The Stupid 365 Project, Day 81: The KKK
December 22nd, 2010
No, not the Ku Klux Klan. The Kardashians’ Kristmas Kard.
For those of you who are not yet fully basking in the warm glow of the holiday spirit, I offer you this tender artifact from the family that’s famous for being famous, the Kardashians.
Here’s what I’d like you to do for me: Tell me what this card is supposed to tell us about the family. Or about Christmas. Or about anything. To me, it looks like either something sent out by a plastic surgeon — “Guess the ages of these people and win a face that looks like it came out of a jar” — or some cheeseball Rodeo Drive fashion designer (Bijan, maybe) trying to make the point that black is the new white, and vice versa.
What it says to me, right off the top, is: There are a lot of us and we’re richer than you and we’re so used to it that it doesn’t even make us happy and happiness isn’t cool anyway and let’s not get vulgar with this Christmas thing, that little spot of green is plenty, down on the one who mysteriously seems to be levitating right next to Butch Patrick or whoever played Eddie Munster, and won’t he be a delight at, say, thirteen?
One would like to think that they were all, just before the flash went off, laughing and joking and hugging each other and, in general, rejoicing in their extravagant blessings in a world where so many are destitute and cold and hungry and frightened and in pain day and night. But I doubt it.
Just to pretend to be fair for a moment, it’s possible that each of them awakes in the morning with a burning desire to help the children of the world. But this is the image they choose to project of themselves to celebrate the season of generosity and love, and I have to say that it looks to me like you could put all of them together into a big cauldron, boil them into a thick liquid, process it to a puree, and pour it through a filter designed to strain out the milk of human kindness, and you wouldn’t wind up with enough to give hiccups to a baby squirrel.
And if they really need to use the season of goodwill to celebrate their goodwill toward themselves and each other and their spiral stairway, couldn’t they at least find a way to do it that wouldn’t send Ebenezer Scrooge scurrying back to his money box?
This is exactly the kind of over-entitled, self-absorbed, joyless flaunting of purely material values that makes some impoverished Muslims want to bomb us. And makes me wish that impoverished Muslims would choose their targets better.
Oh, and Merry Christmas.
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13 Responses to “The Stupid 365 Project, Day 81: The KKK” -
Sylvia Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 12:06 pm
This is a real family? I presumed it was a promo for a soap opera. They all have daggers in their eyes.
Maybe they really hate the photographers?
(oddly, my wordver is society nuffice – that doesn’t seem very random to me!)
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 12:32 pm
It’s a family in the sense that they share (most of them, anyway) some genetic material. Otherwise, I’d say it’s not so much a family as a self-love collective. And congratulations on living somewhere that’s free of American “reality television,” the dying genre from the civilization that produced jazz, blues, and early rock and roll. How the mighty have fallen.
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Beth Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 12:52 pm
The little guy does deserve pity. How much real, unstructured, childish joy is he likely to experience? I hope he is blessed with nannies who will listen to his stories and find a place to hang his drawings. The women in the family look as if they only use refrigerators for sleeping.
The Kardashians and Paris Hilton belong to that subset of society who have never heard the word “no”. OJ Simpson stopped hearing it as soon as the college football scouts began pandering to him. We know where that went.
Eventually that part of the population who gets most of their information from the newspapers and magazines at the supermarket checkout will tire of the Kardashians. There is a publicist waiting in the wings with the new best thing.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 1:07 pm
YAAAAYYYYYYY, BETH!!!!!! Funniest line of the week, including all of mine. Why didn’t I think of that? “The women of the family look as if they only use refrigerators for sleeping.”
I’m sure the kid’s nannies dress in black and read back issues of Barbed Wire Baby to him at bedtime. Kid hasn’t got a chance. It never fails to amaze me how deeply some people can be shallow.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Oh, and speaking of OJ, let’s not forget that it’s thanks to him we ever heard the name Kardashian, since the now-deceased father of these black-clad honeypots was “best friend” Robert K.
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Lil Gluckstern Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 2:44 pm
I think my problem is that I remember jazz, the birth of rock and roll, when OJ was a positive thought, and sports were about games instead of obscene financial lotteries. I have tried to ascertain just what a Kardashian was, and I’m not sure I know now. Now, Beth, were you referring to their emotional state or their lack of cooking skill, or am I thick headed today? Btw, I loved your walk through Ireland yesterday. I am horrified that power, money and fame seem to be trumping good will, and good works. It shouldn’t take a disaster for us to show our good sides. I don’t watch reality shows because I think they are insulting to us. There is very little real about them. And a Happy Christmas to all.
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Gary Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 5:11 pm
I was quite sure that photo was a promo for the new Munsters movie.
You mean that’s a real photo of a real family?
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Beth Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 5:46 pm
Lil, as Tim mentioned, Robert Kardashian was a good friend of OJ Simpson and he was, briefly, one of his lawyers.
The Kardashian sisters, their faces Botoxed into submission, look frozen. No stray smile or frown would dare appear. They wear black a lot. Clearly they don’t eat. Vampire came to mind.
I’m glad you liked the Ireland story. That was a million years ago.
Thanks, Tim. I’m glad you liked the bit about the refrigerator.
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Debbi Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 7:01 pm
The words “zombie apocalypse” somehow come to mind.
And did they tell the black man he had to go to the back?
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Laren Bright Says:
December 22nd, 2010 at 9:39 pm
Now, Tim — The meaning of this card is that, if Jesus didn’t have to be born in a barn, then he would probably have preferred to be born in a house like this one. And then we’d be celebrating without green & red and can get back to good old black & white and be singing I’m dreaming of a black & white Christmas, which the people in Australia could also now sing, sine they rarely have snow in the middle of their summer.
Which brings me to wonder how Santa’s sleigh gets around in Australia when he makes his run on Christmas eve. Maybe he gets the Kardashians’ chauffeur to drive him around. Maybe that’s why they’re all just standing there — because their chauffeur hasn’t gotten back yet.
It’s possible.
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Robb Royer Says:
December 23rd, 2010 at 7:59 am
Debbi… the black man (Odom) wasn’t even there. He was photoshopped in. That’s how genuine this photo is.
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Timothy Hallinan Says:
December 23rd, 2010 at 9:49 am
Hi, one and all. Well, I apologize for this gobsmack of gloom at what’s supposed to be the most cheerful time of the year. I have a bunch of very prominent buttons and this photo (and family) push almost all of them.
Lil, congratulations to you for not watching reality TV. I don’t, either, except for the occasional cooking show and (when I hit it channel-surfing) America’s Next Top Model, because, umm, because. But the Kardashians have become red-carpet fixtures and I find them, both individually and a family, to be grotesque. By the way, one of the “girls” in the photo is fourteen years old, and she’s already begun the dazzling transformation to trailer trash fantasy fuel. Not, shall we say, age-appropriate. And Happy holidays back at you, and to all.
Gary — “real” is such a difficult word in this context. They’re real in that they share genetic material (except for Hubby Bruce and the older, uh, girls) and they eat and breathe, etc. Maybe the problem isn’t “real.” Maybe it’s “family.”
Debbi, the black man is Lamar Odum (as Robb, to my surprise, knows), a basketball player for the LA Lakers, and the husband of KLHLOE, spelling duly noted, one of the “girls.” And, yes, the positioning could have been a bit more sensitive.
Laren, surely you jest. (Oh, that’s right – you are.) The Kardashians lending their chauffeur to someone who needs it to bring joy to the children of the world? It is to laugh. But I like it as an explanation for their expressions. Maybe Lamar gave the go-ahead. (What I’ve always wondered about Christmas in Australia is how Santa goes up those chimneys, since the houses are all upside-down. Gary>)
Robb, perhaps they were all photoshopped in. Maybe that explains the sense that each of them is standing in total solitude, like a bunch of dolls on the shelves of a toy store, each in an individual sealed plastic tube.
Once again, I apologize.
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Debbi Says:
December 23rd, 2010 at 6:46 pm
the black man (Odom) wasn’t even there. He was photoshopped in. That’s how genuine this photo is.
OMG. That’s so tasteless, it’s both awful and hilarious.
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