America is a fundamentally racist country. America is as much into mindless, unthinking racism as people generally were into mindless assaults 2,000 years ago.
Hollywood is the most racist place in America with the possible exception of the US Senate.
You get to see some of that when Priyanka Chopra gets interviewed on American TV.
So Ellen. She is gay and female and small. And so she is the make you feel good person. If you can tolerate Ellen then you have proven you are a really really tolerant person. Hillary picked Ellen as the first show after the debates. Because Ellen is gay and female and small.
But Ellen has to ask Priyanka Chopra, "Do they drink over there in India?"
Some of the most famous Bollywood songs are around drinks. There is an entire genre of songs - ghazals - that revolve entirely around drinks. Not saying that drinking is essential and wonderful and when you drink you have really arrived or anything like that. But do they drink anywhere in the world?
The point is, if you have to ask, do they drink in India, you are about to ask, do you ride elephants to school? I rode an elephant once, but not to school, and I did not even grow up in India, I grew up an Indian in Nepal: my kind are still waging a civil rights movement for basic rights for being Indian.
Do you ride elephants to school? That actually was a question Priyanka Chopra was asked when she attended high school for a few years in Flushing, Queens, of all places.
But Ellen is a candlelight compared to a dumb white guy who shall remain nameless because I really don't know his name. He goes ahead and calls Priyanka Chopra "Miss Piggy Chops, because you eat like a pig, all the time, and your last name is Chops." On live television. Prime time television.
I was dumbstruck. If Indians were into things like jihad they would call a jihad on that dumb white ass, if you have any idea how popular Priyanka Chopra is in India.
She is Bollywood royalty.
But then this is a country where 40% of the people have felt the urge to delegitimize the first black president and the Senate Majority Leader would rather burn the US constitution for good rather than let the president appoint a judge like that document says.
But it is also a country where the top paid actor right now is a black guy. Opposite whom Priyanka Chopra is starring in a movie.
She came, she saw, she conquered even as the dumb white guys of the world stayed busy asking their dumb questions, like, can I call you Miss Piggy Chops?
She has the Body Mass Index of someone who has not destroyed half her gut bacteria.
Racism is a lot of people's idea of an ice breaker. I am going to say something racist and you are going to act like you are okay with it, then I am going to be nice to you about other things. Because I need to get the big picture right first.
But if you don't put up with that first racist comment they are utterly lost, like you had suddenly dropped them in the jungles of Burma without so much as a map.
