US could, can and in the future can design and run very secure networks of any size or standard when needed.

Why the sudden political and media interest in network security? US cleared staff have to understand that a 'list' trap is set, baited and will be tested.
Anyone on the vast low level 'digital' security list might get a chat down from two or more people who fit the caricature of foreigners with a story, files, backgrounds and an offer....
In changing economic times, with an understanding of security, staff might be tempted as the approach could be real and of great to gain personal wealth.
US staff now know every low level security validation is going to be re tested, reviewed, re interviewed, approached, chatted down as a list by expert contractors and gov officials.
The only reaction now is to report any approach. The US has secured a generation against approaches by other nations.

All the data in the wild is bait. Projects, places, events, dates. Everything at that level is set up to be trackable internally and externally.
To work as bait it has to be readable in English, usable over time by staff on internal networks in English and usable over the US to job fairs, contractors, operations needing staff, staff been given clearances as they change from gov to mil to private sector and back.
The other reaction is to test internal US networks and all staff levels as they react to the very 'real' 'news' of reviews.
Is someone in middle or upper management getting fixated looking up their own past, names, other names? Why?
Another test is to see how social media tracking and planted cover stories over years can handle the interest.
Cleared staff are been tested. How do they react to the media attention. What are they searching for on work and public networks.
Or not looking for when all their colleagues are.

Just because some people are finding ridiculous reasons to get offended doesn't mean that some offensive things aren't very real and glaring.

For an example of a ridiculous reason, go see the "controversy" about the actor selected to play Oberyn Martell in Game of Thrones. A bunch of people with nothing better to do decided that it is "whitewashing", because the books describe Dornishmen as "swarthy", which they meant to be black or at least thoroughly dark-skinned; and because the actor in question is only first-generation Latin American (his parents were from Spain), which is "too white". When the author of the books himself noted that "swarthy" was really meant to approximate stereotypical Southern European olive-skinned appearance, as in Italian or, well, Spanish, that same bunch of people blamed the author for "whitewashing his own books", because apparently they know better than him what he actually had in mind by "swarthy" (and, in any case, even if he didn't, then he should damn well have). Now that, yes, is ridiculous.

But most of the examples that are presented in TFA sound like valid manifestations of racism to me. Especially the caricature Jew.

Not just because they're subservient and uneducated, no. But if they draw heavily on the mannerisms and stereotypes of a *particular* racial caricature - traits that were firmly established as racist shorthand long before the nonhuman character was created? Yeah, I think there'd be a strong argument to be made that you were invoking the entirety of that caricature by reference, no matter what color or shape the character was.

Unfortunately it's not quite that simple. I'm not going to take any position on whether Jar Jar was or was not racist, much less whether he was *intentionally* racist, which can be a completely different thing. Just bare with me for a moment:

Consider blackface comedy - if you've never seen any, go watch a few samples on youtube or somewhere, I'm sure you can find some atrocious examples, even though the stereotype was long fading by the time film became common. Or just think of the worst racial stereotype you can bring to mind.

Now ask yourself two questions - hopefully you'll come to substantially the same conclusions so that my argument makes sense:
Does the portrayal accurately represent black people? No, certainly not - that's a large part of why it's so insulting.
Does the portrayal present a semi-coherent and deeply insulting stereotype of black people? Most assuredly yes.

Now for the complicated question: if you saw a white guy in some comedy club playing a bumpkin by adopting that same behavioral stereotype, without any reference to black people, would it be racist?

Now, if you had never seen blackface your answer would probably be no - he's just some dude acting like a lazy idiot for laughs. Maybe it's insulting to lazy idiots, but hey, they're fair game, right? But consider how your feelings might change if you had grown up being the target of that caricature. If you had seen those costumes and mannerisms used to belittle yourself and your entire race for decade after decade. Would the fact that the guy wasn't actually wearing black makeup really make you feel okay about the act? Or would you just see a guy doing blackface without the makeup, with all the racial slurs embedded in that caricaturization?

Agreed, he sounds only vaguely like a *real* Jamaican accent. However, he sounds very much like a *stereotypical* Jamaican accent.

You may as well say that styling a character on traditional blackface comedy isn't racist, because blackface comedy wasn't actually a reflection of real black people. No, it wasn't - that's the entire reason it's so racist. If you're actually accurately representing a subclass of people then the potential for racism is limited - you may laugh at the otherness a bit, but it's by grossly exaggerating the differences into an insulting caricature that you create something deeply offensive. And once that caricature is established in the culture as a stereotype, a non-verbal insult, simply removing the most obvious reference to its racial roots doesn't eliminate the racism. The caricature stands on its own, invoking the mentality that created it to all who recognize it.

And incidentally, I seem to recall a number of prominent native Jamaican media personalities complaining about Jar Jar at the time - and frankly, if there's anyone fit to recognize a racist caricature, I'd say it's the targets - people who have lived their lives on the receiving end of those thinly-veiled insults. Perhaps they may be over-sensitive, but that same sensitivity also highlights in glaring relief the commoditized racism that people who have never been targeted may overlook entirely. (I grew up in a heavily Hispanic community, and to this day being called "white boy" or "gringo" will raise my hackles, even in the most friendly of contexts - and I have the benefit of being on the "winning" side of racial conflict, so the name really only brands me as "other", not "lesser")

The thing is, you don't have to intend for a racist slur to be insulting for it to be so - the insult has been baked into the slur by decades of abuse. Just as saying "red" invokes a mental impression of a certain color to anyone with color vision, so saying "nigger" invokes a mental impression of a judgment of subhuman worth to anyone familiar with the words recent history. And invoking a racist caricature does the same to anyone who has been sensitized to that caricature, even if it's done by a nonhuman CG character.

There's a big difference between a white British actor talking with a British accent while playing a white guy, and a computer generated caricature exhibiting the most negative stereotypes of an ethnicity.

its fantasy... i dont to this day think about real life when watching fantasy.

Then you are uniquely incapable of appreciating metaphor. You see, many writers build their stories around symbolism in order to convey a message that may not be explicitly stated. This makes those stories richer and more meaningful for an audience not simply waiting for the next explosion. Aesop's fables are an extreme where the moral is explicitly stated by fantasty talking animals at the end. These metaphors depend on fictional or fantasy elements within the story bearing recognizable similarity to real world people or structures, and stereotypical caricatures are a millenia-old mechanism for that. Star Wars, Wizard of Oz, The Tempest or Adam and Eve: if you can't see that these stories say more than what is on screen, then you are missing the fucking point.

those who do IMO are wasting their time because whats the point of fantasy if you are going to do nothing but complain about how its close to X, if you squint real hard and spin around 3 times, it could be taken as racist

It's an effect of sensitization. If you wake up every day and someone calls you a lazy moke, you get much better at recognizing subtle comments. It's the reason it's ok for Peyton Manning to slap Marvin Harrison on the ass, but not ok to slap cheerleaders. Stereotypes, like the one about autistic computer geeks unable to recognize metaphor, are propagated by repetition.

He's definitely black. Go watch the movie again. Jar Jar is of some underwater race who have a king that is a caricature of an african chief. And they made him the dumbest, fattest, most easily manipulated character of the movie. Jar Jars people are the most primitive, tribal race in the pequels and guess what, they are portrayed by african (or jamaican) voices. It's kind of sickening to see how many racial stereotypes there are in those movies. Lot's of references to colonial architecture as well.

It's not just Jar Jar. The king of his people is made out to be some african tribe chief. He's another racial caricature.
And just about any alien that gets some text in the prequels is some sort of racial caricature.

I think it's more so Lucas being lazy and just wanting the aliens to sound different than the main characters. In the original series we would have just had some random buzz or hiss (or Wookie howl) where the meaning was mostly clear based on the scene or how the character was acting, but Lucas is a hack and we get lazy caricatures.

I hear you, and if it was just Jar-Jar I would probably write it off. But the Jewish/Arab caricature in Watto and the Japanese caricature in the Trade Federation just makes it hard to ignore.

Jar Jar Binks rolling, ungrammatical voice sounded like a caricature of a beach living, laid back, ganja smoking Jamaican. And yes, the parody was so horrible that it made me think of the remnants of the last of hte "blackface" shows and minstrel performances from when I was very young.

                              http://www.telegraph.co.uk/fil...

Jar Jar's speech sounds a lot like Jamaican patois to me. Whether that is racist or not is another story, but Jar Jar's general behavior; stupid, lazy, and addled, do conjure up the way blacks were portrayed in literature and films for a rather long time. I don't think Lucas is a racist, and I've long given him the benefit of the doubt that Jar Jar was yet another iteration of the whole Ewok concept, cute funny talking things that can be made into toys that say things like "E-chooda!", because in Lucas's mind, the kids love them.

The problem with Lucas's theory is that, at least the kids of my generation (what I'd call the Star Wars generation, who were 5-10 years old when the first film came out), we had no interest in any silly characters. The most desirable action figures were Darth Vader (because he was bad ass and could crush peoples' throats with his mind), Chewbacca, Han Solo and Obiwan, because they were the fighters who kicked ass.

I was eleven or twelve years old when Return of the Jedi came out, and I found the Ewok scenes to range from fucking insipid to, in the final battle scenes, be utterly improbable.

But I don't think Jar Jar was any more intentionally racist than the Ewoks (who, so far as I can tell, were heavily modeled on African bush people). It's just that Lucas has so little capability to portray nuance that you end up with broad caricatures that you have to forgive some for confusing with rather well known racist imagery.