[Jeb Stuart Thurmond]

You can tell the quality of an organization by the popularity and longevity of it's brand. The fact that McDonald's stands by its golden arches says "remember your last experience with our company? We're so certain it was a good experience that we trust our logo alone (which represents nothing except your memories of us) to sell our product."

Bad groups and organizations try to hide from people's bad memories of them with a camoflage tactic called "rebranding". Like criminals switching their clothes and getaway cars, groups escape responsibility for their past actions by changing their appearences. However, if they don't change their actions, people catch on to them, and they have to keep rebranding, over and over.

This brings us to n!ggers - oh sorry, you'd rather be called "coloreds" - and then suddenly "negros" - oh wait, now it's "black", oops, now "people of color", no wait, "African-American"....

So many rebrandings, no wonder even the best of us get confused at times:

And always changing the clothes, language and every superficial thing other than actual behavior. Business dress has not changed since July 1914. Other than a few gizmos there's nothing in your average republican's life that was not the same during the Kennedy Administration. We wore plaid and listened to country then as we do now.

And heaven help any cartoonist who tries to portray black people! Or when an actor with actual talent tries to play a black character - "blackface" is not a hate crime, it's a competetive alternative to the black actor's OPEC-style monopoly. Do we get offended by blacks straightening their hair or making their skin paler? I'd be flattered, if I cared at all.

Call us a "gringo" or "whitey" or "cracker" or "honkey" or "roundeye" or "bignose" and we're not offended. Why would we be offended by simple statements of fact? I'm not in denial about the size of my nose or the color of my skin. A brand is only as bad as it's product. "Cracker" might be mildly offensive if it refers to whip-cracking, since that s&m stuff is perverted. Though I always thought it's because our skin is the same color as wheat crackers.

And what's so offensive about "negro"? That's just spanish for "black". N!gger is just poorly-pronounced spanish for black. How can anyone be honestly offended by that? "African-American", I would think of that as a negative, why would you want to be associated with the continent that leads the world in rape, ignorance, war, genital mutilation, despotism, and did I mention rape? Hey, there's even apes over there, and for some reason you guys think you're the only humans who can't be compared to primates. I'm willing to admit that I superficially resemble an ape. Why can't blacks? Does the comparism hit too close to home?

Yes, I know Republicans have also used rebranding. What with renaming "Bush loyalist" to "maverick" and "Republican Party" to "Tea Party". But we did actual real-life changes too, for example the completely unprecedented, endlessly newsworthy practise of having rallies where crowds hold up signs.