  WHY IS HERBERT "H-DOG" KORNFELD SO FUNNY? The latest from editor-at-large Herbert Kornfeld is in this week's edition of urlLink The Onion . H-Dog and tha Accountz Receevin' bruthaz rescue one a they own from the weak-ass shiznit that is jury duty.
Sort of. I've always enjoyed H-Dog, but I sometimes feel a bit guilty about it. You see, pretty much the whole reason why H-Dog is funny is that he speaks and writes in an over-the-top ebonic/street/gangsta slang even though he's a white, probably Jewish, accountant at an office supply company. So does thinking the way he talks is funny mean that I think the way black people talk is worthy of ridicule? It could be said that H-Dog is really funny because he's some white guy pretending to be black who is making us laugh at him because he's so nerdy and his wannabe gangster antics are hilarious. Sort of like Jamie Kennedy in urlLink Malibu's Most Wanted (though I'm just guessing, I haven't seen it). It's also arguable that it's funny because it shows how odd it sounds when white people start talking as if they're black.
This happens all the time - white Americans have been picking up things from the way African-Americans speak for a long time, and many whites consider blacks the arbiters of "coolness" and imitate what they find cool about black people. This leads to odd situations where bland, ordinary white people with names like Herbert Kornfeld end up speaking a mish-mash of ebonics and standard English straight off the 6 o'clock news.
Trying to absorb the black culture white America looks to for style tips, white Americans just seem ridiculous. But, if you really think about it, H-Dog is funny to white people at least in part because of a contradiction in white culture: we absorb and ape black culture and think black culture is ridiculous at the same time. White people think high-fiving your buddy and saying "what up, dog" is simultaneously cool and stupid. And that is a reflection, I believe, of a stereotype white people have regarding black people more generally.
They consider them cool but don't really respect them, their culture, their mannerisms or their speech, in particular. And that is why, at least to some degree, I think I am right to feel guilty that I find Herbert "H-Dog" Kornfeld so funny. 
