Calling it "a little gross" to make a spectacle of a lower-income black man talking about a horrible crime, Atlantic Wire blogger Connor Simpson excoriates the Internet's instant meme-ification of Cleveland kidnapping hero Charles Ramsey.
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No one is saying that Charles Ramsey isn't worthy of the "hero" mantle. He helped save three women who were held captive — brutally — in his Cleveland neighborhood for over a decade. But the Internet's instant meme-ification of this man — a lower-income black man talking about a horrible crime, played on repeat at the expense of stereotypes and with the blinders fully up about the truth — it's all a little gross, no?
Ramsey's interview with ABC's Cleveland affiliate is already a thing of Internet legend, not a day after it aired live on television. "You got to have some big testicles to pull this off, bro, because we see this dude every day. I mean every day," Ramsey told a WEWS reporter at the scene Monday night. "I barbecue with this dude. We eat ribs and what not and listen to salsa music. Know where I'm coming from?" Our Adam Clark Estes predicted it: "This man's going to be an Internet meme for sure," he wrote.
And Internet meme he is. A second interview, with the local Fox affiliate, is making the rounds today. The name Charles Ramsey has been trending on Twitter all day. There are Vines of his expressive face being passed around. There are thumbs-up GIFs. And, of course, there are so many awful autotune mixes of the first interview already, because some people still find that funny.
Read Connor Simpson's entire blog entry at the Atlantic Wire.
The Root aims to foster and advance conversations about issues relevant to the black Diaspora by presenting a variety of opinions from all perspectives, whether or not those opinions are shared by our editorial staff.
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