Chicks Aren't Funny: And Neither are Rape Jokes...Right?

Posted at 1:55 PM Oct 06, 2008

by Andrea Grimes

Last week, Sandra Bernhard got into a teensy, tiny ruckus involving her speculation as to what might happen if Sarah Palin were to go to, say, New York City, and, say, be forced to engage in sexual intercourse with more than one African-American male. Or, to put it in that down home Associated Press vernacular:

"Bernhard made the remarks last month during her one-woman show in Washington before Palin visited New York to campaign. Bernhard said Palin would be "gang-raped by my big black brothers" ...

The problem was not so much what she said, but the fact that she'd been booked for an upcoming headlining charity gig for a Boston women's shelter. Bernhard was fired from the gig. Understandably, the shelter folks don't think gang-rape jokes will go over too well with their audience.

'Cept Bernhard told the Huffington Post that she never even said "gang-rape" in the first place.

"So what I said, only funnier, was 'are you willing to have the experience of getting raped and then keeping your child?' Only I said it much funnier, and more fluidly. I never once said gang rape. Actually I never said rape. Of course what I said was outrageous, it's insane, and I'm completely unapologetic about it."

Why someone hasn't come out with a video of the original performance to set the record straight either way, I don't know. There are certainly a fair amount of right-wing Bernhard haters clogging up the YouTubes with videos taken out of context, but none of them appear to have caught the actual statement in question. To which I say: it doesn't matter.

Why? Because I think we can all agree that any women's shelter who thought it prudent to book Bernhard probably hasn't heard, oh, any of her stand-up material, ever and therefore probably should have bailed, gang-rape joke or not. Bernhard's a powerful feminist, but I don't see her Hicksian rants pairing well with a nice Chianti and white people writing big checks.

There is a question here that no one's asking, and it's far more significant than telling a rape joke before heading into a women's shelter. Maybe the real issue is that Bernhard made a joke about Sarah Palin being raped by black men. It forces a visual that would make many a straight-laced American cringe: our lovely, virginal, right-wing hockey mom being violated by angry, primitive, sex-obsessed negroes.

What Bernhard's statement draws out isn't a conversation about violence against women; it is about the latent White American fear of black men raping white women. The right wing media (and I'm prepared to argue that it's the Fox Newsers out there who are stirring this steaming pile) are really only worried about this violence against this women, and therefore alluding not only to the idea that Sarah Palin stands for all that is good (white) but that we must protect the poor thing from evil (ideals that are non-white or women who are not "normative," such as, oh, I don't know, foul-mouthed, vaguely queer Jewish female stand-up comedians?) Am I prepared to say that this is all being perpetuated to draw attention to the fact that our precious Palin is running against an ahemm black man? I would never say something like that.