Do the events of the last few weeks leave you feeling blue? Are you so mad that you are seeing red? Both?
NASCAR announced yesterday that they have seen enough blue and red flying around at their raceways that they have banned the display of the Confederate flag at all events going forward. This has made Bubba Wallace very happy. Some say that he even helped save NASCAR from itself.
Do you know who Bubba is? He’s a successful NASCAR driver and he’s black. Tell the truth. It will set you free. When you read this did you have an image of who Bubba was? If so, are you prejudiced? He’s not just another Bubba from Alabama.
Another Bubba, this one a professional golfer named Bubba Watson, bought a car a while back. It wasn’t just any car though. Two years after his first tour victory, Watson acquired his dream set of wheels, known as the General Lee, for $110,000 at the 2012 Barrett-Jackson automobile auction in Scottsdale, Ariz.
The problem was that the car featured in the hit TV show Dukes of Hazzard had the Confederate flag painted on the roof. Bubba said enough is enough back in 2017 and painted over it. “Obviously I love the show,” said Watson, who owns the “Dukes of Hazzard” DVD collection. “But the flag is offensive to some people. There’s been enough buzz. I thought it was the right gesture for me to do.” Shouldn’t he rename the car as well?
Racecar here, race war there.
Jeff Foxworthy wrote a few jokes about people named Bubba along the way. The link is a 2015 video of Jeff explaining to Jimmy Fallon how the one-liners came about-innocently. They made Jeff famous. You know the “you know” jokes. For example, “you know that you’re a redneck when your first name is Bubba.” Fallon said that he loved them and thought that they were so funny. That’s way back when we could laugh about each other and enjoy our differences.
Fallon should know. He apologized last month for his Saturday Night Live skit of 20 years ago when he wore “blackface.” Should Fallon have been fired for that transgression? One month’s time might have made a big difference to that answer. And, Fallon again seems on the insensitive side for laughing at Foxworthy’s jokes. Should he apologize again? Or, are redneck jokes still funny?
And, what about Foxworthy? Is his gross insensitivity to “rednecks” just as bad as wearing blackface? The answer is no, not as of today. Maybe never.
Or, does that depend if you hail from a blue state or a red state?
And people say they don’t see color. After we finish with all of the rhetoric and get rid of all of the symbolism we should ask them again.