Court and Spark and Blackface

When her hometown said they wanted to pave paradise and put up a museum in her honor, Canadian songstress Joni Mitchell condescendingly sniffed, “Saskatoon has always been an extremely bigoted community. It’s like the deep south.” (Naturally, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix relaying that quote buried it over 30 paragraphs into their article, demonstrating their keen proboscises for news.)

As Kathy Shaidle writes at the PJ Lifestyle blog, Mitchell’s “idiotic ‘cue-the-banjos,” ‘Deep South’ boogieman is deplorable, although typical of the 1960s/70s era liberal she is.” This is…interesting…however:

Saskatchewan resident Kate McMillan duly posted on this dust up at her blog Small Dead Animals — a post that drew a couple of… interesting comments:

“You might, like me, come to think you love Joni, not the musician but the human being, only to be terribly disappointed when you start to learn about all the racism and cultural appropriation perpetuated by her on her later albums–and in her everyday behavior, too. I mean really, Joni, REALLY?!

Weller glosses over this latter point with a “well, it was a different time…people just did that stuff”…but, no. I can not accept that “people” just [see photo above] dressed up in blackface as their “inner black person, a pimp named Claude” (while also claiming to be socially colorblind, no less! ARGH!) to go to parties and whatnot and it was totally cool. In the ’60′s–’80′s?! Maybe in the 1860′s and ’80′s. Harumph”

Then there’s this:

Lott discussed one moment in particular when Mitchell performed for Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, the promising African-American boxer who was convicted of murder. During the performance, held at Carter’s prison, Mitchell was booed off stage because the black prisoners thought her music was a ‘whitewashed version’ of jazz and blues, he said. Out of anger, Mitchell publicly called Carter the N-word.

That was not the first time Mitchell was controversial regarding black culture, Lott said. On the cover of her 1977 album, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Mitchell appears in blackface drag.

Lott explained that Mitchell’s fantasy of being a black man was apparent in both her music and the relationships she had with men. Having a relationship with a black man came satisfyingly close to being one, Lott said.

‘Joni thought she inhibited blackness,’ Lott said. ‘That’s why she didn’t see a problem with her wearing blackface or using the N-word.’

Click over to Kathy’s post for the photo.

War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and as the left amply demonstrated last year and during their show trial for George Zimmerman, their mindset seems to be, “only by keeping primitive racial stereotypes alive in perpetuity, can we hope to progress.” Last year, as the Daily Caller reported, “NY Democratic assemblyman wears blackface, struggles to understand the problem, finally apologizes.”

As I wrote at the time, this keeps happening — and it invariably involves someone who fancies himself [and now herself] a “Progressive.”

Unexpectedly.