Conductor Matthew Halls

CONDUCTOR Matthew Halls was fired from the Oregon Bach Festival when he amiably joked with a black singer in a Southern accent.

Desire to Return writes:

The woman who created this bizarre situation probably thinks of this as a defining moment of her life, the time she stood up to the evil racists. Reporting Halls to the authorities was, for her, most likely, a means of asserting personal power in an increasingly impersonal society.  Getting Halls canned might have been one of the few times in her life where she felt real efficacy.

Of course, that’s all speculation. She could just as easily be a person who has done this sort of thing repeatedly, a person addicted to the frisson of righteous indignation springing from accusing the guilty and seeing them punished. For all we know, this woman is a decorated veteran in the war to stamp out dangerous jokes.

— Comments —

Joe A. writes:

I love grits. My boys love grits.  Mrs. Joe not so much but she eats them.

We buy them in bulk so we never run out.  Does that make us racist?  What about Quaker Oats Company and Red Mill Farms?  Are they too racist?

I suspect the lunacy bubble is due to be popped.  Maybe in time for our next bowl of delicious grits with butter and a dash of Tabasco.

Laura writes:

I’m ashamed to say I like grits too.

Jane S. writes:

The black singer that Halls made the supposedly racist comment to is Reginald Mobley, a counter-tenor who performs often in the UK. Halls and Mobley are good friends and often joke about each other’s accents.

The people who fired Halls never asked Mobley what he thought about the joke.

“However, Mobley was not invited to give evidence and he says there is a deep irony in the fact the authorities appear to have assumed on his behalf that he would have objected to the joke.

“I’m the subject of a falsified story, without having the chance to have my say,” he said. ‘My voice has been taken away in a conversation about race that involved me, and technically that’s racist.'”

The white anti-racism vigilantes are the most racist people who ever lived.

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