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I'm with Lance and Peter.
This is in bad taste because the butt of the joke is the poor and powerless, who are being mocked as ignorant and resistant to what *we all know* is actually good for them (*connotes sarcasm). The New Yorker’s satire was making fun of the bigots, not the marginalized and stereotyped (Muslims and black people). Stuff White People Like is making fun of the racially privileged. That is the difference, the BIG difference.

Besides, obviously, you can be funny and insensitive or a jerk at the same time.

Although the loss of the corner store is not the real harm of gentrification for all of the reasons already highlighted, the real harm is much worse; it is the loss of your home. The poor are shoved out of gentrifying neighborhoods, which they can longer afford because either (a) they are renting and rent spikes when the neighborhood becomes desirable or (b) they own and can no longer afford the property taxes on their now valuable homes--which have often been owned by a family for generations. They get shoved out to the now suburbs where they are, again, without good mass transit. They should be worried.

by Micky on Dec 29, 2010 1:16 pm • link • report