Koontz Defends Lame Racist Humor

The flap over Dean Koontz’s “Mr. Teriyaki” jokes at a mystery writer’s luncheon last weekend spilled over from the blogosphere to the mainstream media today, as the LA Times did some legwork. Steven Barrie-Anthony reports that “Koontz blames the brouhaha on ‘some sort of an agenda,’” and dutifully records the author’s explanantion that he can’t be a racist because “I was a poor kid with a Jewish grandmother and a great-grandmother who was black, [and] I grew up in a dirt-poor family.” Koontz also describes the letters that prompted the controversy: “There’s some political incorrectness in it, but nothing mean.”

Right. “We could have a few sake and reminisce about the Bataan Death March” is absolutely not a mean thing to say to a Japanese executive, just good-humored political incorrectness.

Of course, it’s worth remembering that a joke can be racist without the joker being a racist, and it sounds like that’s a distinction worth making in this case. Lee Goldberg, the one critic of Koontz’s remarks quoted in the Times, has already written a clarification to the paper: “I think he showed poor judgement writing those ‘Mr. Teriyaki’ letters and then sharing them with an audience. He made a mistake. That doesn’t make him a racist and it’s unfair to accuse him of being one because of it.” Tod Goldberg concurs, “I don’t think he’s a racist. What I do think is that his speech was boorish, insensitive and not funny.”

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