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Mattel unveils Maya Angelou Barbie doll
CNN Via WCVB ^ | January 15, 2021 | National Desk Staff

Posted on 01/17/2021 4:59:32 AM PST by rightwingintelligentsia

Maya Angelou is the latest addition to Barbie's "Inspiring Women" series.

Barbie says the women of this series were risktakers who "changed rules and paved the way for generations of girls to dream bigger than ever before."

Angelou's career includes a national book award nomination for "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," her 1969 autobiography.

Dr. Angelou also received dozens of honorary doctorates, numerous awards and the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

The Angelou doll has a head wrap and a floral printed dress, and an image released by the toy company showed the figure holding a miniature version of Angelou's first autobiography.

(Excerpt) Read more at wcvb.com ...


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: barbie; mattell; mayaangelou
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1 posted on 01/17/2021 4:59:32 AM PST by rightwingintelligentsia
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

It’s a dual use doll. Turn it upside down and use it for a mop.


2 posted on 01/17/2021 5:09:58 AM PST by HighSierra5
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Err.. why not?


3 posted on 01/17/2021 5:10:10 AM PST by duckman ( Not tired of winning!)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

I didn’t know American kids needed one of those. Most American kids never heard of her and really don’t care about her.


4 posted on 01/17/2021 5:12:50 AM PST by FlingWingFlyer (You can vote your way into socialism but you have to shoot your way out of it.)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

PC is no excuse for mediocrity.


5 posted on 01/17/2021 5:19:44 AM PST by reg45 (Barack 0bama: Gone but not forgiven.)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Does she come with a bird cag


6 posted on 01/17/2021 5:35:45 AM PST by struggle
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

how about a kamala harris doll?

Knee Pads... mouth changes to an ‘O’ by pushing a button between her legs... the possibilities are endless! The very symbol of democrat female empowerment!


7 posted on 01/17/2021 5:47:17 AM PST by Samurai_Jack (Democrats are not the enemy, Republicans are not your friends. We're on our own folks!)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

The dolls speaks leftist propaganda—great way to put kids to sleep during nap-time.

“Hate whitey. Whitey is evil. Kill whitey. Forward comrades. Unity. The future. We are all in this together.”


8 posted on 01/17/2021 5:52:54 AM PST by cgbg (A kleptocracy--if they can keep it.)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

The left have curious worship practices.


9 posted on 01/17/2021 6:00:07 AM PST by lurk ( )
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To: rightwingintelligentsia
This seems like a good place to reprise a letter I wrote a long time ago when my daughter was assigned to read Angelou over her summer vacation.

I've posted this here before. Curiously, just now I went to search for it at Google (site:freerepublic.com ml/nj angelou), which I've successfully done previously, but this time Google didn't find it.

Mr. August xxxxxxxx, Principal
xxxxxxxxxx Junior High School
xxxxxxxx, NJ

Dear Gus,

First, thank you for the invitation to the "brown bag" luncheon on Thursday, October 21. I look forward to attending.

I would like to restate my objection here to the assignment of Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings as mandatory reading for my daughter (and others in 9-H) this past summer. I choose to do this in writing because it affords me an opportunity to organize my thoughts and it will allow you to consider what I say before we meet. I would hope that this can be a topic for discussion next week.

xxxxxxx had to read Angelou's book along with Cather's My Antonia; and she selected Twain's Prince and the Pauper from a list of titles as her third summer reading book. No objective educated person would include Angelou with Twain and Cather on a list of books which ninth graders should be assigned, except perhaps if it were in connection with a political science course. But this was not for political science. It was for English.

After we spoke at Open House, I had an opportunity to discuss this with Mrs. xxxxxxx whom you indicated was responsible for the summer reading selections. She told me how widely respected Angelou was and did not seem interested in my objections.

My objections did not grow out of dislike for the poem Angelou read at the Presidential inauguration, though I admit to being turned off by her praise of every ethnic group save those which were primarily responsible for building this country and its institutions. Rather the objections arise from reading selections from her book on three pairs of facing pages I opened to at random.

This is a book of black hate. Read the passages with me and see if you do not agree. (Page references are to the Bantam Books paperback edition of 1971.)

I laughed, too, but not at the hateful jokes made on my people. I laughed because, except that she was white, the big movie star [Kay Francis] looked just like my mother. Except that she lived in a big mansion with a thousand servants, she lived just like my mother. And it was funny to think of the whitefolks' not knowing that the woman they were adoring could be my mother's twin, except that she was white and my mother was prettier. Much prettier. [p. 99]
" ... jokes made on ... " This is English? But the substance is more important. Only a bitter, ignorant person would assume that a person's appearance was the key to being a movie star. Talent probably has something to do with it, as well as persistence, and the other things that bring success in any field. "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings." This is from material I read and remember from my high school days, but the Angelous of the world have a different message which is not the one we should be teaching our children. We also read about the seven deadly sins. As I remember it, envy was one of them. Angelou's logic is not very good either. If one person looks like another to the point of being a virtual twin then it does not make sense to describe one of the two as "prettier; much prettier." Does it? Also, I looked up "whitefolk" in my Webster's Ninth and did not find it. I think I know what it means though but I am not sure about the s' that follows. Will my daughter learn to write like this in her English class?
Then I wished that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner had killed all whitefolks in their beds and that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that Harriet Tubman had been killed by that blow on her head and Christopher Columbus had drowned in the Santa Maria. [p. 152]
Nice! These were Angelou's thoughts while listening to a Commencement address at her high school graduation ceremony.
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power. [p. 231]
I have never heard any white male refer to a black female as a "Ho." But, of course it would be indelicate of Angelou to look to her own people for the causes of, and the solutions to, their problems. Maybe some of the problems that black females face are due to being seduced and abandoned by black males. Does this have to do with a lack of power? I think not. Blacks had much less economic and political power 50 years ago but as a group they had a strong family structure. Now after listening to the Angelous their collective family structure is in disarray. (It is cute, too, that the egalitarian Angelou chooses to capitalize black but not white.)

I am sorry I have gone on for so long. But I find these excerpts so absurd that I guess I get carried away. I wonder if a white woman brought a similar manuscript to Random House (the original publisher) whether they have spent more than half an hour with it. I doubt it.

What was the point of assigning this autobiography? Was it to demonstrate the artful use of the English language? Was it to serve as an example to my daughter of how to confront the problems she might face later in her own life? Or was it to bring Political Correctness to xxxxxxxxxx?

Alas, I know the answer. And as citizen, father, and taxpayer, I do not like it. I ask you to review the titles that students at xxxxxxxxxx are required to read with Mrs. xxxxxxx, and ask her to remove those that are there for political rather than literary reasons.

Very truly yours,
ML/NJ


10 posted on 01/17/2021 6:04:58 AM PST by ml/nj
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To: rightwingintelligentsia
If it's really a "Barbie" doll, then all the Barbie doll clothes will fit.

Malibu Angelou. /smirk

11 posted on 01/17/2021 6:12:06 AM PST by Salman (It's not a "slippery slope" if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: ml/nj

What was the upshot to your letter?

Were you called a racist hater?


12 posted on 01/17/2021 6:13:01 AM PST by Bon of Babble (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, Baby!)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Big market for
America and White Hater f Black lesbo doll .

Dont buy these wackos stock .


13 posted on 01/17/2021 6:33:44 AM PST by ncalburt (Gop DC Globalist )
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

One major difference; the doll’s writing will be far better.


14 posted on 01/17/2021 6:40:15 AM PST by jdsteel ("A Republic, Madam, if you can keep it." Sorry Ben, looks like we blew it.)
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To: Bon of Babble
What was the upshot to your letter?

No much as I recall. But Angelou wasn't assigned to the kids again, at least while I was still paying attention.

ML/NJ

15 posted on 01/17/2021 6:40:19 AM PST by ml/nj
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To: ml/nj; rightwingintelligentsia
DAUGHTER:. Mommy, I don't want this Barbie, it looks old and ugly!

MOTHER: Now, sweetie, don't say that, it is her inspirational writing that is beautiful! Let me read you some...here is a quote from one of her wonderful books, that I think all children should read. Here is what she said in that book:

(Mother opens 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings' and begins reading) "...Then I wished that Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner had killed all whitefolks in their beds and that Abraham Lincoln had been assassinated before the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, and that Harriet Tubman had been killed by that blow on her head and Christopher Columbus had drowned in the Santa Maria..."

DAUGHTER: But Mommy, aren't we "whitefolks"? What does she want Abraham Lincoln to be "assassinated"? Wasn't he a good person? What is "assassinated"? Why does she want Christopher Columbus to drown?

MOTHER: It's complicated. See, you and I are bad people, and we need to pay for what people did many years ago, and we need to keep paying and paying. So, I am a bad and evil person and deserve to be killed in my bed for what those people did centuries ago, and you do too...especially you...because of the color of our skin! (smiles jokingly at her daughter and makes a funny face). But important people, very important people like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama think she is the most inspirational poetry writer there is! And they want you to think that too, which is why you are going to read her book next year, even though you will only be in fourth grade!

DAUGHTER: Mommy, if they want to kill us because we of the color of our skin, isn't that racist? Why do I have to read a racist book?

MOTHER: Oh, Darling, don't worry. Angela Mayou isn't racist because she said that. First, she is an 'artist', so she can say anything she likes, and it is "art" and "poetry". But more importantly, it is only racist if you and I say we want someone to die because of their skin color. We ARE inherently racist. But black people can't be racist, that's a rule. So they can say they want us to have a bullet shot into our head while we watch a play, be hit over the head and have our skull broken and we die, or be downed in the deep ocean, all because we are white people, and that is NOT racist.

MOTHER: I know. But I'll teach you. You teachers will teach you. Your history books will teach you. The people you see on television in movies, news, and sitcoms will teach you, even your government will teach you. But you know what is best of all? Once you understand things the right way, your classmates will teach you, and you will even be able to teach yourself to think the right way! Isn't that exciting?


16 posted on 01/17/2021 6:59:26 AM PST by rlmorel ("I’d rather enjoy a risky freedom than a safe servitude." Robby Dinero, USMC Veteran, Gym Owner)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

So will Mattel be putting out other dolls like their civil rights collection, their BLM and Antifa series, etc, etc, and phase out white privileged Barbie and Ken ? Just can’t wait. How about they put out a butt ugly Liberal Man hating, lesbian Barbie and transgendered And confused Ken?


17 posted on 01/17/2021 7:04:31 AM PST by Captain Peter Blood (https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3804407/posts?q=1&;page=61)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Maya was never that anorexic.


18 posted on 01/17/2021 7:07:21 AM PST by bgill (.)
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

“Inspiring Women”

I’m betting that series will not include Margaret Thatcher, Condeleeza Rice or Phyllis Schlafly.


19 posted on 01/17/2021 7:08:49 AM PST by the OlLine Rebel (Common sense is an uncommon virtue./Federal-run medical care is as good as state-run DMVs. I )
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To: rightwingintelligentsia

Mattel obviously knew the election fix was in. How many companies’ plans would have been foiled if Trump had a second term?


20 posted on 01/17/2021 7:25:56 AM PST by MikeyB806
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