“Jungle noises”
Oh god can we just stop with this?! Axios reports:
An Idaho-based neo-Nazi group is sponsoring racist robocalls made to Democratic voters in Florida mocking Andrew Gillum, the first African American to win a major party nomination for Florida governor, with jungle noises playing in the background, the Tallahassee Democrat reports.
Why it matters: These automated calls come days after GOP nominee Ron DeSantis called Gillum an “articulate” spokesman for socialism and warned Florida’s voters not to “monkey up” their finances. DeSantis’ campaign denounced the calls and continues to push back against accusations of racism regarding his comments.
“Monkey up” is not a thing. People don’t say that. It’s not an expression, a meme, an idiom, a bit of slang. It’s not anything. It’s no more a thing than “zebra up” or “reticulated python up” is. Ok there is a rather antiquated usage to “monkey with” as in “don’t monkey with that socket wrench or I’ll tan your hide,” but that’s a different phrase and it means a different thing. “Monkeying up” finances is gibberish. So yes, it’s a racist dog whistle, even if an accidental one. (“Got monkeys on your mind, Mr DeSantis? Why’s that exactly?”)
And goddam racist robocalls from an Idaho group; just fucking perfect.
Aw, “monkey with” isn’t antiquated. I am not antiquated!
Heh. I dunno, I seem to hear it in the voice of Walter Brennan…
Ben, welcome to the reliquary.
Was he thinking ‘pony up’ and made the all-too common mistake of confusing ponies with the almost identical monkeys? It takes an expert to tell them apart. Or maybe he’s just a plain, old-fashioned son of the South.
Me too for the antiquated category. I often tell my grandsons not to monkey around with the monkey wrench. If they ignore me I tend to go ape.
Apparently, it’s a phrase used in the part of the South he comes from. There is another phrase that means the same thing: it has the word “nigger” in it.
He was being openly racist. I find it really frightening. This is spreading all over the world.
A Google search for “monkey up” resulted mostly in stories about DeSantis or links to a movie from 2016 by that name (“With their parents preoccupied with their new careers, a young girl and her brother befriend a talking monkey who is struggling to be taken seriously as an actor.”; don’t know how I missed that one).
There was this from Webster’s:
Doesn’t really seem to apply.
And then there’s this tweet from dictionary.com:
Sounds right.
“Crufty” – now there’s one I’m not familiar with.
Crufty: any dog show based on the Crufts model.