What is a “Nipsey Russell-Gong Moment?” Three decades ago, the great entertainer Nipsey Russell was a guest judge on The Gong Show. On one episode, a White male ventriloquist appeared as a contestant. His dummy was white, but he (inexplicably) sloppily painted it brown, hence, it looked a bit like blackface. As the man told bad, though not racist jokes, Russell gonged him. Russell explained that he gonged the man because something just wasn’t right. Sometimes things just feel wrong. If you get that feeling, don’t doubt yourself. Just gong ‘em!
My good friend and Sistah’Ph.D. to the (farther and colder) north turned me on to Hanes’ latest ad campaign. Hanes is hawking its tagless underwear with the pitch: “the world gives you enough tags.” So what are the “tags” that Hanes says is burdening us, and that we should turn to their underwear to get a little reprieve from: faggot, nigger, and Paki! I kid you not. Sources tell Sisterdoc that the campaign is not running in the U.S., and that it was created abroad by an ad agency in Bombay, India.
A GONG to Hanes for exploiting the most dreadful of ‘isms and hate speech to sell some damn cotton drawers.
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