Now don't get your discrimination-sensitive panties in a wad -- Means happens to be a humor writer with one sweet rsum. As an undergrad, he contributed humor columns and comic strips to The Dartmouth. After graduating from the College and obtaining his master's degree at King's College, Cambridge, Means has written for The Onion, Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" and, perhaps most notably, "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart." He also draws cartoons for The New Yorker. In 2006 Means won an Emmy for his writing on "The Daily Show," and he'll return to that gig now that the strike has ended. Case in point: He's one badass jokester.
Keeping all that past experience in mind, the satirical tone of "A Practical Guide to Racism" should be obvious. I had high expectations for this lampoon of both racist thought and high academia and with jaw dropping laughs on every page, those expectations were impressively met.
Here's the necessary disclaimer: This humor isn't for everyone. Just because I enjoy borderline-offensive satire doesn't mean my more, uh, "sensitive" peers will get the giggles as well. But "A Practical Guide" does more than just poke fun at racial stereotypes -- it effectively condemns the concept of racism into the realm of absurdity. In case this isn't apparent on every page, Means drives home his overarching sentiment by including a chapter on "Merpeople" (y'know, like Mermaids) right alongside chapters on "Blacks," "Hispanics" and "Arabs."
In an e-mail, he explained the unexpected Mer-chapter: "The point of the Merpeople chapter was really so that people would get the overall joke of the book from the table of contents. Not to be too heavy-handed about it, but that chapter is in there to point out that hating Mermen and Mermaids and believing those stupid, hateful stereotypes about them, makes just as much sense as hating all blacks, Jews, or Asians."
Now I'm no expert on racial epithets or discriminatory stereotypes, but to my knowledge, Means doesn't leave much out. Simply put, this book is not for the faint of heart -- it gets pretty down and dirty as far as mean things you can say about certain races. In order to cover even the most offensive racial stereotyping, Means did a lot of research in preparation. He dove into the work of academic racists such as Josiah Nott and Lothrop Stoddard, who notoriously used their own warped science to "prove" that non-whites are inherently inferior to their paler counterparts.
"Let's just say my internet browsing history for the last year or so would raise some serious eyebrows," Means said.
The book's tone strongly echoes the type of humor found in the national newspaper parody the Onion, which Means has written for in the past. Also, it's important to note that "A Practical Guide" is written by Means "in character" as a haughty "Ethnography" professor named C.H. Dalton, who Means said "might be a distant relative of T. Herman Zweibel, the Onion's fictional, cantankerous editor-in-chief."
Writing with Dalton's voice allowed Means to parody high academia in addition to his more overt satire of racism. Means' time spent at Cambridge prepared him for that aspect of the book. "[Grad school] definitely gave me an appreciation for the absurdity of academia, as well as some experience with blowhard professors like Dalton, which is part of why I enjoyed creating that character so much," he said.
Means expected some backlash from readers who found the book offensive -- but the opposite has turned out to be true. "Most of the negative feedback I've gotten has been from people who don't think it's offensive enough, which is a little creepy," he said. He explained that the book is more about racist jokes, rather than adding new ones to the slew that already exist. Cheap humor this is not, and anyone expecting jokes along the lines of "South Park" or "Mind of Mencia" will be disappointed.
Since the writers' strike began on Nov. 5, Means has been promoting his book and writing freelance for magazines and websites. He admitted that watching "The Daily Show" return to the airwaves (sans writing team, of course) was tough, but since the Writers Guild of America finally struck a strike-ending settlement, he'll be back at the writers' table soon enough. Until then, Dartmouth can claim that one of its most noteworthy alums is out peddling racist humor to those who can find it absurd -- and hilarious.
