The Daily Show nicks a joke from Sepia Mutiny! Check out their hilarious takedown of the ‘moral controversy’ around Jay Chandrasekhar’s The Dukes of Hazzard.
The clip pokes fun at a stuffy NAACP official, University of Tennessee frat boys and Ben Jones (Cooter), who’s calling for a movie boycott. Bonus: ‘Hava Nagila‘ played in a format you’ve probably never seen before 
Watch the clip. Related posts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Update: The #1 movie in America right now is by a desi director.
It’s okay for the SM community to spend over 100 comments talking about a cartoon stereotyping Arabs, but it’s “stuffy” for an NAACP official to take issue with car called the General Lee that has a prominently displayed Confederate flag on the top of it (setting aside for a moment the whole premise of the show/movie–which I love)?
I mean, I saw the episode in question., and I agree that the guy came across as a little uptight, but, then, the Daily Show tends to do that to people. And my ancestors weren’t slaves, so I’m not going to pass judgement.
Thus, stuffy in context.
So how about addressing “moral controversy” now (which were really two alleged moral controversies that they conflated, one which is much more significcant and which i think they expetected their viewers to understand) 😉
btw, you didn’t mention the yankee logo on ed helms’s car, which was hilarious 🙂 also, call me a conspiracy theorist, but i think they occasionally look at SM and get ideas here 🙂
Hmm.. The NAACP rep took offense at confederate flag, calling it a “universal symbol of oppression.”
Did SM take a similar stance toward the British Flag displayed on Austin Powers’ Mini Cooper?
Honestly, what happened to the days when people could go to a movie, enjoy it and come home without someone somewhere starting some controversy over it?
back that ass up.
Speaking of flags there is a clip here about flags and India.
Saurav makes a good point though, and I don’t really expect the NAACP guy to become jovial about the issue just because he’s on the Daily Show.
The stuffy part is not having a snappy comeback to cheek. The NAACP guy says, ‘It was also fun to lynch black people at one time in this country,’ and Colbert says, ‘That’s where you and I differ.’ It’s a stupid gotcha, but it’s cheeky and hilarious. If you’re going to get into the ring with the Daily Show, you need to send out someone with a quick wit and a sharp tongue.
did SM take a similar stance toward the British Flag displayed on Austin Powers Mini Cooper?
When I was a kid, some people in our neighborhood hung Confederate flags in their windows to protest our moving into the area. One of those people shot a few rounds at our house and their kids used to smack us around every chance they got.
I’ve got a bit of an issue with the flag and so do a lot of other people who know part of what it represents. That said, I’ve got some friends who have the flag hanging in their yards and for them, it has something to do with redefining southern culture and reclaiming a part of their identity destroyed by their grandparents’ backwards view on race.
People don’t have a problem with the Union Jack in part because Britain has made some attempt to reconcile with its past and the people and nations it has hurt. As for the Confederacy, the winners of that war decided that for the sanity of all people, it was too broken a philosophy to keep alive and so they buried it.
Austin Powers can put Britain’s flag on a Mini because that flag now represents a nation inclusive of the people it tried to oppress; the General Lee can put the Confederate flag on, sure, but for much of the nation, it represents a painful history that a number of people have tried to forget.
Switching gears…
Oddly enough, I’m a Dukes of Hazzard fan, my cousins and I had some bow & arrows and we used to tie firecrackers to the end [of arrows] and try to blow up mailboxes (usually the mailboxes of those f*ckers who hung Confederate flags in their windows). I was Luke Duke and I dislocated my hip trying to slide across my dad’s car; a girl down the street with big heels was Daisy Duke, she used to punch us in the balls every chance she got. Good times.
Anyhow, I went and saw the new version, it was a serious sausage-party–frat guys talking about how they jerked it to Jessica, dewds whoopin’ & hollerin’, some jagoff braggin’ about how he’s got a still in his backyard and then, one nostalgia-ridden Indian man who reflexively shouted “Yeeeeeee-haawwwww” in tandem with the Dukes. It was a fairly mindless experience and in retrospect, I know my shouting with the movie freaked everyone out–I was by myself and most of the guys in the audience were too young to remember the series so it was just me, laughing like a hyena, looking like Zacarias Moussaoui and shouting “Yeeeee-haaaaAllaaaah-u-Akbar!!”
I don’t think anyone can top that comment by whoa, tiger.
Jessica and her Desi Dukes… yes!!
i had no idea this was a jay chandrashekar film. sooper troopers is hilarious if you are in the right state of mind.
i was intent on seeing the dukes movie, until i read the repeatly bad reviews. a review on the siskel & ropert show also mentions that the duke brothers have a scene in blackface — something which is certainly more offensive than the general lee’s rebel flag.
In that scene they’re accidentally covered in coal dust and called out by black Atlantans for the Confederate flag on the General Lee’s roof. In fact, they’re called on the flag twice in the movie, with motorists flipping them off and yelling, ‘Welcome to the 21st century.’ It’s actually a self-flagellating attempt to update the Dukes show by acknowledging the flag’s negative history.
I give the movie two thumbs up =)