Early in the era of talkies, a man named Al Jolson put on black­face and issued what is regarded by many today as one of the most shame­ful per­for­mances in American cin­ema through The Jazz Singer.

Possibly the only way for him to be more obnox­ious would be to affect a Rochester accent, eat water­melon and fried chicken, and demand to know where the white women is at. You’d think that after eighty years we’d be a lit­tle more enlight­ened about our stereo­types, would be less apt to roll in the self-​​made filth of bigotry.

Cal Grondahl must live in another dimen­sion.

Discovered via Cagle, and yes, Grondahl’s news­pa­per did in fact run this odi­ous dreck.

It’s been pointed out by many oth­ers that big­otry is a priv­i­lege of the priv­i­leged. It’s easy to be in a major­ity and snicker snot­tily about the ways of oth­ers, of those who are not as you are. But it’s par­tic­u­larly obnox­ious to see this com­ing from Utah, the state that’s the world­wide head­quar­ters of the LDS church — which church we now know was instru­men­tal in sup­port­ing Proposition 8 in California, engag­ing in polit­i­cal activ­ity to affect the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple who had the fore­sight (or the good for­tune) to not even live in Utah to begin with.

While it might be valid to argue about states’ rights, I think that argu­ment falls down when it’s clear that one state has delib­er­ately and sys­tem­at­i­cally affected the leg­is­la­tion in another, par­tic­u­larly when it con­tin­ues to try to do so.

Shame on Grondahl, shame on the Standard, and shame on the LDS church for foment­ing anti-​​gay hys­te­ria. If you’re going to play pol­i­tics, that’s fine, but have the decency to keep it to your own turf. Live how you want to, but don’t try to abro­gate the rights of oth­ers to live as they wish as well, par­tic­u­larly not by such asi­nine means as out­ra­geous, big­oted caricature.

In pro­mul­gat­ing this car­toon, you show your­selves as being less human than either Bruce or his spruce.