Comments on: Can We Ever Change?

By: All the Math You’ll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide : World Online Review

All the Math You’ll Ever Need: A Self-Teaching Guide : World Online Review — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 02:04:16 +0000

[...] Can We Ever Change? :: offBeat :: Louisiana and New Orleans Online … [...]

By: guest

guest — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:37:52 +0000

oops – and so do I.

By: Guest

Guest — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 00:33:51 +0000

So if your're so over it – why all the intense anger over the rest of us “whiners”? Also you need to learn how to spell…

By: Sally Showalter

Sally Showalter — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 23:11:32 +0000

I dont think the analogy works. Strange Fruit is a specific song about lynching. It is necessary to know the history of things that happened in the past. WHO came up with that idea – do they know the song? Understanding that song means you respect the past enough to realize what a loaded decision it was to put the title on the cover – not that you cant get past racism.

By: charles

charles — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 22:13:27 +0000

All of this discussion and this “music” magazine can't get the facts on this song correct. This is not a Billie Holliday song, she performed it yes, the fact is”Strange Fruit” began as a poem written by Abel Meeropol, a Jewish high-school teacher from the Bronx, about the lynching of two black men. He published under the pen name Lewis Allan. Meeropol wrote “Strange Fruit” to express his horror at lynchings, possibly after seeing Lawrence Beitler's photograph of the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana. He published the poem in 1936 in The New York Teacher, a union magazine. Though Meeropol/Allan had often asked others (notably Earl Robinson) to set his poems to music, he set Strange Fruit to music himself. The song gained a certain success as a protest song in and around New York. Meeropol, his wife, and black vocalist Laura Duncan performed it at Madison Square Garden. Barney Josephson, the founder of Cafe Society in Greenwich Village, New York's first integrated nightclub, heard the song and introduced it to Billie Holiday.
I find it fascinating that this magazine can't get the facts correct, perhaps this is the reason this whole mess happened in the first place.

By: Viola Liuzza

Viola Liuzza — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:10:24 +0000

People need to get a grip. So many have become overly sensitive little weenies. The ones who complain the most know the least.
How manyof these folks who whined about the title “Strange Fruit” lived in New Orleans in the nineteen sixties and early seventies? How many remember when Tips was the 501 Club and had a pass through window to the outside where black folks were handed their beers? That was racism.This is much ado about absolutely nothing.
Those of us who came up in those days who remember when conservatives created a complete societal structure of de jure segragation know the difference. The rest of you are a bunch of Johnny Come Lately know nothings who have no clue about racism and merely parrot the cri de jour ……..still exploited to this day for political purposes by the very same racist conservatives of yore………….. of “It's racism!”.
OffBeat shouldn't play along. grow some huevos

By: Charles Nicholson

Charles Nicholson — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:41:49 +0000

I also cringed at the “Strange Fruit” cover. As a music magazine, you should have known better than to use this reference. Maybe “color blindness” is a worthy goal, but we are so not there yet.

By: TiredOfReverseRacismInNOLA

TiredOfReverseRacismInNOLA — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:26:59 +0000

Hey jackhole…where are you looking?? December's issue featured a VERY talented young musician named Kermit Ruffins and January featured the GREAT Deacon John. Not to mention the article in the March issue that was ALL about the New Orleans Hip Hop scene. Open your close-minded eyes…we will NEVER be able to move forward with people like you spewing negativity FOREVER. As one very interesting blogger wrote, “Why do we continue to major in these minor issues?”

By: Dan Cooper

Dan Cooper — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:39:53 +0000

I understood what you were saying, and it's true and has been long before the term 'politically correct' came into common usage. And I agree that a lot of people react without thinking too much beforehand. But you were not the first to bring up political correctness in the present context. We're all self-editing and self-policing to the extent that most of us don't make jokes about cancer in the presence of someone suffering from it, or yell out “nigger” in the middle of a crowd if we're so inclined. Depending on our upbringing, education and motivation, we know what's appropriate and what isn't without being told. Jan Ramsey knows damned well what “Strange Fruit” means – not an unwarranted assumption to make of a music editor. She made a poor choice. I have no problem with that. I just don't understand why she had to dilute her apology to those she offended by musing on the half-life of racially charged words. If she had pondered on this before her editorial slip-up, she might not have been caught unawares by the ensuing shit storm. But as an afterthought, this editorial strikes me as pretty dishonest and self-serving.

By: Guest

Guest — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:12:06 +0000

It appears I did not express myself clearly enough. This was asked in the editorial:
“My question is, do our sensitivities run so deep that certain words can never be used in politically correct American society?”
My response was not about offbeat in particular – but about political correctness in general. It is my contention that people should spend less time trying to tell each other how to be and more time trying to understand where they are coming from. That way you would know people's true intentions bad or good. In my opinion, what we have going on in our society is people making innocent (although sometimes uninformed) choices and being condemned; while people who may have less scrupulous agendas become undetectable to others because they know how to cloak their intentions behind fronts of political correctness.
How this idea translates to offbeat in this situation is that people should have asked the intentions of the cover design instead of just attacking it. If they would have done that and got the answer, then they would have seen that there was no malice intended, just a lack of musical reference knowledge. Seeing as there was no offense or inflammatory statement trying to be made by the cover, it should have remained in place. It was merely someone's artist expression about an entirely different topic than assumed by some of the audience. Just as I am afraid, you assumed my response was an attack.
I guess you helped me to make my point…we should ask more, and assume less – and to strive for understanding over quick draw condemnation.
In defense to you, I did make a slight attack, but it was about a music magazine, not having musical knowledge; which I think is fair to point out.