Brad Stine Mini-Cast

Cultural Appropriation

Something seems odd. Why we come on every Monday right at 7:00? We’re ready with our popcorn and our juice or our milk or our beer or whatever it is you indulge in. But something’s odd, you’re saying “something feels amiss” and yet it’s exciting and you hold your breath thinking, “Dare I believe that a miracle has occurred in just one seven-day period from last Monday?” Well, maybe that’s what we will discuss on the Brad Stine Show.

Last week or two weeks ago, the Cleveland Indians changed their name. They did because they thought that the Indian was a cultural appropriation. That you have taken their name, their identity as a group of people, made a cartoon out of their face and basically manipulated that and demean them so that you could use that I guess for your own pleasure and entertainment. I did a little handheld video about it and made fun of it and went out there and got onto the internet.

Guardians.

Guardians, Cleveland Guardians. So they’re going to be called the Cleveland Guardians which I’m guessing is somehow better. But what I said was this, number one, the only time we even hear about Indians anymore in America is their casinos. We got the Cleveland Indians, we have the Atlanta Braves, we got the… Who else is there’s another… Oh, Warriors, right? We have these (silent) given to them as an honorable usage of who they were. At that time baseball, you couldn’t play, I think the Indians came around in 1916 or something like that, only white people could play we all know that. Jackie Robinson, My Dodger player broke the color barrier in ’47 but here’s the thing, white people are the ones who were allowed to play but there was an Indian that played on their team and they kind of in honor of him called themselves the Indians because he was like this Indian that played.

So there’s an interesting, complicated idea here that they chose of all the… They could have called them the Cleveland Italians, could have called them the Cleveland Caucasians, which I would have liked. You want to use my ethnicity as your standard of pride and excellence for your team to go out and do great things? Jump in. They chose Indians and Warriors and Braves as virtuous strong people that couldn’t be stopped and would not be stopped. It was a… I saw it as something to be honored and the people complaining about it by the way weren’t Indians. As usual, some people decided to be offended for them and usually that’s odd but that’s what we find usually under these circumstances.

So cultural appropriation to me and I’m writing a joke about this for my next album, I haven’t worked it out completely but the premise is kind of dictated on this idea, what we call a cultural appropriation we used to call sharing. Funny thing, interesting thing on Bill Maher last week, he did a thing about this and is… That’s the problem of comedy is whoever gets it on television first, it’s considered their idea. Now, keep in mind he’s got 20-something writers that wrote for him so he didn’t come up with it, I came up with it by myself.

But anyways, if you see me do a joke on cultural appropriation which I’m going to and that I grow with it and that it’s growing, it was something I came up with on my own so I didn’t take it from him. It’s called a parallel development in comedy. If a comic gets something about 7-11, here’s another guy who was just like, we all came up with it. We’re all funny. We all see funny in the same places yet we all kind of can come up with similar things now and again, it’s not always somebody stealing.

But what was interesting to me was that we used to see it as sharing and one of the examples that I want to give is music. We know that the black American community invented jazz and blues, a genre that is world widely respected and honored. It’s amazing music, especially jazz. My son, Wyatt, who I always make fun of is an amazing drummer and can play jazz drums as well as everything else he’s great at. So for those of you, by the way, and I had a few people yell at me because I was making fun of my son… They felt so bad for you, Wyatt.

Oh, please. Don’t feel bad for me, I can take it.

You can take it. I know you can take it because you know your dad loves you and that it’s for fun. Also, I only joke with him about these things because he’s so good at so many things, so it’s an honorable thing. When you give me permission to joke about you, it’s honor. You can joke about me. I can joke about me because we love each other and we actually respect each other. The joking about each other’s idiosyncrasies is proof of our love and respect for each other.

Ultimately, there’s a big difference between making fun of someone and joking with them.

Right. Right. But sometimes when you joke with somebody you’re making fun of them.

Yeah. But when I say that, I mean like there’s a difference between doing it maliciously and just try (silent)

Because you know you’re being sarcastic or whatever about it.

It’s all about intention.

It’s all about intention. That’s right. See, I raised my son well, so he understands that, he can take a joke. But what saddens me about the idea of cultural appropriation is that it actually in its supposed desire to not exploit somebody else, or you’re using their ethnicity or some of the way they dress or some things that they created and you’re using it for your own profit and thus you’re exploiting them, it’s like, what about me saying I honor that. I want to wear cornrows. I think that’s cool. And I respect it enough to say I will alter my body like you to give you respect by saying cool idea.

So jazz is its amazing musical genre that’s very difficult to do. You got to be one of the highest levels of a musician can play jazz. Now, if somebody said, “Well, you can’t play jazz because you’re European or you’re white”, and black people invented it so you’re not allowed to play because you’re culturally appropriating that, I said really? Is that really the way we want to go? That whoever invented something suddenly doesn’t allow others to participate? That if somebody else invented something, you aren’t even allowed to use their invention?

Because think of where this is going to go. Think of where this is going to go. That somebody from a social justice warrior, critical race theory idea said, you can’t play jazz. You’re white and you didn’t invent that. And I get to say, okay, I’ll accept that. I won’t play jazz. But that electric guitar that you wrote that song on for jazz, give it back. We invented that. Oh, and the amp that you’re using to get the sound out, we invented that. That’s ours. Give it back, please. By the way, that car you drove to get here so you could play in the jazz club, we invent that. That light bulb that lit everything up, white people invent it. That’s ours. You don’t get light bulbs no more. Back to candles for you. Can’t take a jet anymore. Can’t use that video on your phone that we created, that cell phone with the good satellites that we utilize for GPS, white people invented that. It’s all ours.

Would that be okay? Or do we say we came up with this idea as a human to share with humans because we actually don’t give a crap what color it comes in. We’re respecting your idea, your uniqueness, your ingenuity, your freedom to create. This is a beautiful thing. Cultural appropriation used to be called sharing. Cultural appropriation used to be called giving access to humanity, all equally access to the same great things that people have come up with, so we can all participate and grow together and be better together.

They’ve turned even this beautiful sharing of our cultural uniqueness as evil and dark and all the left ever does in its desire to be woke and demand wokeness from the rest of us because it believes in equity and egalitarianism that everybody gets the same outcome in their constant desire to have everybody get the exact same outcome, they split us up into fragmentation that never get the same outcome because we’re literally restricting some of you from access to equal concepts, ideas, songs, scientific breakthroughs. We’re keeping that away from you. We’re segmenting you. We’re literally doing the exact opposite of equity. What a buffoon? You are to not see your own idiocy, your hypocrisy, your idiotocracy. You’re destroying something America tried to create E pluribus unum, out of many. Yes, many. Out of many, yes, from Italy, from Ireland, from Africa.

Everybody came here. They brought the best of these ancient technologies, ancient ideas, ancient recipes, ancient songs, ancient ideas from a much older, older culture. They brought it here and then they gave it to us and shared it with us so we could have a richer tapestry. But then they became Americans and we spoke the same language and we had the same ideals and the American ingenuity of what we’d share with each other so we can become great together. The most eclectic unique conglomeration of ethnicities and peoples and cultures in human history came together the United States, there’s still never been a more ethnically diverse country in human history right here and all they want to say is we are the problem. How dare you? We must have a way to take these folks up and go stick them in North Korea for one year, in China for one year, in Iraq or Afghanistan for one year. Go live in a place where you’re not allowed to disagree. You will beg to come back here, just like immigrants do every stinking day. Let us in to America. It’s our last great hope.