The Racist Michelle Obama Photo And Why You’re Better Off Hangin’ With Internet Pervs

November 24th, 2009 | 4 comments | Posted by Jen

Google’s taken out ads on its own site to explain why, when you do a Google Images search of “Michelle Obama,” one of the first pictures you pull up is a disgustingly racist one depicting FLOTUS as a monkey.

Here’s a screengrab of both the photo and Google’s “Offensive Search Results” ad-response:

Screen shot 2009-11-24 at 7.21.19 AM

Click on the ad, and you get this explanation for the image:

Screen shot 2009-11-24 at 12.17.25 PM

Although Google’s removed the image before on grounds that the host site was serving malware to its visitors, it’s since been re-posted on another site and doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, despite much public objection and media attention. And therein lies both the horror and the beauty of the internet.

Funny thing is, the racist Michelle Obama image comes up first in results in a Moderate SafeSearch–the “recommended” setting–and second in a Strict SafeSearch–you know, the same search filters that are supposed to weed out “offensive” content, i.e. porn?

What’s the takeaway here? You can filter out porn, because it’s offensive. But you can’t filter out racism, because…it’s not?

Meanwhile, guess what happens when you do a Google Images search for Michelle Obama with SafeSearch off?

This offensive image…

original

…is NOWHERE TO BE SEEN. The same goes for porn, at least in the first 20 pages of results. Mostly you just pull up a lot of adorable pictures of POTUS and FLOTUS together. This, in fact, is the first result in an un-SafeSearch of Michelle Obama:

michelle-obama-sexyAwwwww

Guess I have a lot more in common with the legions of internet pervs than I thought.

Huh.

[via HuffPo]
[Google.com: Offensive Search Results page]

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4 Responses to “The Racist Michelle Obama Photo And Why You’re Better Off Hangin’ With Internet Pervs”

  1. dalianmoon says:

    Oh geez…
    The internet: Where the racists go to hide, because they know they will get their asses kicked if they state their fucked up views in polite society.

  2. Simon says:

    Google should remove it. We all know that it’s offensive and defamatory.

  3. MariaNTexas says:

    Um, it takes 5 seconds for YouTube to remove a video when someone crys “Copyright infringement” and it took Google HOW LONG to resolve this? Seriously, enough already with the racist depictions of blacks as monkeys. We ALL have common ancestry. The RSOH (recent single origin hypothesis) has proven this with DNA evidence to back it up.

    Many of the reasearchers involved in the study that resulted in the RSOH are in fact East Asian:

    http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/05/010511074454.htm

    Thanks ladies for all you do, by the way. Your blog ROCKS!!! Great work with the follow up/update too!

  4. prometheus says:

    Google can do whatever it wants with its own website.

    On the other hand, Google -should- do what it promises to do: deliver the best search results for whatever search I type in. If I search for “Michelle Obama”, the monkey image probably shouldn’t turn up in the first few pages, let alone as #1.

    If I search for “Michelle Obama Monkey” however, the image -should- turn up. Because that’s exactly what I am looking for, offensive or otherwise.

    It’s not like searching for “Swastika” won’t turn up some of those either.

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