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

The joke's not on ?uestlove - it's a joke showing low Triumph is willing to go.

The series of magazine covers go in two directions simultaneously to illicit a shock.
True-ish -> absurd
High -> Low

The first cover is making fun of Jimmy and has *some* amount of truth to it. It's low, but pointed.

The second joke is on Higgins and it's just an insult - and plainly more absurd than the first.

The third joke is not about ?uestlove, or the hair on his head, but shows the depths Triumph is willing to go to insult someone. There's no truth to the joke , it's just showing how low Triumph will go. And a Merkin joke is low.

>It should also be noted that that my reading of the joke appears to be the reading of >all the other black people in this post. So I am not making it up. Now you can >dismiss us all as over sensitive people looking to pick a racial fight OR

>You can admit that while you are familiar with Merkins, you weren't familiar with the >black people have pubic hair on their heads joke.

I see it now - you thought Triumph was saying "That black man's head is full of pubes - and it's fake pubes to boot. HaHa."

That's even a lower joke - but *I* don't think that's what he was going for.

I guess it never occurred to me that black people's hair could be pubic hair. And I'm a Gen-Xer so I'm familiar with a lot of racism. You think that if black people's hair was pubic had - and they went bald - that they'd buy a wig made of pubic hair to replace it??? And the cover mentions"Itch-Free: the revolutionary breakthrough." So toupees for your head can itch?? Never occurred to me not even once.

So I see how it could be taken wrongly, but I didn't then.

Or maybe I'm completely wrong and it was racist joke.



Note: Smigel co-wrote "Don't Mess With The Zohan" that simultaneously had one of the only *serious* explorations of the Israel / Palestinian conflict AND doused a block of burning houses with a vat of Hummus to put the fire out. I didn't see that as racist - I saw that as absurd.