Elizabeth, over at Blog of Stench, brought our attention to a New York Magazine article about the Obama sock monkey doll (the company set to manufacture it has apologized and canceled production). Here is a picture of the doll:
From the article:
We were happily cruising around the Internet yesterday when we stumbled upon a link on Andrew Sullivan’s blog that gave us one of those moments Dave Chappelle joked about in Killin’ Them Softly: “Have you ever had something happen that was so racist that you didn’t even get mad? You were just like, ‘Goddamn, that was racist.’” That’s how we felt when we saw TheSockObama.com, a Website peddling an “Obama” monkey doll.
The response the author got after contacting the company:
To Those with Heartfelt Queries,
We chose twenty-two customer queries today that we believe merit a response. You touched us with either your concern, intelligence, humor, sensitivity, and/or your thoughtfulness. We thank you. There are other queries we received today as well that we chose not to respond to, because of their spewing of venom and their aimlessness.
We at TheSockObama Co. are saddened that some individuals have chosen to misinterpret our plush toy. It is not, nor has it ever been our objective to hurt, dismay or anger anyone. We guess there is an element of naviete on our part, in that we don’t think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore. We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little. We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases. We think that if we can do this together, maybe it will behoove us a nation and maybe we’ll even begin to truly communicate with one another more tenderly, more real even.
This is only our introductory plush toy. If we choose to move forward with a Republican candidate, we’ll begin with an elongated and slightly lumpy, fuzzy Idaho potato. Had a different Democratic candidate won the nomination, we were prepared to move forward with the cutest, fluffiest 12″ chestnut and golden-haired squirrel, with a short Farrah-like do in a brown pantsuit and call her Squirellary.
In earnest folks, we’re so sorry we offended anybody.
Best Regards,
TheSockObama Co. www.thesockobama.com
Thanks, Elizabeth!
NEW: Consider also…
Thanks to Green Ink for pointing this out in the comments!
WOW, AN UPDATE: Click here to see the TheSockObama Co. aggressively, and I mean aggressively, revoke the conciliatory words they offered in apology (thanks to Breck C. for the tip!). Some highlights:
We at TheSockObama Co. have some questions to pose. What’s really going on in America? In the good ol’ fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism ; free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America…
Double standards appear to be a common thread here. It’s okay for there to be hundreds of thousands of Google sites containing references to our current president’s resemblance to a chimpanzee. However, it’s not okay to make that same association regarding our possible next president. Isn’t this the very definition of hypocrisy?
TheSockObama is no longer scheduled to go into mass production… Have the bullies won here?
…the blogging dens of resistance quickly began their fury of emails. An electronic battery of fiery darts flowed swiftly but silently through the veins of technology. Feverish fingers frantically clicking coast to coast, crashing and burning our tragically naive - yet sparkling website. A steady stream of repetitive verbal eloquence graced our Customer service inbox with tasty tidbits like, eff-ewe and every other colorul expletive you could possibly imagine. We thought we had heard it all. Hey thanks. This is America, right?
…With the number of Customers we’ve had to disappoint in our first week of business; are we saying it’s okay to take something out of the marketplace that other people want to buy? Are we now censoring one another’s liberty as Americans to freely purchase goods and services on our own terms? Is this the kind of America we want?
Lisa analyzed their “anti-apology” and what it means for U.S. race relations over at the Huffington Post. Check it out.
Also, it appears they are still selling the sock monkey, now at another website. The website has exactly the same design as the original one.
See our follow up to this post here.
15 Comments
I really don’t see anything wrong with it. This is one of those things that is up to the viewer to see any racism in it. Black people =/= monkeys. Monkey doll =/=racist. I actually think it’s adorable.
I’m with Eleanor, I found it really endearing, but I’m a massive fan of the toy and its cultural history. Perhaps if it had been sitting within a different context (e.g. a whole range of sock monkeys) then it wouldn’t have received the reaction it did. While on one hand it’s appalling to see the casual racism / sexism / classism that abounds in the media, in politics and in the manufacture of toys and novelties, it’s likewise kinda sad when something as innocent as this is completely misread and caught in the crossfire.
The fact is the Obama monkey image is out there in a racist context already, setting up the interpretation of this toy as racist. I found this image yesterday when reading the BizarroBlog.
The key is thinking about *why* Obama is so much like a monkey, or McCain so much like potatoe… This is naive (they admit as much but never quite get beyond it) to not see historic connections and to believe that they are ’simply’ making basic visual associations is remarkably (though perhaps not surprisingly) ignorant. It has been said that one of the great myths of America is about forgetting the past — probably this isn’t only an American tendency, certainly Canada suffers from it.
The result is this kind of affront (the affront of white privilege?) where the response is: “can’t we all just be nice to one another?”
While I’m not up on the visual history of the representation African Americans, it seems likely that the reason that the association is so fitting is because we have seen this before. We have already seen the negro-monkey and it plays on our memory.
Elanor and pharmacopaeia, I defy you to find a single African American who doesn’t find this doll outrageously racist and offensive.
This doll is “innocent” only insofar as the history of whites dehumanizing blacks in America (esp. by simian references) can be ignored.
Breck - I am biracial. My father is black and my mother is white. I still think it’s cute, and I’m a little sad I’m not able to purchase one.
Elanor - Well, I stand corrected, I guess. My wife, too, is biracial, and we both found this doll appalling. Plurality proves once again to be fractal in nature.
I’m glad that the manufacturers have ceased production, and hope that they’ve learned something about the visual language they were working in (naively, if we’re to take them at their word).
Oh. My. God.
I’m always lurking on this site, and I never post, but I really can’t keep my mouth shut this time.
Are we at such a place in our history that we really have no memory of what has taken place prior to our generation??
Do the folks here, or the ones creating this toy REALLY not remember all of the comparisons of black people to monkeys, in artwork, film, and commercials? Are we at a point of collective amnesia where we cannot remember even the weapons that have been used against us for the majority of our history in this country?
I defy you to google “monkey” and the “N-word” together and see what is returned. Maybe then you’ll have an idea of why this representation of Obama as a monkey is not so cute.
This is a complex one. Without fully discounting the possibility that the conception of this item was somehow racially influenced, I have to point out that peoples’ immediate interpretation of it might be just as/more/the racist thing.
I draw your attention to http://www.jcnot4me.com/Items/spoofs/the_bush_monkey.htm where Bush is associated with a monkey.
Bush may have been compared to a monkey because someone perceived him as dumb. Obama may have been compared to a monkey because he was black. But I think that the Bush-Monkey comparison shows people draw lots of parallels to animals, in fact especially monkeys, for a myriad of reasons, and it may not necessarily be racist…
White people will not understand why the referance to Monkies Apes and Gorillas are offensive to African Americans, the same white people can’t understand why hanging nooses and burning crosses are offensive either . This country needs a honest conversation on race.
I want one so bad it hurts…
Black people will never understand why this is so funny… it looks just like him… what a hoot.
Get over it… so what if you all look like monkeys… it how you act that counts… you know, like monkeys…
Speechless. Although I am impressed that people like you John, are even capable of using a computer. I can’t comment any further on that without the use of expletives.
The Obama Sock Monkey is extremely offensive and painful. I am glad they took it down and I hope the creator of this feels like an a**hole. What ignorance. How sad.
For some levity, I’ll offer this “Pat the Politician” (pull & poke parody) that some friends of ours designed, in bipartisan splendor…
http://www.amazon.com/Pat-Politician-Political-Pull-Parody/dp/0974889105
And for folks like John’s comments, try AntiRacistParent.com, a great site for ‘getting up to speed’ on the diff. between Bush & Obama when portrayed as a chimp.
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[...] works or, as I prefer to say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease (you haven’t forgotten the Obama sock monkey and the sex target yet, have you?). The commercial below was set to run in the U.K. for five [...]
[...] The evolving controversy over the Obama Sock Monkey toy led us to make a few updates on our post. If you didn’t notice, the company making the toy aggressively revoked it’s apology and we’re pretty sure they’re still selling it. Check it out here. [...]