16 Comments

1. 

   cymast

    /  December 10, 2008

   Now more than ever. I found the “Chocolate Milk” reference offensive and Sharptonish.

2. 

   acilius

    /  December 10, 2008

   How so?

3. 

   cymast

    /  December 10, 2008

   Well, the quote says the treatment of blacks are now NOT the barometer of human rights. Now the barometer is the treatment of gays (or I would say anyone other than “straight” and “not transgendered”). Then right below the quote you see “Chocolate Milk.” Harvey Milk was all about equal rights for gays. If the point of the cartoon is saying the focus has shifted from blacks to gays, don’t glom black rights back onto gay rights, Rev. Sharpton.

   BTW Sharpton’s and Jackson’s careers are effectively over, now that Obama is the President-elect. Good riddance!

4. 

   acilius

    /  December 10, 2008

   See, I didn’t read it that way at all.

   I took the description of Rustin’s work on the March on Washington and the “Chocolate Milk” tag as a way of saying that the rights of sexual minorities are not exclusively a matter for whites, but that people of all races have a stake in the issue. That Rustin characterized the treatment of sexual minorities as a matter of “human rights” emphasizes that point and denies any need to choose between fair conduct regarding people of different ethnic backgrounds and fair conduct regarding people of different sexualities. If our society is going to respect human rights, it will have to show respect to the rights of all persons, members of sexual minorites as much as members of racial minorities.

   Notice also that he doesn’t say that sexual minorities are the only minorities who have legitimate grievances. Instead, he says that fairness to sexual minorities is the barometer of human rights. So he proposes that we think of human rights as a single quantity, and that we use the status of sexual minorities to measure that quantity, as formerly we might have used the status of blacks to measure it. Blacks formerly, because formerly they were the most vulnerable minority group, sexual minorities now, because they are now the most vulnerable minority group.

5. 

   cymast

    /  December 10, 2008

   ” . . “Chocolate Milk” tag as a way of saying that the rights of sexual minorities are not exclusively a matter for whites . . ”

   It’s not exclusively a matter for blacks either, hence I find the term “Chocolate Milk” in this context offensive.

6. 

   acilius

    /  December 10, 2008

   I just don’t see anything offensive about it. Rustin was like Harvey Milk in that he was one of the first people at his level of prominence to be an out gay man, so the “Milk” part is appropriate, and he was also a black man who was among the leaders of the civil rights struggle, so his racial identity adds another level of meaning to his remark. As Nestle’s Quik adds an extra level of tastiness to milk.

7. 

   cymast

    /  December 10, 2008

   Perhaps I am jaded or perhaps we have different life experiences. I prefer the strawberry flavored Carnation’s Instant Breakfast.

8. 

   acilius

    /  December 10, 2008

   Strawberry flavored Carnation’s Instant Breakfast is too sweet for me. I like to put about two teaspoons of Quik into a 16 ounce glass of cold milk and stir for almost a full minute. I can recommend that as a bedtime treat for anyone, no matter with whom they then go to bed.

9. 

   cymast

    /  December 10, 2008

   I agree the strawberry flavored Instant Breakfast is a bit sweet- that’s why I only put half a packet in my glass. And I like to drink it in the morning, as the name suggests.

10. 

    acilius

     /  December 10, 2008

    Names can make unhelpful suggestions sometimes. For example, there’s a brand of vegetarian foods called Morningstar Farms. Mostly pseudo-meat, the fake chicken is really good. Anyway, because it’s called Morningstar Farms stores put their products in with breakfast items. When you’re looking for pseudo-chicken for dinner, you can forget to look in the breakfast area.

11. 

    cymast

     /  December 10, 2008

    Speaking of fake meat, isn’t it interesting how so many vegetarians love the taste of meat- love it enough to buy fake meat. I know some vegetarians are repulsed by anything that looks/smells/tastes even remotely of meat, but many vegetarians love meatfulness.

12. 

    acilius

     /  December 10, 2008

    I don’t know what the breakdown is of people who buy things like Morningstar Farms Chikn Patties or Boca Burgers or other pseudo-meats. Most of the longstanding vegetarians I know never buy those things- they seem to think that the only people who do are either new to vegetarianism or are people like me and Mrs Acilius, non-vegetarians who sometimes worry about their cholesterol intake. They may be wrong in that- for all I know, veteran vegetarians may be the main consumers of those products. I’ve never seen any figures.

13. 

    cymast

     /  December 11, 2008

    My friend Teri- whom I consider to be a militant veteran vegan- eats fake meat. I occasionally will buy the fake burgers and fake hot dogs because I prefer that taste over the meat stuff. That, and I find meat unappetizing.

14. 

    acilius

     /  December 11, 2008

    See, I don’t like the fake hot dogs at all. Fake burgers I like, but I usually prefer non-fake.

15. 

    cymast

     /  December 11, 2008

    I get the Litelife Tofu Pups, which I noticed while e-seaching for the company name, rated last in a slate.com hot dog taste test. But I load mine with toppings galore- slate didn’t.

16. 

    acilius

     /  December 11, 2008

    The only vegetarian hotdogs I’ve ever enjoyed were served to us in some kind of bean casserole, so you couldn’t tell what they tasted like.