I've never found a more effective response to the fake-indignant question "how come THEY can say it but I can't" than simply telling the person "there are 170,000 words in the English language. There are maybe 3 dozen you shouldn't say. Relax, you'll be fine."
I know you're sad because you like using words and now there's one you can't use, so let me make it up to you: “Minatory.” “Velleity.” “Deuterogamy.” There, three words you didn't have earlier to make up for the one we're taking away from you. Have fun with them.
There are also a billion possibilities for newly-minted words — all of them so much fun! Like this one, hot & steaming from out the word-coiner, me in my dressing gown awaiting the coffee pot, to describe the political philosophy of those who adhere to any of the above views mentioned by our Host:
I haven't researched this, but I'm pretty sure women say the phrase "vaginal cramps" many, many more times than I do. For some reason, this does not fill me with rage at the unfairness of it all.
It is literally a question that will confuse the person of average intelligence for maximum 3 minutes at age 12. If you are still asking this question when you are 25 or 60, it is an admission that you are so profoundly stupid, you should consider putting yourself on an ice floe to avoid being a burden on society.
Oct 31, 2022·edited Oct 31, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Maybe sad, maybe amazing, maybe I don't know what but that this is the freedom the pardon my French worthless (or worse) motherfuckers are going apeshit over... (That vented, I still think a not insignificant amount of this is just to excite the base to go out and vote so a chunk will be disappearing in a few weeks.)
Meanwhile... given the toxic spew of sewage that's been conservative media for the past couple of decades and what one could call the unsophistication of those people, only the volume here should be at all surprising -- and since Donnie's first run, not even that.
We're seeing the fine people of the heartland of the homeland (hateful, pro-death, leeches of my taxes) for what they are, always have been and will always be.
I mean, fighting for the freedom to hate.
JFC.
Meanwhile, America's greatest living genius, Elon Musk, showed us the other day real freedom by pushing the far right theory that the attack on Paul Pelosi was strictly a homosexual lovers' thing that got out of hand. But then again, as the MSM has been legitimatizing and moralizing insanity, sure, that.
"far right theory that the attack on Paul Pelosi was strictly a homosexual lovers' thing..."
It's a pretty slick operation they've got running, the RNC never has to send out an order for a hit piece on Paul Pelosi, the people who create this slime are freelancers who do it for the clicks, but they know there's an audience eager to lap up whatever shit they squeeze out. And then there are the "LOL nothing matters" bros like Musk, who think the whole world was created for their entertainment, that the only reason there are other humans on this planet is to provide "material" for their wisecrackery.
There's a gay couple with whom we sometimes have to interact at the airport. When they first started coming around, my Rightwing boss said something like "I don't want to imagine what they do in bed."
So I asked him if he ever spent any time wondering what heterosexual couple he knows do in bed. He got a strange look on his face and then said, "No, I don't." And he's never brought that subject up again. My boss is a Rightie, but he's a teachable Rightie!
You mistake the result: He isn't self-censoring. He actually thought about it and realized he was wrong to single out gay relationships.
He is the same man I convinced that "indoctrination " of kids into the gay lifestyle is not possible. When he brought it up the first time, I asked him to tell me what I could have talked him into being gay. After thinking about it for a moment, he realized that nobody could have talked him into being gay because he's not gay.
Pretty sure gay genie won't go back into the ( immaculately decorated ) bottle.
I work in a facility with about 150 people .
At least 20 % are of who knows what gender. And nobody cares. These aren't cosmopolitan academics. These are salt of the earth lower to middle class working stiffs working here because it's close to home and we don't drug test.
Everybody's relieved that they don't have to pretend Uncle George is just an old bachelor that never met the right woman.
Now everybody goes over to Uncle George' s for Thanksgiving where him and his partner Tom put out the best buffet imaginable. They can hate all they. want.Pass all the bullshit laws. Doesn't matter. They've already lost that one.
Oct 31, 2022·edited Oct 31, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
True, they've lost that one, and we've all seen how they handle loss. Turn over the table and scatter the checkers* all over the floor while screaming "You cheated!".
I got the impression the people at the school board meetings were mostly there for the opportunity to go off on someone rather than any particular thing they believed.
I am usually pretty pessimistic about race relations in this country.
Coming from "The Sticks" ( SW Ohio) I've grown up wallowing in it. Or rather I'm surrounded by people who wallow in it. It's everywhere here and I"'ve mostly seen it as something we might never overcome. You know though, lately
I've noticed the commercials. I swear the typical family to Palmolive or General Foods is a biracial family.
You know they ain't doing that out of the goodness of their progressive hearts. If Procter and Gamble thought a commercial about how good Tide was at removing stains out of a white robe would sell more soap that's the commercial we'd see 10 times a night.
Thanks for pointing that out about the commercials, I was wondering if it was just an MSNBC thing and if Fox was running all-white versions of the same commercials? But I guess Fox ads are now mostly MyPillows and Buy Gold, so maybe it's not an issue for them.
Same. In the 90s I worked in a coffee shop with a woman who'd been a high school biology teacher, until she divorced her husband and started dating a woman. She was in her 30s, in rural Arizona if I recall correctly. She said some lunatic lady ginned up the whole town against her, suddenly PTA meetings were packed with people there to yell about a lesbian corrupting our children, business ground to a halt until the school Did Something. Anyway this story ends with the bio teacher working in a coffee shop 400 miles away. She was great, fun to be around, and gorgeous. Her tale was eye-opening to me, as I also had no reason to believe people cared if a teacher was gay. Just not a thing that would ever occur to me as a problem. I am sure that even though the world got better by 2014 it can go back to being awful by 2028. That's what the hate speech is for.
One man (as it usually is) with an automatic rifle can easily kill twenty other people even if he's quickly stopped by someone else, armed with a gun or a board with a nail in or what have you. With those odds, a much smaller but liberated-feeling set of hate-filled people matter, unfortunately, when they kill and injure directly, when in official positions from which they encourage others to do, and when they're on juries.
As I noted at the old Alicublog homestead yesterday, conservatives have been on about this since the 1970s at least. That's when people started looking at you weird and edging away when you used a racial slur. By the 1980s, it was no longer okay to remark on your secretary's posterior or tell ethnic jokes around the water cooler. THOSE are the "freedom of speech" issues conservative have always been most concerned with.
Think of all the great Polock jokes we've lost! [thinking] Uh. Zero?
Okay no wait there's one. Three guys crossing the Sahara, one brings water, one brings food, one goes lugging a car door. A fourth guy shows up who says Huh, I can understand why you Smart Ethnicities brought food and water, but... Oh, that's obvious, says the Dumb Ethnicity. When it gets too hot, I can roll down the window!
OK. If we're gonna go there, I'mo quote the Ambassador of the Czech Republic, from a forum he hosted about beer in Czech society (it's actually a really big deal there).
A German, a Brit and a Czech walk into a bar. It being October, the German orders a festive special lager. The Englishman scoffs and orders an ale. The Czech orders a Coke.
The other two say "What's the deal?" The Czech replies "Well you guys didn't order beer so I just went along".
When people vote Republican "because crime is up", what they mean is that Republicans SAY things about crime that they like ("Back the Blue", "Chicago's a hellhole", etc.) but they don't really expect Republicans to DO anything about crime, because, duh, they need to keep the issue fresh for the next election.
And also "doing something" is what they are sworn to avoid. Because that would be government activism. So we continue to elect people we will pay to complain.
Right, I mentioned Ron Johnson below, his complaint is that cops are "dispirited" because of the protests and so they're having trouble recruiting, but his answer isn't that we should do even one single thing to improve recruitment or working conditions for cops, because "doing stuff" is a liberal thing, so his answer is we should just TALK better about the cops, problem solved!
My world (if it was mine) would be a happier place when all the gated communities have a border guard on the outside, charging the denizens a fee each time they wanna enter the real world.
Can we project this out to its (OK, maybe slightly illogical) conclusion? Like "Hey, since we're now talkin' like Trump, let's grift like Trump! And assault wimmins like Trump!!" Which would lead (directly or indirectly) to "Hey! Wait a minute! You didn't prosecute Trump fer this!! What's the deal??!!!"
It’s the Republican Hate Superbowl campaign: the Jiggaboos vs the Hebes, with the Fags, Chinks, Spics, Micks, Polacks and Wops on deck. Plenty of hate for every taste in the old melting pot.
Now I'm imagining a bracket with every slur known to man, pairing them off til we have a winner, but on second thought, why would we bother when we already know which slur wins the championship every damn year.
Oct 31, 2022·edited Oct 31, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Yea, I get what you are saying, and also where the conservatives are coming from, but still can’t stop myself recoiling at the idea that the types of speech people are entitled to is dependent on their skin color or ethnicity. And I’ve come to believe that the euphemism “n-word “ is much worse in common usage than what it is euphemisizing, and to use the euphemism in many contexts is worse than what it’s replacing, serving to make bad people look less bad.
Oct 31, 2022·edited Oct 31, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
My go-to example is this: Jewish comedian makes an insulting joke about Germans vs. German comedian makes an insulting joke about Jews. See a difference? Of course you do. It's not a matter of law, just that history matters and normal people recoil at certain things because of that history.
I think the analogous situation would be Jewish vs German comedians both making jokes about Jews, probably. But of course, you're right: just blinding oneself to historical/social context doesn't lead to good thinking.
Oct 31, 2022·edited Oct 31, 2022Liked by Roy Edroso
Exactly. Blinding oneself to historical/social context doesn't lead to good thinking. That's what happens when it's verboten to accurately quote racists saying racist things. Bad thinking.
If I can put a word in for euphemism here, it's useful to have a way to report on someone else's use of a racist term without having to say the racist term yourself. This is common in other contexts, if a reporter says, "The voter told to politician to 'Go F- yourself", most people wouldn't insist the reporter spell out "Fuck".
Timely reminder: Iran is preparing to execute local reporters for reporting about the protests there. That is, for saying normal stuff. Euphe & the Misms would not stand a chance in Tehran.
Yea, duh, but what if a journalist accurately reports what the German comedian said? Or an academic quotes it in a research paper? Do you have a problem with those scenarios?
I was responding to "types of speech people are entitled to is dependent on their skin color or ethnicity". Are you OK with saying, "There are some jokes a Jewish person can make that non-Jews shouldn't make"? With the understanding that "shouldn't make" doesn't mean jail, it means people might think you're an asshole and not buy tickets to your next show.
Yep, no disagreement with that, though the more interesting nuance in your question is the difference between ‘can’ and ‘should.’ Should ethnic comedians have fun with their cultural stereotypes? I’d say yea, but then should people from other cultures laugh at those jokes, or even hear them? As alluded to above, I think political speech is Ill-equipped to deal with that much (if any).nuance. Much more interesting how artists deal with it?
And I wasn't expecting some kind of medievalist inquisition. (sorry Steve, I'm not referring to you here, but sometimes just can't help myself.)
I generally don't laugh at ethnic jokes unless they're about my ethnicity and told by someone of my ethnicity. If it's a good enough joke, I'm probably not gonna get the nuance, which may rely on an understanding that racism is ridiculous. Sometimes the point of the joke is to laugh at the people who laugh at the joke because they're the punchline.
Just throwing slurs around for the sake of being socially rebellious isn't really funny. It's lazy.
I dunno, Michael. I mean we're already seeing on Twitter what happens when "nigger" gets the all-clear. (And by "all-clear" I mean overt social sanction.) Think we'll be better off if that moves into meat space?
I don't know, probably not, but maybe. Theoretically, all of us who don't like it could quit those platforms, which would destroy them. Or much better, they could be held legally responsible for their content just like old-fashioned publishers.
Coincidentally, I'm rewatching the early episodes of Atlanta and noticed how much they deal with these questions about hate speech and who can say what. Paper Boi's appearance on a Charlie Rose type show about transphobic rap lyrics is priceless, but most of it is much more subtle.
If you haven't seen Atlanta, btw, and are looking for an entreé into quantity television, it is an incredible artistic achievement.
Oh wow, the ol' "but Mark Twain" argument? That's a classic -- glad to see it coming around again.
The other way to look at it is "How are we going to know the Racists are Racist if we don't all hear exactly how Racist they are?"
I shouldn't weigh in here (& I don't mean to be disrespectful to you, M.W.) because I don't have the time to unfold the whole argument or address all the (mostly very predictable) objections or counter-points.
But I think a major part of it (esp. in the classroom, re: Twain) is "collateral damage."
See the definition: "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant..."
And the etymology: "Euphemism comes from Greek eúphēmos, which means "uttering sounds of good omen," "fair-sounding," or "auspicious." The first part of that root is the prefix eu-, meaning "good." The second part is phēmos, a Greek word for "speech."
So basically, the sentence "Donald Trump said the N-Word," comes off as much more agreeable and inoffensive than the real thing. It's like he's uttering sounds of good omen, or saying something auspicious.
"It's like he's uttering sounds of good omen, or saying something auspicious."
You sure about that? Because if a news story says "Donald Trump said the N-Word"
1. About a third of the country would say "Love it! I like sayin' it too!"
2. Two-thirds of the country would say, "Well, of course, he's a racist and an asshole."
You really believe there's some nonzero set of people whose opinion of the person saying the word depends on the word being spelled out? I can't imagine that's true.
White people who use the N-word are engaging in childish bullying. Bullying that starts young and never ends. Imagine all the times Black people have heard the N-word from white people, and the situations in which it comes up. How many decades of that would traumatize you? At some point it becomes a trigger, the original meaning, something that causes you trauma or to relive trauma. As someone who has a visceral reaction every time she's called a whore or a cunt, it's a thing I'm willing to avoid inflicting on others.
Any person on the privileged side of the hate speech ought to understand that "forgetting about racism" or whatever is an ultimate form of privilege. Pretty sure that communities victimized by hate speech don't get that luxury.
I might suggest that if, as that str8 white cisgendered male who's in peril of this forgetting, you can wake up every day, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat every foul epithet you like. That can be your memory lesson, held on your own time & in your own space.
Sorry for the delete: I had a beautiful, historical reply -- but when I hit "post" half of it was highlighted & disappeared. Momma's too tired & has to much to do to reconstruct it.
But the comment was like those plums you were saving in the icebox: so grouchy & so cold....
My guess is that, for these folks anti-Semitism is like the Graduate School of racism. Because racism you can just pick up as a kid, from your parents and friends, but to be a really good anti-Semite you gotta watch a LOT of YouTube videos.
Interesting-ish that, like always, the dread Other are simultaneously vastly outnumbered by Us and also so fiendishly clever that they've managed to gain total control of the entire universe.
I imagine even these right-wing hatemongers subscribe to the idea that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. But what they never seem to grasp, even as the extreme capitalists they profess to be, is that you can't yell -anything- in a theater that the theater owner doesn't want you to yell.
Tangentially related remark from MoRon Johnson, in the debate with Mandela Barnes, claiming that criticism from groups like BLM had "dispirited" the police, and that's why crime is up. See, it's always about the words, never about anything real. So racism is always "someone said a racist thing" never anything more than that, certainly never anything systemic that affects the real lives of real people. It's a handy tactic if your goal is to never, under any circumstances, engage in any actual problem-solving, just get everyone tied up in an endless meta-debate, talking about talking.
They aren't real shy about hating Blacks or Hispanics if that's their pleasure. If they felt like that about gays I'd of picked it up I think. I'm sure there's someone with issues. The culture is such they keep it to themselves though.
When the Founders saw the light of reason all those years ago after Adam Weishaupt sent an agent over to work his magic, they were surely thinking "hate speech is all there is to free speech."
Ten years ago, enough Republicans agreed that violence has no place in our political process. Today, the Republican Party in the House has refused to join the January 6 Committee. In the Senate, within days of the attempted violent coup, Republicans declared it not an impeachable offense. Multiple high-ranking persons close to the Trump Administration have refused to testify about what they saw that day, and Republicans like Cheney and Kinzinger who said violence needs to be punished and prevented from recurring have been run out of office by Republican voters. So. Here we are. One party and enough of its voters have declared, repeatedly and loudly in word and action, that they believe violence DOES have a place in our political process. That is the context in which they are demanding more hate speech. Not good, if you like, as I do, the USA.
I know I'm not the first person to mention it, but there's a sad commentary here about the small conservative imagination. This is it, their great, glorious victory for Free Speech: they can now yell slurs at minorities without repercussion.
Hearted reluctantly, except that Roy's logic is impeccable.
I've never found a more effective response to the fake-indignant question "how come THEY can say it but I can't" than simply telling the person "there are 170,000 words in the English language. There are maybe 3 dozen you shouldn't say. Relax, you'll be fine."
When you say most effective, how effective?
They shut up. That's the goal.
Oooo! Canceled!
Hell yeah.
If Twitter becomes a club that no one decent wants to belong to -
I'm OK with that.
I know you're sad because you like using words and now there's one you can't use, so let me make it up to you: “Minatory.” “Velleity.” “Deuterogamy.” There, three words you didn't have earlier to make up for the one we're taking away from you. Have fun with them.
There are also a billion possibilities for newly-minted words — all of them so much fun! Like this one, hot & steaming from out the word-coiner, me in my dressing gown awaiting the coffee pot, to describe the political philosophy of those who adhere to any of the above views mentioned by our Host:
"sack-of-shittism"
See? What a lark!
I could see "shitticism" having some potential.
Man. I dare you to tell 'em about 'Duderotomy' in all its elegant detail while standing within the head-explosion hazard zone!
I haven't researched this, but I'm pretty sure women say the phrase "vaginal cramps" many, many more times than I do. For some reason, this does not fill me with rage at the unfairness of it all.
Indeed. And men get to say "Ow! My Balls!"
Hopefully not very often
It is literally a question that will confuse the person of average intelligence for maximum 3 minutes at age 12. If you are still asking this question when you are 25 or 60, it is an admission that you are so profoundly stupid, you should consider putting yourself on an ice floe to avoid being a burden on society.
Hearted for ice floe exile.
Maybe sad, maybe amazing, maybe I don't know what but that this is the freedom the pardon my French worthless (or worse) motherfuckers are going apeshit over... (That vented, I still think a not insignificant amount of this is just to excite the base to go out and vote so a chunk will be disappearing in a few weeks.)
Meanwhile... given the toxic spew of sewage that's been conservative media for the past couple of decades and what one could call the unsophistication of those people, only the volume here should be at all surprising -- and since Donnie's first run, not even that.
We're seeing the fine people of the heartland of the homeland (hateful, pro-death, leeches of my taxes) for what they are, always have been and will always be.
I mean, fighting for the freedom to hate.
JFC.
Meanwhile, America's greatest living genius, Elon Musk, showed us the other day real freedom by pushing the far right theory that the attack on Paul Pelosi was strictly a homosexual lovers' thing that got out of hand. But then again, as the MSM has been legitimatizing and moralizing insanity, sure, that.
"far right theory that the attack on Paul Pelosi was strictly a homosexual lovers' thing..."
It's a pretty slick operation they've got running, the RNC never has to send out an order for a hit piece on Paul Pelosi, the people who create this slime are freelancers who do it for the clicks, but they know there's an audience eager to lap up whatever shit they squeeze out. And then there are the "LOL nothing matters" bros like Musk, who think the whole world was created for their entertainment, that the only reason there are other humans on this planet is to provide "material" for their wisecrackery.
Proving once again that gay sex is top of mind, always.
I’ve long thought they seem abnormally (for purportedly cis het people, that is) interested in what same-sex oriented people do.
There's a gay couple with whom we sometimes have to interact at the airport. When they first started coming around, my Rightwing boss said something like "I don't want to imagine what they do in bed."
So I asked him if he ever spent any time wondering what heterosexual couple he knows do in bed. He got a strange look on his face and then said, "No, I don't." And he's never brought that subject up again. My boss is a Rightie, but he's a teachable Rightie!
"And he's never brought that subject up again."
Oh, my heart bleeds for the poor man, and the powerful self-censorship he must exercise in your presence.
You mistake the result: He isn't self-censoring. He actually thought about it and realized he was wrong to single out gay relationships.
He is the same man I convinced that "indoctrination " of kids into the gay lifestyle is not possible. When he brought it up the first time, I asked him to tell me what I could have talked him into being gay. After thinking about it for a moment, he realized that nobody could have talked him into being gay because he's not gay.
Like I said, he's a teachable Rightie.
Bots.
All
The
Way
Down.
Pretty sure gay genie won't go back into the ( immaculately decorated ) bottle.
I work in a facility with about 150 people .
At least 20 % are of who knows what gender. And nobody cares. These aren't cosmopolitan academics. These are salt of the earth lower to middle class working stiffs working here because it's close to home and we don't drug test.
Everybody's relieved that they don't have to pretend Uncle George is just an old bachelor that never met the right woman.
Now everybody goes over to Uncle George' s for Thanksgiving where him and his partner Tom put out the best buffet imaginable. They can hate all they. want.Pass all the bullshit laws. Doesn't matter. They've already lost that one.
True, they've lost that one, and we've all seen how they handle loss. Turn over the table and scatter the checkers* all over the floor while screaming "You cheated!".
*For "checkers" I mean "dead bodies."
I hope so, but then I used to think that nobody cares whether schoolteachers were gay, either.
I got the impression the people at the school board meetings were mostly there for the opportunity to go off on someone rather than any particular thing they believed.
I am usually pretty pessimistic about race relations in this country.
Coming from "The Sticks" ( SW Ohio) I've grown up wallowing in it. Or rather I'm surrounded by people who wallow in it. It's everywhere here and I"'ve mostly seen it as something we might never overcome. You know though, lately
I've noticed the commercials. I swear the typical family to Palmolive or General Foods is a biracial family.
You know they ain't doing that out of the goodness of their progressive hearts. If Procter and Gamble thought a commercial about how good Tide was at removing stains out of a white robe would sell more soap that's the commercial we'd see 10 times a night.
Thanks for pointing that out about the commercials, I was wondering if it was just an MSNBC thing and if Fox was running all-white versions of the same commercials? But I guess Fox ads are now mostly MyPillows and Buy Gold, so maybe it's not an issue for them.
Same. In the 90s I worked in a coffee shop with a woman who'd been a high school biology teacher, until she divorced her husband and started dating a woman. She was in her 30s, in rural Arizona if I recall correctly. She said some lunatic lady ginned up the whole town against her, suddenly PTA meetings were packed with people there to yell about a lesbian corrupting our children, business ground to a halt until the school Did Something. Anyway this story ends with the bio teacher working in a coffee shop 400 miles away. She was great, fun to be around, and gorgeous. Her tale was eye-opening to me, as I also had no reason to believe people cared if a teacher was gay. Just not a thing that would ever occur to me as a problem. I am sure that even though the world got better by 2014 it can go back to being awful by 2028. That's what the hate speech is for.
Are you sure nobody cares? I could believe nobody wishes to provoke at the current time but nobody cares seems a bridge too far
I apologise for being this way, but:
One man (as it usually is) with an automatic rifle can easily kill twenty other people even if he's quickly stopped by someone else, armed with a gun or a board with a nail in or what have you. With those odds, a much smaller but liberated-feeling set of hate-filled people matter, unfortunately, when they kill and injure directly, when in official positions from which they encourage others to do, and when they're on juries.
I've been saying for years that (name the winger du jour) is just mad that (s)he can't say n****r in public.
As I noted at the old Alicublog homestead yesterday, conservatives have been on about this since the 1970s at least. That's when people started looking at you weird and edging away when you used a racial slur. By the 1980s, it was no longer okay to remark on your secretary's posterior or tell ethnic jokes around the water cooler. THOSE are the "freedom of speech" issues conservative have always been most concerned with.
Think of all the great Polock jokes we've lost! [thinking] Uh. Zero?
Okay no wait there's one. Three guys crossing the Sahara, one brings water, one brings food, one goes lugging a car door. A fourth guy shows up who says Huh, I can understand why you Smart Ethnicities brought food and water, but... Oh, that's obvious, says the Dumb Ethnicity. When it gets too hot, I can roll down the window!
OK. If we're gonna go there, I'mo quote the Ambassador of the Czech Republic, from a forum he hosted about beer in Czech society (it's actually a really big deal there).
A German, a Brit and a Czech walk into a bar. It being October, the German orders a festive special lager. The Englishman scoffs and orders an ale. The Czech orders a Coke.
The other two say "What's the deal?" The Czech replies "Well you guys didn't order beer so I just went along".
Ah, in that one though, the beers are the punchline! Very nice. No need to czech your privilege.
Hearted, but oof...
I submit that that is Trump's #1 appeal. He certainly isn't doing anything else for them.
When people vote Republican "because crime is up", what they mean is that Republicans SAY things about crime that they like ("Back the Blue", "Chicago's a hellhole", etc.) but they don't really expect Republicans to DO anything about crime, because, duh, they need to keep the issue fresh for the next election.
And also "doing something" is what they are sworn to avoid. Because that would be government activism. So we continue to elect people we will pay to complain.
Right, I mentioned Ron Johnson below, his complaint is that cops are "dispirited" because of the protests and so they're having trouble recruiting, but his answer isn't that we should do even one single thing to improve recruitment or working conditions for cops, because "doing stuff" is a liberal thing, so his answer is we should just TALK better about the cops, problem solved!
"Recht und Ordnung Johnson is right!"
THAT's the dispirit!
Crime is *always* up to Fox-watchers in gated communities.
My world (if it was mine) would be a happier place when all the gated communities have a border guard on the outside, charging the denizens a fee each time they wanna enter the real world.
Can we project this out to its (OK, maybe slightly illogical) conclusion? Like "Hey, since we're now talkin' like Trump, let's grift like Trump! And assault wimmins like Trump!!" Which would lead (directly or indirectly) to "Hey! Wait a minute! You didn't prosecute Trump fer this!! What's the deal??!!!"
It’s the Republican Hate Superbowl campaign: the Jiggaboos vs the Hebes, with the Fags, Chinks, Spics, Micks, Polacks and Wops on deck. Plenty of hate for every taste in the old melting pot.
Jigaboos, Polacks and Chinks, Oh, my!
In my armor??!!
Now I'm imagining a bracket with every slur known to man, pairing them off til we have a winner, but on second thought, why would we bother when we already know which slur wins the championship every damn year.
But... but... how can you say this when some people in Minneapolis burned down an AutoZone three years ago. #neverforgettheAutoZone
Where's Billy Hearst when we need him??!!
"You supply the prose poems, I'll supply the race war."
Yea, I get what you are saying, and also where the conservatives are coming from, but still can’t stop myself recoiling at the idea that the types of speech people are entitled to is dependent on their skin color or ethnicity. And I’ve come to believe that the euphemism “n-word “ is much worse in common usage than what it is euphemisizing, and to use the euphemism in many contexts is worse than what it’s replacing, serving to make bad people look less bad.
My go-to example is this: Jewish comedian makes an insulting joke about Germans vs. German comedian makes an insulting joke about Jews. See a difference? Of course you do. It's not a matter of law, just that history matters and normal people recoil at certain things because of that history.
I think the analogous situation would be Jewish vs German comedians both making jokes about Jews, probably. But of course, you're right: just blinding oneself to historical/social context doesn't lead to good thinking.
Exactly. Blinding oneself to historical/social context doesn't lead to good thinking. That's what happens when it's verboten to accurately quote racists saying racist things. Bad thinking.
I don't think anyone here has suggested that that should be forbidden? I'm not sure who you're arguing with.
The wind.
If I can put a word in for euphemism here, it's useful to have a way to report on someone else's use of a racist term without having to say the racist term yourself. This is common in other contexts, if a reporter says, "The voter told to politician to 'Go F- yourself", most people wouldn't insist the reporter spell out "Fuck".
Precisely. It’s mostly self-censorship of a judicious and prudent sort.
Timely reminder: Iran is preparing to execute local reporters for reporting about the protests there. That is, for saying normal stuff. Euphe & the Misms would not stand a chance in Tehran.
Yea, duh, but what if a journalist accurately reports what the German comedian said? Or an academic quotes it in a research paper? Do you have a problem with those scenarios?
I was responding to "types of speech people are entitled to is dependent on their skin color or ethnicity". Are you OK with saying, "There are some jokes a Jewish person can make that non-Jews shouldn't make"? With the understanding that "shouldn't make" doesn't mean jail, it means people might think you're an asshole and not buy tickets to your next show.
Yep, no disagreement with that, though the more interesting nuance in your question is the difference between ‘can’ and ‘should.’ Should ethnic comedians have fun with their cultural stereotypes? I’d say yea, but then should people from other cultures laugh at those jokes, or even hear them? As alluded to above, I think political speech is Ill-equipped to deal with that much (if any).nuance. Much more interesting how artists deal with it?
And I wasn't expecting some kind of medievalist inquisition. (sorry Steve, I'm not referring to you here, but sometimes just can't help myself.)
I generally don't laugh at ethnic jokes unless they're about my ethnicity and told by someone of my ethnicity. If it's a good enough joke, I'm probably not gonna get the nuance, which may rely on an understanding that racism is ridiculous. Sometimes the point of the joke is to laugh at the people who laugh at the joke because they're the punchline.
Just throwing slurs around for the sake of being socially rebellious isn't really funny. It's lazy.
He was referring to me -- and it was good quip
I dunno, Michael. I mean we're already seeing on Twitter what happens when "nigger" gets the all-clear. (And by "all-clear" I mean overt social sanction.) Think we'll be better off if that moves into meat space?
I don't know, probably not, but maybe. Theoretically, all of us who don't like it could quit those platforms, which would destroy them. Or much better, they could be held legally responsible for their content just like old-fashioned publishers.
Coincidentally, I'm rewatching the early episodes of Atlanta and noticed how much they deal with these questions about hate speech and who can say what. Paper Boi's appearance on a Charlie Rose type show about transphobic rap lyrics is priceless, but most of it is much more subtle.
If you haven't seen Atlanta, btw, and are looking for an entreé into quantity television, it is an incredible artistic achievement.
Oh wow, the ol' "but Mark Twain" argument? That's a classic -- glad to see it coming around again.
The other way to look at it is "How are we going to know the Racists are Racist if we don't all hear exactly how Racist they are?"
I shouldn't weigh in here (& I don't mean to be disrespectful to you, M.W.) because I don't have the time to unfold the whole argument or address all the (mostly very predictable) objections or counter-points.
But I think a major part of it (esp. in the classroom, re: Twain) is "collateral damage."
You should have prefaced that with "No one expects the medievalist inquisition!!!!"
Wait. Let me settle into my comfy chair first.
How is the euphemism worse?
See the definition: "the substitution of an agreeable or inoffensive expression for one that may offend or suggest something unpleasant..."
And the etymology: "Euphemism comes from Greek eúphēmos, which means "uttering sounds of good omen," "fair-sounding," or "auspicious." The first part of that root is the prefix eu-, meaning "good." The second part is phēmos, a Greek word for "speech."
So basically, the sentence "Donald Trump said the N-Word," comes off as much more agreeable and inoffensive than the real thing. It's like he's uttering sounds of good omen, or saying something auspicious.
"It's like he's uttering sounds of good omen, or saying something auspicious."
You sure about that? Because if a news story says "Donald Trump said the N-Word"
1. About a third of the country would say "Love it! I like sayin' it too!"
2. Two-thirds of the country would say, "Well, of course, he's a racist and an asshole."
You really believe there's some nonzero set of people whose opinion of the person saying the word depends on the word being spelled out? I can't imagine that's true.
Also, I think knowledge of Greek etymology might not be as widespread as you think.
White people who use the N-word are engaging in childish bullying. Bullying that starts young and never ends. Imagine all the times Black people have heard the N-word from white people, and the situations in which it comes up. How many decades of that would traumatize you? At some point it becomes a trigger, the original meaning, something that causes you trauma or to relive trauma. As someone who has a visceral reaction every time she's called a whore or a cunt, it's a thing I'm willing to avoid inflicting on others.
Thank you for this.
Any person on the privileged side of the hate speech ought to understand that "forgetting about racism" or whatever is an ultimate form of privilege. Pretty sure that communities victimized by hate speech don't get that luxury.
I might suggest that if, as that str8 white cisgendered male who's in peril of this forgetting, you can wake up every day, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat every foul epithet you like. That can be your memory lesson, held on your own time & in your own space.
Bonus: it'll keep your teeth straight & white...
Amen. Question: is our antisemitism as ingrained as our racism?
I'll bet not, though they're working on it.
Sorry for the delete: I had a beautiful, historical reply -- but when I hit "post" half of it was highlighted & disappeared. Momma's too tired & has to much to do to reconstruct it.
But the comment was like those plums you were saving in the icebox: so grouchy & so cold....
I wondered why I was shivering so...
My guess is that, for these folks anti-Semitism is like the Graduate School of racism. Because racism you can just pick up as a kid, from your parents and friends, but to be a really good anti-Semite you gotta watch a LOT of YouTube videos.
Interesting-ish that, like always, the dread Other are simultaneously vastly outnumbered by Us and also so fiendishly clever that they've managed to gain total control of the entire universe.
They'll take the anti-semitism out for a walk every couple of years at election time, but the rest of the time they just leave it in its cage.
Yes. Example--Ku Klux Klan.
I imagine even these right-wing hatemongers subscribe to the idea that you can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. But what they never seem to grasp, even as the extreme capitalists they profess to be, is that you can't yell -anything- in a theater that the theater owner doesn't want you to yell.
Tangentially related remark from MoRon Johnson, in the debate with Mandela Barnes, claiming that criticism from groups like BLM had "dispirited" the police, and that's why crime is up. See, it's always about the words, never about anything real. So racism is always "someone said a racist thing" never anything more than that, certainly never anything systemic that affects the real lives of real people. It's a handy tactic if your goal is to never, under any circumstances, engage in any actual problem-solving, just get everyone tied up in an endless meta-debate, talking about talking.
Yeah. Wake me when we get to punch the nazis.
This should be public.
They aren't real shy about hating Blacks or Hispanics if that's their pleasure. If they felt like that about gays I'd of picked it up I think. I'm sure there's someone with issues. The culture is such they keep it to themselves though.
When the Founders saw the light of reason all those years ago after Adam Weishaupt sent an agent over to work his magic, they were surely thinking "hate speech is all there is to free speech."
To be fair to right-wingers, they don't think hate speech is all speech, they just think it's the most fun part.
Ten years ago, enough Republicans agreed that violence has no place in our political process. Today, the Republican Party in the House has refused to join the January 6 Committee. In the Senate, within days of the attempted violent coup, Republicans declared it not an impeachable offense. Multiple high-ranking persons close to the Trump Administration have refused to testify about what they saw that day, and Republicans like Cheney and Kinzinger who said violence needs to be punished and prevented from recurring have been run out of office by Republican voters. So. Here we are. One party and enough of its voters have declared, repeatedly and loudly in word and action, that they believe violence DOES have a place in our political process. That is the context in which they are demanding more hate speech. Not good, if you like, as I do, the USA.
I know I'm not the first person to mention it, but there's a sad commentary here about the small conservative imagination. This is it, their great, glorious victory for Free Speech: they can now yell slurs at minorities without repercussion.