If you are old enough to remember The Saturday Evening Post (which ended its run as a weekly magazine in 1969) you might remember a feature called “The Perfect Squelch”.
The Perfect Squelch occurred when someone reacted to a silly, or insensitive, or nasty comment with an answer that effectively shut the offender up.
With that in mind, I would like to show you a comment cited in Joseph Ellis’s article at msn.com.
The comment was made by The Daily Show correspondent Dulce Sloan, regarding criticism (which, for the record, I have not heard anyone make) of Beyonce releasing an album of “country” songs:
“If White people hated cultural appropriation, then they shouldn’t have created music.
“Because every form of music in America was stolen from Black people: rock’n’roll, jazz, blues, country, pop music. So if you have a problem with cultural appropriation — y’all created classical music, y’all could have stuck with that.”
There you go. White people had nothing to do with any kind of music other than classical. How’s that for unbridled ignorance, not to mention overt racial animus?
And now, in answer to Sloan’s comment, I will show you a response tweeted by someone using the screen name “Tandy”:
“As dumb as this is, let’s just say she’s right.
“Fine. We’ll give up performing rock & roll and she can give up indoor plumbing, the printed word, cell phones, and wheeled transportation.”
That would be just as obnoxious and just as racially charged as Dulce Sloan’s comment…except all Tandy did was answer her in kind with a response that – if Sloan has any smarts (a big “if”) – would cause her to shut up and not say another word on the subject.
The Perfect Squelch lives.
