Racism: Sadly, it’s still with us

I was watching the “Today Show” recently when a story came up that had me sitting up. It was a story about a TV advertisement for Cheerios breakfast cereal. The ad was about a little girl asking her mommy if the cereal was good for daddy’s heart. He was napping on the couch. Mom said that yes it was, and dad wakes up from his nap covered in Cheerios. End of story.

Well, not really.

It caused an uproar on YouTube. Why? Well, it’s hard to believe, but it was due to the family’s racial makeup. Mommy was white, daddy was black and the child a little of both. It set off a firestorm of racially charged, bigoted hate emails and sickening comments on the YouTube sight. So much so that the company disabled the comments feature and pulled the remainder off the Internet. The ad continues to run on TV.

This is proof that racism is still very alive and well in the 21st century, a sad fact that stunned many including myself. What to do about it? Racism, like all prejudices, is a learned behavior. It must be taught, a dark teaching that should have been eradicated ages ago. Yet it still rears up as it did when this advert popped up on TV and the Internet. Outrage was felt all over about this. I felt outrage wasn’t the way to go.

I have an idea, one that has been going through my mind while trying to write this. We need to take a lesson or two from Mel Brooks, who took some of the most hated people in history, concepts of bigotry and prejudice and laughed at it all. He rendered them all pointless, powerless, useless and showed the entire world just how small they really are with comedy.

His recount of the “History of the World” put Hitler on ice. He took a hated word of racial ignorance and made it a comedic punch line in “Blazing Saddles.” He took the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition and turned it into a song and dance number in his movie “History of the World Part 1.” That’s is my favorite scene in the entire movie.

Brooks pokes fun of and laughing at those evils that plagued our human race and exposing them all for what they truly are — a joke. It’s ignorance practiced by small-minded morons shrinking their false power down and forcing them to crawl back under their rocks in shame. And all with a belly laugh. Maybe this is the way to go on this latest incident.

Prejudice, bigotry and racism feed on hatred, all hatred. It grows with each bite to loom over all. It gains power from it. But it shrinks when laughed at. Shrivels with every chuckle and guffaw. It hides when those who practice it are exposed for their true selves, which is small, simple-minded, beady-eyed fools.

Brooks saw this many years ago and acted upon it. Yeah, humor instead of outrage. Bigots and racists feed on that outrage. Laughter sounds much better. Starve them of the fuel they need to grow like a cancer. Let’s laugh them all out of existence.

So I am just going to giggle at the absurdity of the hatred directed toward that TV ad, laugh in the face of bigotry, guffaw at the foolishness of racism and prejudice. Let’s laugh them out of existence, or at least try to. Then I’m going to slap in Mel Brook’s “History of the World Part 1” and laugh with a true master.

Anyone for hot buttered popcorn?

Wasilla resident Daniel D. Grota retired from the U.S. Army after more than 21 years of service.