Friday, April 4, 2008

They got me there

Presumably pseudonymous writer Preson Tense at Obsolete Vernacular has me pegged to rights as
Cook. White male; w/ glasses.
in his/her open letter critique of the racial makeup of the contributors to the 2007 Oxford American Southern Music Issue.* Resist as I might to this pigeonholing, there is no denying that I am a white male with glasses. The briefest of glances in my direction will bear me out. I am H-O-N-K-Y and have, as they say, no alibi.

I try to hide it, I do! I attempt a degree of coolness hoping to inspire one to say, "That guy is so cool, surely he cannot be white. It must be the sun glinting off his coolness that blinds me." Further one would add, "And for sure a guy that cool is not spectacled, as he oddly appears to be."

Alas, the truth can finally be told: fishbelly white with a persistent lazy eye.

*at least I live in the south, unlike some other people I could mention....

2 comments:

  1. The lazy eye would be more ironic if you were black. Just sayin...

    But really... this is the first I heard of you NOT being black. Maybe because you try to hide your whiteness when you write. From now on when you write stuff, you should always say, "As a White Music Critic..." or "I might be white, but..." Just throw your bright whiteness around... that's why God gave it do ya!

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  2. Baretta. Barthelme. Brockmeier. Cohen. Ehrhardt. Petrusich. Uhl. Wasik. Hmmmm. Some of your fellow-white-mostly-male music writers have names that sound suspiciously ethnic. Did the Oxford Am. overlook this when they were handpicking white music critics?

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