And don’t try to tell me it was all just a joke; you can’t hide your ignornance through that tired trick.

A. Throw a watermelon into the air and it comes down squash!

The watermelon attains an altitude of 306.25 feet and, 5 seconds after Condoleeza tossed it, impacts the pavement at 140 feet per second.

That is all.

It’s interesting—I doubt my high-school aged American kids are aware of the racist connotations of watermelon either. On the one hand, many of these are disappearing from public consciousness (and that’s a good thing). On the other hand, there’s an expectation that everyone should somehow be exquisitely sensitive to all these potential land-mines and that ignorance is an unlikely explanation for any miscue.

Condoleez[z]a is a name typically associated with black women.

Is that true? I only know of one black woman, or person of any kind, named Condoleezza, and since her mother invented the name I doubt there are any others unless they’re named after her (in which case they’re probably not old enough to be women).

:-B

Anyway, what’s Malkin’s response?

As a footnote to 4 and 6, I’d like to add that with regard to identity politics in America, the patients run the asylum.

Oh crap, now they’ll bust me for disparaging Persons Of Alternative Mentation!

Gotta go.

The reference is to Condoleeza Rice, the U.S. Secretary of State who happens to be African-American, and to a stereotype that African-Americans are fond of watermelon.

That bit is not disparaging in itself, of course—there’s nothing wrong with liking watermelon—but it ties in to a bunch of other antiquated stereotypes about African-Americans (simple-minded, happiest when doing agricultural labor, etc.) that people do find offensive.

If Condoleeza had thrown a snow-globe containing pictures of Iraqi prisoners being mistreated by soldiers in the air at 20 f/s, there would have been no potential interpretation of racism.