Bill Donohue's "Gook Joke" [VIDEO]

Posted by Evan Derkacz at 10:50 PM on February 14, 2007.

The Catholic League's Bill Donohue is typical. Just your garden variety angry blowhard who spies hatred at every turn. He'd be someone to pity were he not able to actually function as a commentator in the media. Were he not able to inspire a NY Times article attacking low-level staffers, causing them to eventually quit from the hatred and anger he unleashed.

Well, if his Jews control Hollywood crap doesn't sink his reputation as a legitimate commentator -- as a legitimate anything -- the embarrassingly sad confrontation in the video to the right should do the trick.

A bit of background. In a comedy bit at halftime of a Columbia U. football game, Andy Hao joked that "'Fordham tuition [is] going down like an altar boy." This was newsy at the time due to the rampant sexual abuse and cover up in the Catholic Church.

Donohue, who has a history of forgiving bigots so long as they're rightwingers, took offense and launched into the pathetic analogy that a joke at the expense of someone's BEHAVIOR is somehow equal to a racial slur.

If I'm a Catholic, I'm getting as far from this nutball as possible...

**HUGE Hat Tip to Media Matters, and Justin Cole in particular, for finding this footage.

Transcript after the jump...

DONOHUE:

Look, the kid's a phony, and he proved that to me --

DONAHUE:

Well, don't start calling names on me right out the box here.

DONOHUE:

Well, no, no, no, no. I will demonstrate -- I will demonstrate that the kid's a phony.

HAO:

All right, let's do it.

DONOHUE:

I dealt with that --

HAO:

Bring it on.

DONOHUE:

Look, just hold on here. You had your time. Look, the kid's a phony, and here's why: I dealt with him earlier today on an MSNBC show, and I said we could hypothesize that there'd be a Columbia University pingpong team made of Asians, and somebody goes out there and says, "All gooks go home." So I asked him about my gook joke. And guess what? Andy's sense of humor just collapsed. He found that offensive. You see what you are? You're a phony. You're a typical Ivy League little brat who thinks it's OK to dump on Catholics, but you don't like my gook joke. Now, what's wrong with a gook joke?

HAO:

Can I respond?

DONOHUE:

Yeah.

HAO:

All right. Here's the thing. I mean, first of all, it's completely a false analogy.

DONOHUE:

No, it isn't. You attacked my religion!

[crosstalk]

HAO: I

would like to speak.

DONAHUE:

Bill, Bill, let's behave like Catholics here.

[laughter]

HAO: I

mean, the gook joke's completely irrelevant, while the Catholic joke is a satire of an event that's going on. The gook joke's just throwing on racial slurs. I mean --

DONOHUE:

Oh, let me tell you something --

HAO: Your members and your

Catholics should be very proud of you.

[crosstalk]

DONOHUE:

No, let me tell you something. We can go right down the line. You want to talk about Asians? We can do it with Jews. We can do it with African-Americans.

DONAHUE:

All right, let's --

DONOHUE:

Everybody knows the dirty laundry in every other group. And all I'm saying is this: Civility should rule. You ought to know that. You go to a fancy school. All I'd ask for you is to show the same degree of respect for Catholics as you would for Asians. You don't like the gook jokes? I don't like them, either. So just wise up.

[…]

HAO: Behind

the argument in your joke, you're saying that if it offends somebody or here -- you call it uncivil. It shouldn't be said. But where do we draw the line? I mean, if it offends somebody, should it not be said?

DONOHUE:

Common sense and --

HAO:

How many people should it offend?

DONOHUE:

-- and common decency should know that you don't generalize from the individual to the collective. We know there's a problem in the Catholic Church. We know there's a problem in a lot of --

HAO:

Well, that --

DONOHUE:

-- demographic groups and institutions. What is wrong is when you generalize from one group to the other. I used to be a professor. I'd like to teach you, kid. You might learn something.

DONAHUE:

You know, I tell you what --

HAO:

Nothing good from you.

DONOHUE:

Oh, you'd learn a lot. You'd learn about virtue.

HAO:

For Catholics.

DONAHUE:

You know, you're being very patronizing to the young man.

HAO:

That's exactly right.

DONAHUE:

And I don't think we're going to -- you know, he doesn't have to do a perp walk here. He's not going to jail for this.

DONOHUE:

Nor should he. I never asked for that.

DONAHUE:

And you know, I think if you just relax, move on -- we can't expect our culture not to -- there's a thousand jokes that are stemming from the Catholic Church's scandal.

DONOHUE:

Let me -- let me tell you something, Phil. Phil, I watch you all the time because you're so good. You really are. I want to tell you something. Two nights ago, you had Reverend Jesse Jackson on. He's complaining and gets excised for DVDs.

DONAHUE:

True. Barbershop, the movie.

DONOHUE:

Barbershop. Exactly.

DONAHUE:

Yeah.

DONOHUE:

Now, you -- you raised the issue of censorship.

DONAHUE:

I did.

DONOHUE:

But you -- see, because you're sensitive to African-Americans more than you are to Roman Catholics, and that's certainly true of this guy.

[crosstalk]

DONAHUE:

I'll tell him when he comes in.

[crosstalk]

DONAHUE:

We'll be back in just a moment.

[…]

DONAHUE:

Your reference to oral sex and the Catholic Church scandal in your -- as the poet laureate, made people crazy. Here's what --

HAO:

Made some people laugh too.

DONAHUE:

Made -- you make --

DONOHUE:

A lot of bigots laughed at it.

[…]

DONAHUE:

How are you instructed by this, Andrew? Did you have any idea that this kind of -- you know, it is a dormitory joke, and you brought it right out there in front of Mom, Dad. You may have had some grandmothers there.

HAO: I think

it's a joke that should be out there. I mean, people have to have a sense of humor. And every joke you bring out, some people aren't going to get it.

DONOHUE:

Yeah, like

the gook joke!

[crosstalk]

DONAHUE:

If you joined us late, you're not -- you don't know what we're talking about. One of the references in -- as he announced to the whole crowd at the football game, whose tuition is going down?

HAO:

Fordham.

DONAHUE:

"Fordham's tuition is going down" --

HAO:

"Like an altar boy."

DONAHUE:

-- "like an altar boy."

DONOHUE:

What about the gook jokes? I want to know, why don't you have a sense of humor about gook jokes?

HAO: I

mean, I -- what I'm saying is --

[crosstalk]

DONOHUE:

Why don't you lighten up a little?

Tagged as: religious right, racism, bill donohue

Evan Derkacz is an AlterNet editor. He writes and edits PEEK, the blog of blogs.