It’s not that the story hasn’t had a somewhat happy conclusion for Dodson: Because he got a generous cut of the Auto-Tune The News track, which in turn became the first Internet meme to hit the Billboard singles chart, he’s earned enough money to move his family out of the projects and into a new house. What remains really scary, to us, is that in every new incarnation of “Bed Intruder,” higher profile people and more legitimate news organizations are sanctioning what pretty much amounts to a celebration of someone else’s systemic oppression. (It remains unsolved.) And Jezebel talked about how sad it was in the first place that such an event could be so unsurprising to its victims that it could only be met with sarcastic humor. We’re not the first to make this point: The Awl included the Dodson meme as #2 on its list of “Five Memes That Are Mostly Just People Laughing at Working-Class African-Americans, in Order of Views.” (The only worse offender? Soulja Boy.) Racialicious dissected the original news station’s decision to edit the interview the way they did and pointed out that the attempted rape of Dodson’s sister - a serious crime that actually does deserve attention - went mostly ignored in favor of Bed Intruder mania. And yet, very few people seem bothered by a largely white, middle-class audience’s problematic appropriation of what actually amounts to a pretty brave and smart subversion of race- and class-based expectations and norms. A marching band performed it! Someone even got an Antoine Dodson tattoo (and we can’t imagine he won’t regret it this time next year). We’ve heard it, literally, out of the mouths of babes.
Notice that this video didn’t come from some snarky blog, but was actually made by ABC News! And it’s far from the only high-profile endorsement of “Bed Intruder.” Hayley Williams of Paramore, Jordan Pundik of New Found Glory, and Ethan Luck of Relient K got together to record a pop-punk cover of the original Auto-Tune The News version, and it begins with a cringe-worthy impression of Dodson:
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