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Google Apologizes For "Michelle Obama" Results
theodp writes "CNN reports that for most of the past week, when someone did a Google image search for 'Michelle Obama,' one of the first images that came up was a picture of the First Lady altered to resemble a monkey. After being hit with a firestorm of criticism over the episode, Google first banned the site that posted the photo, saying it could spread malware. Then, when the image appeared on another site, Google displayed the photo in its search results, but displayed an apologetic Google ad above it. On Wednesday morning, the racially offensive image appeared to have been removed from any Google Image searches for 'Michelle Obama.' Google officials could not immediately be reached for comment."
Update — 15:38 GMT by SS: A reader pointed out that this article from the Guardian says the image was de-listed simply because it was removed from the blog where it was hosted rather than by any "deliberate" action from Google.
At the moment it suggests searching for "Michelle Obama monkey" when you search for "Michelle Obama"
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
No one complained when Bush was made to look a monkey
They never did that for the "Bush chimp" pictures.
Why does anyone give a shit? Some moron happened to put a stupid picture up and it turned up on google. WOWZERZ. Fuck whoever thought this was worth writing about and fuck whoever made google take the image down.
Though not terribly surprising, I suppose.
Google did not act when there were images of the prophet in its search results, or offensive images from shock sites, or when Bush was made to look like a chimp. Bowing to pressure like this only re-inforces the belief that "new" media, as well as "old" media, has a liberal bias.
Many leaders and famous people are portrayed in a funny cartoon or distorted picture. Why should she be special? Just becuase her husband got a noble peace prize for NOTHING. That prize is worth nothing now....humm same as Obama.
Since when is Google responsible for the content on the Internet?? I thought it just showed what was there, no matter what.
I searched for "George Bush" and first result is George Bush eating a kitten.
http://www.flystylelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/michelle-obama-ape.jpg There ya go.
"In Soviet America, Google censors you." If only it were a joke.
I'm not sure what bothers me more, that we're following China's lead or that one company gets final say on what is or is not acceptable for the world to see.
People post dumb shit on the internet. Other people complain. Welcome to the 21st century. How is this remotely news? To me it seems more like pandering to the slobbering teabaggers, it's basically saying "look, teh googles controls your free speach!!!"
Google pulls shit from search results all the time for a wide variety of reasons, in this case because it's fucking offensive. You wanna be a racist prick that's your business, you can still find the picture it's just not the top result for a search of "Michelle Obama". If you can't deal with that you can go use Bing like the dumbfuck you are.
eWeek has a screenshot of the apology.
... that Google is now being held accountable to what is available on the internet. That should take them down a peg or two.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Google *should* just index what it finds, and thats what originally happened here...
There are thousands of sites out there hosting insulting pictures of george bush, some where he looks like a monkey or is compared to one and some where he's likened to adolf hitler... If you're going to do something that makes you famous, then you will attract a huge amount of attention and inevitably some of it will be bad. That is well known up front and you can't go crying about it when it happens. Noone forced obama to stand, and now that he's won there will be a lot of attention given to him and his family, if he doesn't like that he should have thought about it before.
Incidentally, when i woke up this morning i had no plans whatsoever to look for pictures of michelle obama on the internet, but having read this story i went looking for the picture in question and i'm sure a lot of other people will do the same. Had i stumbled across such pictures by accident without having read this story i probably wouldn't have thought anything of it because there are countless other derogatory pictures of famous people out there.
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When Google said that it wouldn't remove the picture I was quite annoyed with them, but then it suddenly dawned on me that if they removed that picture, the very next thing that would happen is that some bright spark would speak up and say "Great, now take this one down too, because it's just as bad" and before you know it, the whole situation's lost control.
It wasn't particularly fair on Google and they had to make a tough decision and I think in this instance they made the right one.
Summation 2
maintained that too a8d as BSD sinqks
why is that picture "racially offensive"?
because the portrayed person is black?
what if it was made by a black person?
do we know it wasn't made by a black person?
would it be racially offensive it it portrayed a white person and was made by a black person?
if we want to reach REAL equality between all races, this also means we mustn't go nuts about an insult to a person from one race while not caring about the same insult to a person from another race (remember the bush/chimpanzee pictures?)
The MAFIAA is a bunch of mindless jerks who will be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes
and frightening.
If you care about freedom of speech you have to be willing (and you should be proud) to let people say stuff you don't agree with.
That includes racist bullshit too. Even if it is directed at the world's favorite US president's wife.
Christ on a stick you guys are fail.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think they should allow the picture to be shown. It accurately catalogues one of the varied opinions that humans have of one another. It doesn't matter that it's offensive. That's a judgement call that one has to make for ones' self. Who's to judge what is correct or not. It kinda gets scary when someone or some entity becomes the sole arbiter of what is right and moral.
In this case, I really think it's uncalled for and, frankly, more damaging to the poster than to the one posted about but it's the poseter's choice to express his opinion no matter how much of a fool he might seem because of the opinion he has expressed.
The site showing the image has removed it. Google don't appear to have 'removed' it from their index, just promptly re-indexed the offending site.
However, I don't remember Google (/youtube) being this proactive when offensive Thai royalty videos appeared. Or the 'Bush chimp' images (although those were funny*)
*IRONY
They have not censored this image, or blocked it from their search. They just removed it from the top pick when you do an image search of her name. One of their suggested searches points you directly to the image. If you google Michelle Obama Monkey it comes up.
In the past, numerous artists have drawn caricatures of numerous politicians, and no one apologized for the caricatures.
In much the same way, the media has ignored the racist voting pattern by African-Americans in favor of Barack Hussein Obama. Allow me to explain.
During the election, about 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama due solely to the color of his skin. See the exit-polling data by CNN.
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
The image, and site that hosts it, are still in Google search, you just have to actively search for "Michelle Obama Monkey" for it to come up now, and not just a basic search of her name.
Don't let that stop playtime in fantasy land, though.
Oh god. How stupid of them. They just illustrated that they do take responsibility for the entire content of the web. Congratulations Google, you just lost a lot of credibility on the internet for me. Anyone know of a search engine which doesn't censor such things?
I wonder if it is possible that search is working as it should.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/nov/25/michelle-obama-google-images-removed
As according to that Guardian article above, the image in question, has been removed from its original linked location.
I wonder if the level of searches for Michelle Obama has increased since this story was released? Also, how many people have seen the image now, that wouldnt have before?
Lots of people were offended that it was the top picture that came up when you looked up her name, and submitted it with Google's "Report Offensive Image" button on the bottom of every Google image search page.
It still comes up if you Google her name and monkey, but that narrows the result to only people wanting to find pictures of her photoshopped to look like one...
In theory they can list or not list any results they like, whatever combination is most profitable.
qntm.org
In the past, numerous artists have drawn caricatures of numerous politicians, and no one apologized for the caricatures.
In much the same way, the media has ignored the racist voting pattern by African-Americans in favor of Barack Hussein Obama. Allow me to explain.
During the election, about 95% of African-Americans voted for Barack Hussein Obama due solely to the color of his skin. See the exit-polling data by CNN.
Note the voting pattern of Hispanics, Asian-Americans, etc. These non-Black minorities serve as a measurement of African-American racism against Whites (and other non-Black folks). Neither Barack Hussein Obama nor John McCain is Hispanic or Asian. So, Hispanics and Asian-Americans used only non-racial criteria in selecting a candidate and, hence, serve as the reference by which we detect a racist voting pattern. Only about 65% of Hispanics and Asian-Americans supported Obama. In other words, a maximum of 65% support by any ethnic or racial group for either McCain or Obama is not racist and, hence, is acceptable. (A maximum of 65% for McCain is okay. So, European-American support at 55% for McCain is well below this threshold and, hence, is not racist.)
If African-Americans were not racist, then at most 65% of them would have supported Obama. At that level of support, McCain would have won the presidential race.
At this point, African-American supremacists (and apologists) claim that African-Americans voted for Obama because he (1) is a member of the Democratic party and (2) supports its ideals. That claim is an outright lie. Look at the exit-polling data for the Democratic primaries. Consider the case of North Carolina. Again, about 95% of African-Americans voted for him and against Hillary Clinton. Both Clinton and Obama are Democrats, and their official political positions on the campaign trail were nearly identical. Yet, 95% of African-Americans voted for Obama and against Hillary Clinton. Why? African-Americans supported Obama due solely to the color of his skin.
Here is the bottom line. Barack Hussein Obama does not represent mainstream America. He won the election due to the racist voting pattern exhibited by African-Americans.
African-Americans have established that expressing "racial pride" by voting on the basis of skin color is 100% acceptable. Neither the "Wall Street Journal" nor the "New York Times" complained about this racist behavior. Therefore, in future elections, please feel free to express your racial pride by voting on the basis of skin color. Feel free to vote for the non-Black candidates and against the Black candidates if you are not African-American. You need not defend your actions in any way. Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
Come on.. this is the just the Zeitgeist. There are more people searching for the picture in question rather than just her name. That would put the suggestion higher in the list (I'm guessing that's how the autocomplete algorithm works).
Google isn't really to blame.. and them removing this item can be seen as censorship.
http://dilemma.gulecha.org - My philospohical short film.
google staff these days are going downhill - they should have just made it less relevant showing up in page 100 or something
at least all these Michelle Obama monkey phrases showing up in the index will overcompensate.
I think the Google apology link was a good idea, since it explained to the uninitiated how Google works, rather than making Google responsible for everything on the Internet.
Further, I agree with this statement: "Racism won't be truly a thing of the past until we can make fun of black and white politicians alike."
However, this is not "alike". We make fun of white politicians--and their wives, at times--without reference to their race. That's not the same as dehumanizing Michelle Obama for being black.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
When I run that exact search. The top Bush image comes up, but the rest of the results, are of either of the Obamas, with the 3rd pick on page 1, being the image this whole story was about.
Google is a business, and, in particular, an American business.
The only "morals" are to maximize shareholder profits.
If that means caving in to public outcry or government pressure, they will do that.
If it means subverting elections (Exxon, in Chile), bribing government officials (Boeing, in the tanker deal), or blowing up villages in India (Union Carbide, in Bhopal), they will do that, too. As long as it doesn't cost the shareholders more than it saves or gains, it is "the right thing to do".
If enough of their users click on the "Report Offensive Image" button, they're going to act on it sooner or later. That's why they put it there, and it's on the bottom of every Google image page.
African-Americans have voted in a much larger percentage for the Democratic party since the civil rights era. That whole time they were voting for white politicians.
Frankly, your entire premise here is ignorant bullshit. Going by your logic every white person is a racist, if they've only voted for white politicians like John Sidney McCain.
It's their website so they can do whatever they want with it. If they want to ban gays,fine... If they want to ban pictures fine. There's no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to control the content on their own site. If people don't like the content of Google then they can easily direct their browsers elsewhere. Google have a right to freedom of expression too.
Mods: please read the link first before you dub this off-topic.
There was a fascinating article on the BBC website about this; read
Hitler Moustache about a comedian, Richard Herring, who wanted to reclaim the right to make it socially acceptable to wear a "toothbrush moustache" like the famous.... Charlie Chaplin.
.. if that's what it thinks people WANTS to see when searching for Michelle Obama.
Redesign your algorithm please to be more useful.
She sure looks like a chimp in this picture:
If pictures are conclusive proof, then W proves that white people are chimps as well.
Didn't blacks evolve BEFORE whites? Didn't whites evolve FROM blacks?
That's not how evolution works. All humans alive today have a common ancestor. Similarly, all humans alive today have evolved for the same period of time. In other words, today's white people did not evolve from today's black people.
Humans are one species of ape, so of course there are clear similarities in appearance (and differences also, chiefly that humans are nearly bald over most of their bodies). For instance, we can recognize a wide range of facial expressions in apes, and associate them with comparable expressions in humans. These similarities are stronger or weaker depending on the moment, but exist for any human individual. Exploiting the similarity to parody a public figure as an ape or monkey is commonplace, and should be considered just another form of fair comment. This is not a race-specific issue - it applies equally across the board.
Google's conduct in cowing to politically motivated whiners is reprehensible. It is apparently acceptable to compare George W Bush or Steve Ballmer to monkeys (or chimps, or whatever) in words or pictures as social or political comment. Tony Blair mostly got poodle comparisons, but there's probably a few monkey ones around also. RMS would be fair game as an ape, too, although he typically gets cave-man or neanderthal comparisons. The US cannot consider itself color-blind or non-racist until the same gamut of insults can be levelled at any public figure without fear of censorship or witch-hunting.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Is part of a "popular people morphed into monkeys" series, which has been around for a long time, and includes wide assortment of people of all races. There is no evidence of racial subtext or any other message beside, well "popular people morphed into monkeys".
;)
What this shows is that people in US aren't a lot better when it comes to being disproportionately offended by some innocent image in the media. Good thing Google has reacted quickly in the face of, to quote CNN, "the firestorm of criticism", before people started turning cars upside down and burning Google logo flags, huh
I just did a Google vs Bing comparison on image search for michelle+obama+monkey.
First comment: the images were displayed really slowly on Bing; many never appeared at all.
Second comment: of the images displayed, Google's had more with a monkey theme of some sort.
Third comment: neither search produced anything I'd refer to as offensive.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
What would a CIA linked 'google' do with a Watergate, Iran contra ect. ?
Show some more Iraqi museum images?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
with all this censoring going on and all, perhaps it's time for a distributed peer-to-peer open-source search engine...
interesting, I just found this project: http://www.majestic12.co.uk/
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
He's talking about Muhammad, the Prophet of Islam.
There was a great deal of controversy about images of him recently because political cartoons lampooned the prophet, and slandered his followers as violent terrorists, resulting in massive backlash from the Islamic community (and, ironically, various violent attacks on embassies which might be considered terrorism). These cartoons were, and remain, easily found on Google.
Also, just like Jesus in old-school movies, I am reasonably certain that Muhammad is not meant to have his face depicted in images/movies. Instead, he is depicted with his head on fire. The fire represents enlightenment, I believe.
You can only take it.
Say what you want about the Right (and being an equal opportunity center-of-the-aisle kind of snark, I've said a lot...), they have much thicker skins than the Left, I've noticed. Every joke made about the current administration can never really be just a joke about the current administration, it's either borne of "racism" or a "disturbing indication of a growing violence and unrest." The recent SNL stuff is making my leftie friends apoplectic; when the same show skewered Bush and Cheney, my rightie friends were, like, "SNL? Is that still on?"
Sure, it's all anecdotal, but you know I'm correct.
I think that righties don't mind being un-hip. Many even carry it as a "badge of honor." (I am reminded here of bowtie-wearing Conservative pundit Tucker Carlson.) The lefties are mortified that they might somehow be un-cool, and that the Stewarts/Colberts/SNLs/Lettermans will turn on them. They need to be "in" on the joke, and not the butt of it, and if they ARE the butt of it, well, it can't really be a joke then, can it? It must be sedition and racism...
If I do a GIS for "Laura Bush" on the very first page is a photoshopped picture of her naked. If I do a GIS for "George Bush" on the very first page is a picture of him eating a kitten, three pictures of him giving the finger, one picture making him look like a monkey, one picture making him look like some kind of ogre and one picture of a bush impersonator being spanked on his bare bottom. I think some are being overly sensitive here. Michelle Obama is an intelligent and successful woman, I think she can handle a corny picture on the internet.
Streisand effect.
Those of you who are saying that it was a correct decision to remove the image, you are missing the point. There are two different questions to be addressed, which are distinctly different. 1) Is the image objectionable? 2) Is it right to remove the image from search results? The answer to 1) is probably in most people's eyes 'yes'. The answer to 2) is that Google should just act as information carrier. Its search engine should rank images (and other media) based on their relevance to the search query at hand. Google may filter images based on a generic filter, such as SafeSearch. given that there is a demand for it and that the filter can be turned off easily. Google should however not interfer with individual results. (Exception: when the law requires them to do so, however in that case the search result should clearly inform the user about this circumstance) The fact that the image made it to the top position, or at least the first page, is a sign that many people have linked to it and in turn increased its rank. Thus it is relevant in some sense. IF it is believed that the image was ranked so highly because of an error in the algorithm, it's the algorithm that should be fixed, not the individual search result. There is a preceding case that was handled by this principle, back when you got George Dubya's page as the top result when searching for "catastrophic failure". What they did then was to modify the algorithm to make so called "Google bombing" more difficult. --- Rant about principles ends here --- --- Personal opinion starts here --- And it is also my opinion that people need to be less sensitive about politically incorrect commentary. If you dislike something go ahead and criticize it. Discuss it. Or ignore it. But don't censor it. (Or call for it to be censored) It's not your damn right to go through life without ever feeling insulted. And remember, no matter how much you dislike the Michelle Obama image, or any other objectionable image, be aware that if you call for it to be censored, your opinion will be the next to be censored.
How many republicans are against Obama's plans because they don't believe in them and how many because he is black? Like the "you lie" outcry that has not been done to any white president, this case is still to sensitive.
The movie "white man can't jump" could also have been titled "black men can't shoot without trying to look good even it means missing", a point made in the movie itself. Both are racial slurs and yet... there is a difference.
In a movie, writers typically show a bad guy is truly evil by having him kill an unarmed woman who is totally defenseless. Yet in "Apocalypse Now" the "hero" does exactly this while he is not treated as truly evil by either the writers or the audience for the rest of the movie. Because asian women are not truly human perhaps? American-japaense were interred during WW2, American-Italian and American-german were not. There were no neutralized japanese civilian spies. There were PLENTY of neutralized german and italian spies. So why was the loyal group rounded up?
Racism exist, and might never be truly eliminated. Until that it does, we need to be careful claiming that all should be treated equal when this isn't happening.
I don't know if this was unique to holland but there was a racism awareness event that tried to show how stupid racism was by claiming blue-eyed people were less intelligent. Fake docu's showing blue-eyed people being rounded up and put in special accommodations where there lower intelligence could be accounted for. Why blue-eyed? Because bigger noses or dark skin would not be clearly as idiotic perhaps?
Think about it for second. If you had to come up with such a campaign and select a body characteristic that was clearly not linked with someones social value yet obvious to everyone, what would you pick? I would stick with a white characteristic. Else people MIGHT just believe your campaign. Same as people believed Archie Bunker and the actor who played him were for real, while his character was supposed to be a parody and the actor was a well known anti-racist (just played a racist on tv and a movie)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
The source for this image is a now defunct site called celebrityapes.com (misspelled on at least one referring site). I visited the site 2 days ago after correcting the spelling and before it went down. It had pictures of dozens of celebrities, most not black, done to look like apes. Check the Internet Archive for this site and you will see it includes Bill and Hilary Clinton, Katie Holmes, Martin Scorsese and Mariah Carey.
He was burned at the stake for heresy. You tell me of a priest who speaks about the dangers of questioning the bible, and I will do my best to censor him. Fuck freedom of speech. People need to care about other people, not about stupid ideals. In case you're wondering, I'm white.
new sig
I thought America was *SUPPOSED* to be a free country?
http://nathanlindsell.blogspot.com/
http://bilia.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/george-bush-eats-a-kitten.jpg?w=400&h=344
And on that same page of image results:
http://totallylookslike.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/9george-bush.jpg
Calling Michelle Obama a monkey is more offensive than calling George Bush a monkey because in her case it is because of her race, not because of her person. In Bush's case it is a personal insult because of certain people's perception of him, personally, being clumsy and lacking intelligence.
There is a difference
No matter what your opinion of obama or the picture it falls under the freedom of speech clause of the Constitution. I may have to read and listen to liberal global warming BS, but i do not complain about their right to open their out and spew it, just about the junk science. I read tons of post about censorship in China well where are those same voices now?
Now, how many times has /.done the same without us even knowing?? Back when /. first started I thought it was completely above board in the past several year you do see a distinct left sided view being promoted.
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We've heard the argument before: "we are just a search engine, we arent responsible for child porn, warez, illegal mp3s or anythign like that that show up in our results"... unless its a picture of Michelle Obama... If you can flush that you have proved you can flush the other things as well. So whats next?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
I don't know what is Where was this response when the 'bush monkey' pictures were all the rage? Oh, that's right, he's white.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
... still does the trick. Ugly picture, though.
One remark:
> That includes racist bullshit too. Even if it is directed at the world's favorite US president's wife.
racism is very close to fascism, and that's not an opinion, it's a crime. But it's still not worth censoring the internet, in the opposite: you must be able to see "shit" if you want to fight it. If it's just unnoticed, it's still there. Like that hiding game you play with childs: closing your eyes really does not make yourself disappear - or the bad things existing in our world, for that matter.
Just trying to be prepared for when Tiananmen happens in the U.S.
I presume this means that Google will be removing the images - or at least apologizing for the images - that show Bush and Clinton as a monkey (e.g. among others http://doctorbulldog.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/8130george-w-bush-monkey-posters.jpg, http://www.buttmonkeycentral.com/album/Funny%20Stuff/images/90576096af1be680a4643139f000e6db_11439207240/image.jpg), Bush as hitler etc.
Someone should apologize to the Monkey - what an insult!
Today, we have home theater instead of cinema. Maybe someday when home computing power increases enough we'll have home-based web indexing, and we won't have to put up with censorship.
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I agree. If we as a society are ever to overcome racial biases and discrimination, this is the attitude we need to have. A race-neutral attitude... Is that really so hard?
Someone please explain to me how this is in any way a "racial slur". As far as I can tell, it's a political statement, and people are pulling the race card because they don't want to see the first lady criticized.
The other comments all suggest that a monkey is somehow a racial slur, but I have never, ever heard it as a racial slur before today, so if it has been one in the past, it sure hasn't been very common. So yeah, someone please explain to me on what grounds people are calling this a racial slur, because it isn't and never has been as far as I've ever been aware.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
I just spent several hours reviewing various axiomatic treatments of probability theory and then ... this. Major train derailment. Stick accordion self-compacted for hundreds of yards. Tragic loss of brain function for all involved. Luria weeps at the carnage.
What people self-report on exit polls proves bupkus all. Most people suck at preference reporting (ask any economist). This nut case is thinking that if a person self-reports incorporating "is black" in their preference determination, that Michael Vick would have prevailed over Abraham Lincoln on every one of these ballots.
The sad fact of life in America is that a man who is regarded as a black man experiences life differently--and usually not better. Would it were not the case that Obama had a longer row to hoe to get where he is now. And I'm not even counting overcoming negative precedent: that no black had yet accomplished this feat. Could it be that most black people in America have a stronger sense of Obama rose above, having faced it themselves? Empathy considered harmful. What next?
Likely many of these people voted for Obama because he rose above his blackness, and made it a non-issue, which would be hard to accomplish (the rising above part) if he wasn't *black* in the first place. (Zeno's unknown paradox of non-issue making.)
I'm sure the average exit poll carefully distinguishes this sentiment from the depiction in the word salad above. And then this nameless worm goes on to complain that the major media didn't smoke his troll weed.
I'm never given a rat's ass about the Turing test, but I sure would like to code a reliable troll detector, one that isn't fooled by sarcasm or wit, because we sure need more of that and less of this.
Voting on the basis of skin color is quite acceptable by today's moral standard.
Concluding sentence: slime-factor bonus +5
"on the basis of skin color" => via mental processes too unseemly to state clearly; to the exclusion of all other factors
"quite acceptable" => passive-aggressive fang-baring under cover of triteness
"today's moral standard" => we're all going to hell in a hand-basket
Surely these are easily detected memes? The indirection isn't terribly clever.
From transcript gloss for Ayres on Super Crunchers and the Power of Data
Russ Roberts made a rebuttal to this guy's claims in a following podcast, but I think statistics goes a long way, applied appropriately. What I would like to correlate are the predictable trappings of the sleaze module when forced to intertwine emotion and logic in certain styles of pathological prose.
We've spent too much time trying to understand the logic of language, when often there isn't any. Why aren't we studying instead the pragmatics of sleaze?
I found this on Google after searching in vain for the Obama pic. This one spreads it around and pokes at everyone equally. I may not sleep for weeks:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/monkey-palin-obama-clinton-putin-biden.png
Why is Google trying to censor its results? Presumably results are returned in page rank order, and sticking their fingers into this mess is going to open up a whole can of censorship/regulation woes.
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
that Slashdot shold apologize with Natalie Portman.
Why is this offensive? Because certain viewers attach a negative connotation to it? Give me a break. Ask my 6yo son what the image 'means' and he will just think it is funny. The only reason this is offensive is because the race baiters of the world in concert with the criminal liberal media continue to educate the uneducated that an image of a monkey is (more correctly was) racist - at one time. Get over it and quit propagating your own hate and blaming others for it.
Politics aside, I am against Google altering search results for most any reason. If it is a result and relevant, display it.
On the other side, if the site was using a clever google bomb to bait malware - then he!! yeah shut em down!
Monkey? No... Klingon? Yes.
I have it for you.
http://taophoenix.cwahi.net/Freedom/michelle-obama-ape.jpg
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I remember that I saw some pics resebling former President Bush to a monkey, even in the New Yorker Magazine!... Any actions then?
Dear
Everyone knows you can only do tasteless jokes about a black woman or man when they are a conservative.
Remember Condoleezza Rice?
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=1&sa=1&q=condoleezza+rice+monkey&btnG=Search+images
Remember Michael Steele?
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=1&hl=en&safe=off&sa=1&q=michael+steele+blackface&btnG=Search+images
Apparently you forgot to read the liberal playbook. Anything that shows a conservative (which Bush wasn't by the way) in a bad light is good. Anything that shows a liberal in a bad light is bad. I quit using google over a year ago. You can't blame them "technically" though. Look where they are headquartered...San Fran...the heart of liberal~socialism. Hey, it's their product. If they want to be like that, doesn't bother me...it's a 1st amendment thing with me, but, I also have the choice to search elsewhere. They aren't the only search engine in the world, just the most known/popular.
>No, obviously not. Likening Michelle Obama to a monkey is insulting her because she is black, and is therefore racist. Likening Bush to a monkey is not insulting him because he is white, and so is not racist.
Amazing that one of the dumbest things I've ever read in my life get +5 insightful!!!!!
So, acording to you, if a black person calls me "monkey" and I reply "you are the monkey", I am committing a hate crime and he is just insulting me. Is that so? Good Lord!
Dear
This headline has been running EVERYWHERE but its not true. Google didn't apologize. Nowhere do you see ANYONE from Google saying "Gee, sorry we put that image up." What they SAID was "Look guys, we're organizing the world's information. Some of that information is racist and dumb, and probably should be taken off the internet. But until it is, we're going to index it." That's not an apology, that's a very smart stance in this hyper-politicized age. This is just the media trying to make Google seem week, or that it is somehow cowed to the Obama Administration. Now that MSFT is in bed with Murdoch (and owns 18% of MSNBC) I expect to see plenty of Google smear campaigns soon. Fox runs stories about Google's socialist cloud computer and "free" software, while MSNBC cries anti-trust and paints Google as Big Brother. In the end, Google will survive if they continue to stay on track with thier message and not bow to external pressures (China notwithstanding, though I suspect Google has a trick up its sleeve there...)
Or at least viral memes. Very cyberpunk solution.
Racism is in YOUR head. The people making this picture have been making it for ALL public figures, white or black.
Maybe it's bad taste, not funny. But perhaps some people even find it funny. It's not racism though, that is only your projection (which if you read the article, but this is /. after all ;-), you wouldn't make this mistake.
Racism dies the day you decide it isn't real (and you can still fight for equal rights and opportunities for ALL people in society).
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
Google left the "miserable failure" link to Bush's official bio at whitehouse.gov intact for years. When Obama took office they realized the link pointed to the new president's bio. After years of it being okay to link to Bush the google bomb was disabled within a matter of days.
This shouldn't come as a surprise considering Eric Schmidt is a big supporter of Obama.
So don't be surprised now when a fake picture of Michelle Obama is taken down within days, but fake pictures of Sarah Palin still make the top of the list.
Google seems to have simply removed the picture from Blogspot (no different from someone removing a picture from a website they own), which is where the top-ranked pic was hosted. It still shows up on other sites, just ranked way down. I wouldn't call this Google censoring their search results. The image was hosted on their servers, so all they had to do was take it down.
Right now, searching for Michelle Obama results in google saying:
"Related searches: Michelle Obama Monkey"
Appears to me the cure was worse than the disease.
A glitch a day keeps the bugs away.
Racism vs. free speech... Dave, my mind is going... I can feel it... I can feel it...
So racism is dead in America right?
If racism were dead, Google would not be removing images based solely on the race of an individual targeted.
I find the image offensive but I will defend to the death the right of those that created it to display it, and fight censorship where I find it.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Getting rid of racism?
Are you serious?
You will NEVER get rid of it as long as people come in different shades.
Every race is racist. Asians look the same to me but they are racists betwen themselves.
Blacks are racist towards lighter skinned blacks or mullatos.
Jews would rather cut off their heads than let their daughter marry a black man or an arab..
And on and on and on....
Go TO ANY country on the planet and you will find racism.
Getting rid of it is a pipe dream of someone who has never walked out of their house.
Ask Colin Powell how funny it was when he visited Venezuela a few years ago and the private media there where doing their regular "Chavez is a monkey" analogies because you see Chavez is brown and comes from an inferior caste. The same media the US always props up are some of the filthiest racists you have ever seen.
Imagine if CBS ran a cartoon of Obama as a monkey to criticize him and you would get the difference between the racism we have here and elsewhere.
Sure, blacks were full fledged humans until about 40 years ago but racism around the planet is doing very well thank you.
Oh, and having spent time in India, I could write 10 books on racism there.
Getting rid of racism?
Yeah, ok...go back to the drugs now hippie.
I don't know what is Where was this response when the 'bush monkey' pictures were all the rage? Oh, that's right, he's white.
And a monkey!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
I can post images of child pornography on Google images, and it would not be their fault.
Especially if the title is like Obama and the monkey....how are they supposed to know to filter that
image out as being a bad image
I heard they use a filter on names, tags, and also skin tones as well as size to check for child porn...
how can they know that changing the image to a money but naming the image Obama is a no,no.
Seriously, this is not Google's fault, it should be the fault of the person who put it there.
Even then, what happened to free speech?
If someone painted a mustache over my lips and drew little horns, and posted my image on the web...
would they be doing something illegal, but because of who the person is, they should be off limits to criticism
or jokes???
Google is just too sloppy with thier algorithms. But
the much much bigger problem is the existence of all the
rasist sites.
I'm no legal expert. But is rasism _LEGAL_ in the US??!
(assuming some of the sites are from US or made by white americans)
To solve this problem, you americans, must create some proper laws ffs.
I assume you have laws against other illegal contents. I mean in those
instances you've managed to lessen Free Speech within reason.
I'm confused.
Sue google for illegal algorithms? I'm serious. Try doing something
to fix this!
Make a law that say: black-human image + monkey image + rasism context = illegal.
Let me post this disclaimer that I am as Democrat as they come. I somehow don't see the difference between this and depicting George W. as a chimp. Must be the whole "race" thing, or something. C'mon people! Stop feeding the flames! If you're going to put this kind of energy into something so trivial as a human-less web image search aggregator, you're only going to make it worse. The Google juggernaut is only doing it's job, which is to crawl the web, and give you, based on mathematic algorithms, what -it- deems to be the most relevant results. Racism is a human condition, not a mathematical model. Google even tried to fix it, but the humans figured a way around it. Incidently, do a Google Image search for "George Bush". I guarantee that you will see at least one comparing him to a chimp. I never heard someone put up a stink about Google displaying these on the first result page.
Spork.
P.S. Spork.
Well, here's another possible solution...
It doesn't involve killing quite everyone...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AqhcPgg_YUQ
How the hell is this photo racist? In G.W. Bush's last term I must've seen 20 photos of him being compared to a chimp, either superimposed (which he did resemble) or side-by-side .. was that racist as well? I can't stand these double standards.
Is this the picture:
http://www.flystylelife.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/michelle-obama-ape.jpg
Michelle Obama did look like very much an ugly and angry monkey early in the campaign.
They went to Michale Jackson, who wasn't dead then, for advice, and transformed her into more woman like.
Humans consistent? What EVER made you think that? Besides, if you think connecting BLACK people to apes is no different than white people -- well-- I'm glad you are so clueless; it shows that we are making some progress in regards to race.
For the ignorant: Racism is still fading out in the USA, sure, it'll never die off (just like the creationists...) Only a generation ago there were HUGE race issues going on; the majority were alive during those times. Worse than ANY swear word-- racism and minority slurs carry a TON of taboo and irrational behavior. Its in fashion to attack, censor, and persecute racists and many think its their turn for equity in addition to people being "hip" and doing their part to try to stamp out racism; its easy self-righteous behavior in a society with very few majority shared positions that strongly held (and popular.)
I oppose any censorship; however, I can understand the herd behavior; especially in the USA. Private censorship is constitutional... Idealistic goals are just that-- goals; one never completely achieves them. Its reasonable to argue for some exceptions; that is, breaking of the ideal as opposed to completely legitimizing exceptions.
Expecting old dogs to learn new tricks when the major changes occurred during the last generation is expecting too much.
I've seen many primate looking humans in my days but the Obamas are far from it. Bush on the other hand actually fit so well that many people besides myself made the connection before seeing somebody else do so (; Bush being a nitwit probably helped as well.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
Unsurprisingly
FTFY.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
That image should be a non story, the only reason people feign outrage over it is as a preemptive measure to avoid the stigma of being called "racist".
I'm always amazed by how conservative the slashdot crowd really is. Every single 'Bush was a monkey' post was modded up, and every single poster has chosen to ignore the obviously racist subtones in the image. The freedom of speech argument is valid, but you can't deny that the image is offensive. MUCH more offensive then similar pictures of Bush. The way Slashdot folk talk about race is pretty childish in general, essentially it's just encouraging everyone to feign ignorance with arguments like, 'if it's okay for black people to say n***** then it's okay for white people to say it too!"
I can see this being a ploy by Microsoft to undermine google's credibility. Pay someone to click on the link enough to kick it to the top, google goes down as a racist company.
I am so tired of all this racial crap. People complain when Michelle gets compared to a monkey, but no one complained when Bush did? People complain about black face, but has anyone here ever dated a darker skinned girl? Half of them use skin whiteners. Most models will lighten their face before a shoot to make themselves look young. Yet, thats not racist?
Racism has nothing to do with intent or whether something is negative or positive. It has to do with treating people differently on the basis of race. The most racist group I have seen in the last decade are the supposedly anti-racist people.
If you search for Laura Bush with safe search off under Google images on the first page you get a picture of her standing next to George with her pants off.
Double standard?
I think the non-technical world at large is unable to understand the real issue from the CNN article, since it sort of seems like it is *Google* that is making the picture available to people. Of course everyone here knows that Google is just providing a link to something that is already there, and that it is a cold, emotionless and apolitical machine deciding that this link is popular enough to be highly rated. Without that background knowledge, which many people don't have and which the CNN article doesn't explain too well, any sort of opinion on this issue will be misguided.
It goes further than that, since this has NOTHING to do with free speech, unlike what many comments here suggest. The US right to free speech is about how the government cannot prevent your speech, and since Google isn't the government, free speech has no bearing on what Google does. Furthermore, since e.g. making child porn available is illegal in most places, including the US, it is just completely bogus that free speech means that you have a right to distribute any kind of information you want. On top of that, even if Google was the government, it would not have an obligation to make this link available. Free speech has nothing to do with this.
Google can't take down links to images like this just due to public outcry, because then it would never stop with people trying to get Google to take all sorts of things down. That is the essence of Google's involvement here.
Page 1 has "George Bush looks like a monkey," and Bush eating a kitten and giving the finger.
Only 9 of the 21 results are regular photos, the rest being meant to criticize or make fun of Bush.
And Google takes action over one Michelle Obama photo?
Talk about double standards.
You must be new here. And to be fair, slashdot has wackos of most every political flavour.
This is to congratulate everyone who is spreading righteous anger over the picture in question, here and elsewhere, no matter what your race and persuasion are:
Great job, guys!
You have done immensely well to make it so that everyone knows (or is reminded) that comparing Blacks - and only and specifically Blacks - to apes is very, very bad thing to do, probably about as bad as, say, saying "fuck" to other people. I'm sure kids in America and all over the world will take that to heart, and will never, ever call any Black person an ape from now on for the fun of it, especially if they haven't previously thought of that idea, or didn't find it particularly funny to concentrate specifically on Blacks.
Once again, congratulations! I wish you best of luck in your endeavor of exterminating racism!
I think it's funny because she looks like a monkey.
"In the absence of the ability to establish the attribute of truth they tried to establish the noble attributes."
Just turn off SafeSearch, and enter in the term: michelle obama monkey image
Get your free Dropbox account with 2 GB Free storage!
If I do a GIS for "Laura Bush" on the very first page is a photoshopped picture of her naked.
My groin thanks you for the suggestion, mister!
But others have already put to rest why your point of view is completely worthless...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.