You couldn't make this stuff up, no matter how good your imagination is. This one will make you wonder if the once-proud NAACP has been commandeered by escapees from the madhouse or unrepentant drunks with brain damage.

To make a short story long, Hallmark has a line of greeting cards starring two cartoon characters named Hoops & Yoyo. They're pretty popular with people who are into greeting cards... whoever that is. Women and kids, I guess. As a man even I don't find them overly obnoxious. Looking at them, I would never suspect them of being hate-filled racists.

Who would? They're greeting card cartoon characters for God's sake!

But the Los Angeles NAACP listened to a talking graduation card starring Hoops & Yoyo and heard them calling African American women "black whores." They apparently had to listen real carefully to be sure, because the card was sold for three years before the NAACP brainiacs decided they were being insulted.

The card's theme was the solar system and emphasized the new graduate's ability to take on the universe, using Shakespearean lines like, "Watch out, Saturn, this grad is gonna run rings around you!" Good stuff. Hopefully the writer got a bonus.

Where Hoops & Yoyo got in trouble was when they mentioned the singularities which form when large stars collapse, otherwise known as black holes. "And you black holes — you’re so ominous! And you planets? Watch your back!" That's what the cartoon characters say, but what the NAACP officials heard was, "And you black whores — you’re so ominous! Watch your back!"

It's a persistent theme with bogus hate crimes: the unrelenting stupidity of the wannabe victims.

Hallmark's response to the complaint from the NAACP was to patiently explain that the card had been on the market for three years without a complaint, then patiently explain the solar system theme of the card and provide a written transcript so the idiots could read what Hoops & Yoyo were actually saying, and then, finally, realizing that people this stupid are likely unable to read, withdraw the card from their shelves.

Stupidity wins another round.


Sources:

6/2/10 - KABC-TV - NAACP calls Hallmark graduation card racist

6/3/10 - Orange County Register - Is this Hallmark ‘Hoops & Yoyo’ card racist?

6/7/10 - IHateTheMedia.com - Don’t just play the race card, give one



Posted from Reno, Nevada, USA