Of Course Tyler the Creator's Mountain Dew Ad Was Racist

So, I'm not sure how many of you have seen this Mountain Dew ad that was recently pulled that was made by Tyler the Creator. I hadn't watched it until I stumbled on this post from CNN. I tried to post a direct link to the video but since it's been pulled YouTube is doing a good job policing any uploading of it. But you can watch most of it on the CNN website.

Now I usually agree with CNN opinion articles. I'm liberal, they're liberal, so we don't disagree on that much. But I was shocked that the author of this article is trying to act like this ad is funny and not racist. He calls it a "sad, sad day when the policing of comedy gets to a point where we can't even laugh at a talking goat."

He tries to compare the humor in the ad to a Chappelle skit where Chappelle plays a blind racist who thinks he's white. The problem with this comparison is that Chappelle is calling out the racism while making fun of it. This ad by Tyler just IS racist. It doesn't lead on that it knows it's being racist. Sure some of the names are funny"(aka again pretty much racist) but having an abused woman pick out her abuser out of an all-black lineup can't be called anything but racist.

So not only is the ad racist and promote violence to women, but it's NOT FUNNY! That's almost the worst part. Had it been done with some sort of tongue-in-cheek twist (like a blind black racist who thinks he's white) then you could make the argument that it's done in humor. I can only imagine that the author was looking at this picture of Tyler the Creator while writing his article to explain how he thinks this commercial is in any way like the Chappelle skit. Thank goodness for the author of this CNN article he is black. Because if he had been a white man trying to write an article about the ad not being racist he would have probably lost his job.

The author seems to think along the lines of Tyler the Creator who claims to be "not homophobic" despite using the term "f*gg*t" just about every other word because he is friends with Frank Ocean. Just because the intention of the ad was to be funny doesn't mean it's not racist.