Can we hold off on those flowers?

I am reacting to something that I can no longer find, at least not the way I first saw it.

What I saw was a tweet with a clip of comedian Bill Burr going off on white women. It said "Give Bill Burr his flowers."

I was thinking about that on the 4th. I knew I wanted to do something with it, but we were having home issues and I put it off. Now that tweet and all the people agreeing with it are gone.

I think this makes sense. The clip was a short snippet of his monologue from Saturday Night Live from October 2020. I initially thought it was recent, and I think other people were going on that assumption too, like maybe it was a reaction to recent Supreme Court rulings on affirmative action. Old things do sometimes pop up as new, and then sometimes people reacting to that find out, get embarrassed, and delete.

It is possible that there was another reason for embarrassment and deletion, which I'll get to, but I must first express surprise at how many references came up to Bill Burr and flowers without me being able to find that one. Like, did he do a bit about it at one time that people are referencing? I don't know.

I could not find that clip, but I did find an article that gave me the date and a longer clip:

https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a34338294/snl-host-bill-burr-white-women-cancel-culture-rick-moranis-opening-monologue/

For the record, I don't think it's a great article, but it does clarify how much was edited. The clip in the tweet only had criticism of white women. It was missing the criticism of pride month and unironic uses of "woke" and "cancel culture" and glee over Rick Moranis getting sucker-punched. He did also criticize anti-maskers, but his emphasis was on not caring that they are dying or taking out relatives with them.

This is not surprising.

I am not saying that criticism of white women is not reasonable, but my immediate reaction to it was "You're not the one who gets to say it."

Yes, I realize more than half of white women voted for Trump, but you know what group had a higher percentage? White men.

Burr refers to white women getting Black men lynched by sleeping with them and then declaring it was rape. Well, maybe sometimes, but let's not forget the high frequency of times when everyone knew it was consensual and didn't care, or the times when there wasn't even that; just economic success that needed to be punished. Or, you know, that maybe if there really was a crime, you don't need a lynch mob, you can just let the law handle it. We all know that white men are big fans of criminal prosecutions and penalties for rape.

It reminds me of the movie Rosewood, where the whole massacre was the fault of a lying, cheating (but actually with a white man) white woman, but it was okay because at the end her husband was mad about all the deaths and beat her (just like her white lover did!). 

Sorry about the spoiler.

Here are the things that don't surprise me:

1. It does not surprise me if someone recently edited the clip to focus on white women but without sounding racist or homophobic. There is some strong misogyny out there, and there are people whom that appeals to, as long as it does not sound bad in other ways. This in no way means that white women are the last group that you can criticize, only that different people are more susceptible to different things.
2. It does not surprise me that Burr jokes about killing off your cousin with asthma, and does not express any concern about anti-maskers killing off other people, that are not their relatives. Honestly, it doesn't surprise me when any comedian is hateful. It's not the only path to comedy, but that path gets a lot of traffic.
   
3. It does not surprise me that in searching other references came up to Burr being transphobic. You can think that you accept almost everyone, but these things have a way of growing. You can find men who say they are only sexist but not racist, or people who say they are fine with "LGB" as long as you take off the "T". Don't put too much trust in them.
4. It does not surprise me that even an old, truncated clip would get a lot of people immediately going "Yeah!" without noticing the hypocrisy. There is that "taking sides" thing, but also that thing where a Republican will take one principled stand out of 99 and then have people praising their leadership and wanting them to run for president.

I firmly know that this is not helpful.

If all you have to offer is slamming on the group that seems safe, you are not going to accomplish anything good.

Our legacy of bigotry is build on the exploitation and abuse of others where it is allowed. Leaving some groups out of that, but still only focusing on pushing down, does not make you brave or wise or useful.

We cannot build anything good with those tools.

But it might result in a temporary burst of flowers.