Today’s Tom Woods Letter, which all the influential people receive every weekday. Be one of them.
Well, we made it through Irma safely and with no property damage (or even power outages!).
So it’s back to the grind for me.
Over the weekend, this happened:
Acclaimed British conductor Matthew Halls was removed as artistic director of the Oregon Bach Festival for telling a racist joke.
Except — as I probably don’t even need to tell you — the joke wasn’t “racist,” and Reginald Mobley, the black classical singer he told it to, is insisting that the whole thing is an outrageous injustice against a good man.
“He has been victimized and I’m very upset about it,” Mobley said. “It was an innocent joke that has been entirely taken out of context.”
Here is the entirety of the joke, according to the Telegraph:
Halls and Mobley had been chatting at a reception held last month during this year’s Oregon Bach Festival, when the subject turned to a concert in London in which Mobley had performed.
The singer, who was born and raised in the southern state of Florida, said the concert had an “antebellum” feel to it, of the sort associated with Gone With the Wind and other rose-tinted representations of the pre-Civil War south.
In response Mobley says that Halls “apologized on behalf of England,” before putting on an exaggerated southern accent and joking: “Do you want some grits?”, in a reference to the ground corn dish popular in the south.
“I’m from the deep south and Matthew often makes fun of the southern accent just as I often make fun of his British accent,” said Mobley. “Race was not an issue. He was imitating a southern accent, not putting on a black accent, and there was nothing racist or malicious about it.”
Evidently a woman overheard the exchange and reported it. That’s not a misprint: she reported a conversation she heard between friends.
So now Matthew Halls has to proceed with his career with the “racist” accusation around his neck, on the basis of nothing at all.
Mobley, meanwhile, is unimpressed by people who, despite his own protestations that the joke was inoffensive, have evidently taken it upon themselves to decide what should offend him.
“They make assumptions on our behalf about how we might feel, as if we don’t understand when something said to us or done to us is racist.”
Thankfully, pressure is building to reinstate Halls.
If “white privilege” means anything (or really existed), it should mean that Halls would not have been subjected to this preposterous and unjust treatment.
Now, down to business:
(1) Be sure to join me for my 1000th Tom Woods Show episode extravaganza, September 30 in Orlando. Register here: http://www.tomwoods.com/orlando
Please help me spread the word! Bring a friend! With Eric July as emcee, plus Michael Malice and Tom DiLorenzo as special guests, we’ll have a blast.
(2) Had a good chat with the founder of Gab, the free-speech social media platform.