Fox & Friends and Malkin's Attack On Crayola Was Stupid But ......

This rather bizaree episode on Fox and Friends is getting some play. See Fox & Friends Outraged Crayola Recognizes More Than One Skin Tone But before I get to the meat of the matter let me address what is said at the end of that article

....So why did Fox & Friends run with this story today? Searches around the internet reveal very little Crayola-related news, apart from a few articles about their new line of bubbles. But there is one other item that pops up: an April 1 post on the far-right blog The Volokh Conspiracy about the markers. It's possible that's a total coincidence. Or perhaps Fox & Friends is just picking their stupid, borderline bigoted story ideas by sifting through fringe blogs, without checking to see if the stories in question predate the Clinton administration.

The Volokh Conspiracy is not a fringe site but a very well respected legal site that has some pretty impressive people at it. It has an Libertarian edge to it but that is a valid legal point of view. This is an repected site in the legal community that is often engaged. So lets be clear on that. Further I am not sure that the viewpoints there that are often discussed can so easily fit in the way "right" vs "left" is used often.

In the Volokh Conspiracy link there is a discussion in the comments. The author of this post says in a comment:

"Some of the other descriptions on the Crayola page (to which I linked) put it well: assorted skin tones. And this avoids the implication that culture is somehow synonymous, or even closely linked, with skin color."

Later another commenter :

Assistant Village Idiot says: What Ricardo said. Whatever sells more markers. Excepting, of course, things which would be offensive or insulting — and insulting to our intelligence doesn’t count. There’s plenty of that everywhere. “Multicultural” is a good advertising buzzword, where the more accurate “multiracial,” “multiethnic,” or “assorted skin tones” just aren’t that grabby. As for EV bothering to mention it at all, why not? It’s an example of cultural acceptance of a fuzzy and pernicious concept of equating culture with color, and deserves to be skewered....

That right there gets to the core of the issue for people and I think FOX and Friends had that reaction too without thinking though it.

The right needs to be careful not to be indoctrinated by some of the "Color" politics that even the left does. For instance there is a depressing equal number of people that think LATINOS will all vote alike on all sides. A couple of years back I met a real AFRICAN American. That is he was raised in Africa but was now a Citizen. He was basically thrown out of a campus NAACP meeting for raising points that were not "black" enough. Think of the complaints against Clarence Thomas for not being really black. I could go on and on.

That being said if they called these fleshtones colors I suspect people would not have the overreaction that FOX and Friends did or Michelle Malkin that has the tendency to REALLY overreact to everything. I also get the impression that the people on that show did not really get into the art / drawing thing in school.

By the way I think these crayons are a great idea.