"Although I no longer enjoy picking up the phone to listen to an Indian accent who cannot pronounce my name correctly requiring me to pay my dues, school and life must go on."

A very MEH use of synecdoche. Likely to offend some people, and I'm kinda disgruntled. But I ain't gonna be part of the problem. In the end, we all reaffirm stereotypes with cultural clichés, it's like breathing to us. (See? I own up to it.)

The difference between you and me is that you're getting published, and y'all in the Opinion section have gotten some mass heat for it.

So, rather than just bashing you for doing something we all don't like to own up to, sit right down here playa' and let me holla at chya'.


Humor is more than stating the obvious. I know, I know. Carlos Mencia and Dane Cook are the leading causes of arthritis in America's funny bone right now, and they get so much TV and air time...but there's a reason Dave Chapelle stopped work on his show's last season.

He didn't want to make money reaffirming racial stereotypes.

Good comedians can add a new (or many new) twist(s) to conventional thought. S/he takes a concept familiar to the audience and then brings it forward in a new light, both shocking and guiding the audience to ponder this new take on an old idea.

George Carlin. Start there. He can alternatively pull this trick off ramming the death penalty into Western voyeurism, or with an acute insight in regards to fingernail clippings...where he described playing with them in a way that made the audience discover it shared a common experience (with both Carlin and amongst themselves.)

And yeah, Dave Chapelle could pull it off, and did many times, but he was right to stop short on that third season...there was really nothing new in his comedy at that time.

-Frank