Don't hit the white ones!

Cartman's rapid ascendancy within Somali pirate society is a parody of the "mighty whitey" trope.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey

"A common trope in 18th and 19th century adventure fiction, when vast swathes of the world were being explored and properly documented by Europeans for the first time, Mighty Whitey is a displaced white European, usually of noble descent, who ends up living with native tribespeople and not only learns their ways but also becomes their greatest warrior/leader/representative."

It is funny. It's also kind of a stock liberal gag of America (esp. the military) being inherently racist.

It's of the same vain of all the comedies where the black soldiers are pushed out as unwilling cannon-fodder -- even though the truth is blacks are underrepresented in combat and blacks have never been used as cannon fodder by the US military. It's a joke based on a historical lie. And nowadays it's middle class whites (esp. from the Midwest and South) who volunteer for the more dangerous combat duty, blacks are more likely to seek out support staff duty.

Regardless, it was a funny bit. Faux-racism is funny.

As for the Mighty Whitey trope -- that's truth in fiction. Cortez defeated the Aztec with, what, a few hundred Spaniards?

A more recent example was Afghanistan. US Special Forces pulled a Cortez there. A small of Special Forces and CIA moved in, made alliances with local tribes and led them to take over the country. Same thing Cortez did to the Aztecs. And Cortez couldn't call for air support!

The Mighty Whitey trope is supposed to be some racist white fantasy, but it really did happen on more than a few occasions.

It's also kind of a stock liberal gag of America (esp. the military) being inherently racist.

i think you missed the point of that gag. it wasn't about the racist military, it was (i think) a specific reference to the fact that the life of 1 american mattered so much weighed against all the shit that goes down every day in somalia. the selective killing of the somalian pirates was an obvious reference to the snipers killing the 3 somalian pirates.

The Mighty Whitey trope is supposed to be some racist white fantasy, but it really did happen on more than a few occasions.

in eastern europe during the middle ages t was the 'might german.' in the ancient near east it was the 'might macedonian.' it seems a general tendency when advanced peoples come into contact with less advanced ones.

Cortez defeated the Aztec with, what, a few hundred Spaniards?

And a few sextillion virions. You could say the spanish started laboring away on their victory centuries or millennia earlier when they started croaking of smallpox. The actual expedition was the tip of an iceberg; the real work was done by people whose contribution was to lie down and die young, ages before the gun was even invented. Evolution is the great ironist: absolutely no matter what fix you get into, evolution is guaranteed to have the perfect, 100% effective solution to your problem - only, not for you, never for you personally.

yeah, the aztecs were not a very relevant example. i didn't even mention that because it was so weak. european adventurers in africa or asian courts were qualitatively different.

"i think you missed the point of that gag. it wasn't about the racist military, it was (i think) a specific reference to the fact that the life of 1 american mattered so much weighed against all the shit that goes down every day in somalia. the selective killing of the somalian pirates was an obvious reference to the snipers killing the 3 somalian pirates."

Well, I'm pretty sure I got the Somali angle, it was a funny timely gag. But the gag doesn't work nearly as well if, instead of Somalis, it's a gang of Italians or Brits, right? The gag also doesn't work as well if the Navy commander isn't white (one of the shooters is black, but the commander who says,"Don't shoot the white ones." and the guy who says, "Clear." are both white.)

And it's not just due to the timeliness. The base premise behind the gag is American (read white) indifference to the suffering of the black and brown peoples of the world. The gag taps into that widely held belief.

Here's a gag I've seen done several times in various forms (stand-ups, sketch shows, etc). A news crew is covering some tragedy in a minority community -- like a tornado has ripped through a poor black neighborhood and killed dozens -- when suddenly the news anchor interrupts with, "We interrupt to bring you breaking news -- somewhere a cute white girl is missing!" And all the news crews scramble into their vans and race off leaving the poor destitute blacks blinking with disbelief.

The gag works because of the implied racism of America, right? It's not funny to say "somewhere a cute Asian girl is missing" or "somewhere a hispanic boy fell down a well."

I'm not complaining, just analyzing the humor and why I think it works.

But the gag doesn't work nearly as well if, instead of Somalis, it's a gang of Italians or Brits, right?

it would have been fine if they were albanians with accents too. but i'm enough of a post modernist to grant you your interpretation as equally valid. just don't pretend it's the only one. you see what you see when it comes to SP humor.

Here's a wiki link to maybe the mother of all whitey tropes, the story of English adventurer James Brooke, who became the white raja of Sarawak:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Brooke

George MacDonald Fraser's excellent and hilariously entertaining Flashman series of novels describe dozens of other historical figures to whom the mighty whitey trope would also be applicable.