{"id":1474,"date":"2008-06-16T17:42:54","date_gmt":"2008-06-16T22:42:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=1474"},"modified":"2010-11-23T23:43:50","modified_gmt":"2010-11-24T04:43:50","slug":"obama-sock-monkey-toy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2008\/06\/16\/obama-sock-monkey-toy\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Sock Monkey Toy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth, over at Blog of Stench<\/a> (and now a regular Soc Images blogger), brought our attention to a New York Magazine<\/em> article<\/a> about the Obama sock monkey doll (the company set to manufacture it has apologized and canceled production<\/a>). Here is a picture of the doll:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

From the article:<\/p>\n

We were happily cruising around the Internet yesterday when we stumbled upon a link on Andrew Sullivan\u2019s blog that gave us one of those moments Dave Chappelle joked about in Killin’ Them Softly<\/em>:<\/em><\/a> \u201cHave you ever had something happen that was so racist that you didn\u2019t even get mad? You were just like, \u2018Goddamn, that was racist<\/em>.’\u201d That\u2019s how we felt when we saw TheSockObama.com, a Website peddling an \u201cObama\u201d monkey doll.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The response the author got after contacting the company:<\/p>\n

To Those with Heartfelt Queries,<\/p>\n

We chose twenty-two customer queries today that we believe merit a response. You touched us with either your concern, intelligence, humor, sensitivity, and\/or your thoughtfulness. We thank you. There are other queries we received today as well that we chose not to respond to, because of their spewing of venom and their aimlessness.<\/p>\n

We at TheSockObama Co. are saddened that some individuals have chosen to misinterpret our plush toy. It is not, nor has it ever been our objective to hurt, dismay or anger anyone. We guess there is an element of naviete on our part, in that we don’t think in terms of myths, fables, fairy tales and folklore. We simply made a casual and affectionate observation one night, and a charming association between a candidate and a toy we had when we were little. We wonder now if this might be a great opportunity to take this moment to really try and transcend still existing racial biases. We think that if we can do this together, maybe it will behoove us a nation and maybe we’ll even begin to truly communicate with one another more tenderly, more real even.<\/p>\n

This is only our introductory plush toy. If we choose to move forward with a Republican candidate, we’ll begin with an elongated and slightly lumpy, fuzzy Idaho potato. Had a different Democratic candidate won the nomination, we were prepared to move forward with the cutest, fluffiest 12″ chestnut and golden-haired squirrel, with a short Farrah-like do in a brown pantsuit and call her Squirellary.<\/p>\n

In earnest folks, we’re so sorry we offended anybody.<\/p>\n

Best Regards,<\/p>\n

TheSockObama Co. www.thesockobama.com<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks, Elizabeth!<\/p>\n

NEW:<\/span><\/strong> Consider also…<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Thanks to Green Ink for pointing this out in the comments!<\/p>\n

WOW, AN UPDATE:<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 Click here<\/a> to see the TheSockObama Co. aggressively, and I mean aggressively,\u00a0revoke the conciliatory words they offered in apology (thanks to Breck C. for the tip!).\u00a0 Some highlights:<\/p>\n

We at TheSockObama Co. have some questions to pose. What’s really going on in America? In the good ol’ fashion spirit of entrepreneurialism ; free enterprise has been censored, and TheSockObama politically plush toy has been discriminated against in the marketplace of the United States of America…<\/p>\n

Double standards appear to be a common thread here. It’s okay for there to be hundreds of thousands of Google sites containing references to our current president’s resemblance to a chimpanzee. However, it’s not okay to make that same association regarding our possible next president. Isn’t this the very definition of hypocrisy?<\/p>\n

TheSockObama is no longer scheduled to go into mass production… Have the bullies won here?<\/p>\n

…the blogging dens of resistance quickly began their fury of emails. An electronic battery of fiery darts flowed swiftly but silently through the veins of technology. Feverish fingers frantically clicking coast to coast, crashing and burning our tragically naive – yet sparkling website. A steady stream of repetitive verbal eloquence graced our Customer service inbox with tasty tidbits like, eff-ewe and every other colorul expletive you could possibly imagine. We thought we had heard it all. Hey thanks. This is America, right?<\/p>\n

…With the number of Customers we’ve had to disappoint in our first week of business; are we saying it’s okay to take something out of the marketplace that other people want to buy? Are we now censoring one another’s liberty as Americans to freely purchase goods and services on our own terms? Is this the kind of America we want?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Lisa analyzed their “anti-apology” and what it means for U.S. race relations\u00a0over at the Huffington Post<\/a>.\u00a0 Check it out.<\/p>\n

Also, it appears they are still selling the sock monkey, now at another website<\/a>.\u00a0 The website has exactly the same design as the original one<\/a>.<\/p>\n

See our follow up to this post here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Elizabeth, over at Blog of Stench (and now a regular Soc Images blogger), brought our attention to a New York Magazine article about the Obama sock monkey doll (the company set to manufacture it has apologized and canceled production). Here is a picture of the doll: From the article: We were happily cruising around the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":50,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,279,227,256,85,238,1711,285,1760],"class_list":["post-1474","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-objectification","tag-commodification","tag-humor","tag-politics","tag-election-2008","tag-toysgames","tag-raceethnicity","tag-raceethnicity-blacksafricans"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/50"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1474"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29499,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1474\/revisions\/29499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1474"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1474"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1474"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}