‘Eschew the Taboo,’ revisited

In December 2006, Christopher Hitchens wrote a column with the above headline in quotes, which included a sub-headline reading, “The pernicious effects of banning words.” He went on to describe a short-lived interview with Chris Matthews on MSNBC, in which he explained the evolution of the word “stupid” as it relates to politics, noting that John Stuart Mill once referred to the Tories as “generally stupid.” I couldn’t locate a reference to a quote from Mill that actually used these three words in this sequence — “the stupid party” — so I’m not sure if Hitchens was paraphrasing or referring to an actual quote in some dusty volume.

In any case, the moniker apparently stuck, since eventually, the Tories actually began referring to their party in this way. The late Hitchens has proven himself prophetic beyond his years in this regard since in November 2012, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal challenged the prevailing anti-intellectualism that had run amok in his own party:

“… Stop being the stupid party. … It is no secret we had a number of Republicans damage our brand this year with offensive, bizarre comments — enough of that. It’s not going to be the last time anyone says something stupid within our party, but it can’t be tolerated within our party. We’ve also had enough of this dumbed-down conservatism. We need to stop being simplistic, we need to trust the intelligence of the American people and we need to stop insulting the intelligence of the voters.

Near the end of his explanation on MSNBC, Hitchens sucked the air right out of the room when he dared suggest that the word “stupid” may have taken a similar evolutionary journey as other words like “nigger” and “queer,” “and I might have added faggot,” Hitchens informs us in parenthesis. For this insult to the sensibilities of the MSNBC staff, he was quickly hurried off camera and told that the interview was “extremely over.” Taking the case of the former word, he said that while white people have not been afforded the ability to use the word, “nigger,” in any context whatever, however benign, and must always defer to the cowardly N-word, black folks have turned the discriminatory and racist undertones of the word on its head:

If white people call black people niggers, they are doing their very best to hurt and insult them, as well as to remind them that their ancestors used to be property. If black people use the word, they are either uttering an obscenity or trying to detoxify a word and rob it of its power to wound them. Not quite the same thing.

Note the distinction that Hitchens makes in this essay between white people calling blacks derogatory names with the intent to harm versus using “nigger,” “queer” or “faggot” in an explanatory or historical context that I am doing right now.

This brings me to more recent news in which the Associated Press has announced that it will no longer use the words “illegal immigrant” to describe — clears throat — illegal immigrants, and it has for years advised journalists to avoid the borderline derogatory labels “illegals” and “aliens.” This step by the AP is one of numerous ways that it suggests people shy away from labels and focus more on behavior. Presumably, we must now refer to undocumented immigrants by the laborious “people who are living in a country illegally.”

Howard Kurtz today on CNN’s “Reliable Sources,” called the change “a bit too politically correct.” I have to agree. While I have and do avoid “illegals” or “aliens” because of their derogatory connotations, banning “illegal immigrant” seems like splitting hairs to me, and while words that journalists use to describe immigrants carry nowhere near the malignant baggage of “spik,” “gook, or “nigger” or any other words racists have embraced to disparage our fellow human beings, AP’s change represents the latest example — add censorship on radio and TV to the mix — of language’s power over us rather than the other way around.

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Language, racism, Schlessinger, ctd.

I probably never would have thought that I would be writing about radio host Laura Schlessinger twice in a mere five days, but here goes.

She has come under recent scrutiny for saying the word “nigger,” with the “I” fully in place more than 10 times while talking about the use of the word with a black caller on her show. The two were having conversation, at times, a heated one, on the use of the word “nigger” in black culture and how “nigga” is quite different than “nigger.” ((http://emptysuit.wordpress.com/2010/08/13/dr-laura-schlesingers-nigger-rant-transcript/)) ((http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/will-dr-laura-survive-her-racial-rant/19592675))

Nigger originated from the word, “niger,” and most likely evolved to “nigger” because of Southern slave owners’ mispronunciation of the correct word. “Niger” simple meant black person, but in the 17th century, as the slave trade got under way, it quickly came to mean slave, as there weren’t too many nigers in the colonies that weren’t also slaves. ((http://www.abolishthenword.com/history.htm))

I, for one, think all of this might be just splitting hairs a bit. Rappers and black youths freely say “nigga” in conversation and in songs without thinking twice about it, and the full enunciation of the other version isn’t banished in white nor black comedy or from neither cultures. From the comedy side, see skits from Dave Chappelle (black) and Louis C.K. (white) (The Louis C.K. skit contains mature content). Actually, C.K. said he was more offended by white people saying “the N-word” more than the actual word because “that’s just white people getting away with saying ‘nigger'” and “when you say the N-word, you put the word nigger in the listeners head. That’s what saying a word is.”

The connotation behind the word “nigger” is terrible, slavery was an awful blight on the history of not just this country, but human history, and the sooner racism ceases to exist the better. But doesn’t it say something about how far we’ve come since the dark days of the slave trade that a white person can objectively say that word without a hint of any racist connotation and not get branded a racist (Surely, some blacks folks were in attendance for the above-linked C.K. show). Further, and this applies to supposed “curse words” as well, when did words begin to hold such mastery over us. Didn’t we create language and isn’t language at our service, not the other way around? That’s not to say that folks shouldn’t be sensitive to those connotations because, as Chappelle said prior to the above-linked, all kinds of feelings come up when black people hear that word. But a person like Schlessinger or C.K. or myself uttering the word in, what I think is akin to honest debate about language, and not in any racial context, seems unexceptionable.

Repudiate or refudiate? No matter.

And these are words from the person who ran for vice president in 2008 and who will likely run for president, no less, in 2012:

Ground Zero Mosque supporters: doesn’t it stab you in the heart, as it does ours throughout the heartland? Peaceful Muslims, pls refudiate.

Notwithstanding the illogical statement that “peaceful Muslims” should not welcome a peaceful place of worship at Ground Zero, try to find “refudiate” in the dictionary? Of course you can’t because it’s not there. The word Sarah Palin was looking for was repudiate, or simply, refute. Palin has since modified the original Twitter post to read:

Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts. Pls reject it in interest of healing.

Yet, she still retained this apparent, yet pitiful excuse for the previous error:

“Refudiate,” “misunderestimate,” “wee-wee’d up.” English is a living language. Shakespeare liked to coin new words too. Got to celebrate it!

“Wee-wee’d up??? Palin is now comparing herself to Shakespeare? And we should celebrate what, exactly? That public figures, past vice presidential candidates and likely presidential candidates scarce know their own language. And yet, these conservatives like to rail against Hispanics for not knowing English? They are ones to talk. Learn your own language, and then we can talk about refuting those who enter this country without knowing ours.

Thesaurus in 3D

If you’re into words or interactive websites or both, head on over to dictionary.com to test out Thinkmap’s thesaurus tool to explore the English language (or Dutch, French, German, Italian or Spanish) in quite a unique way.

To get a sense for how it works, take the word “snipe,” which has several possible denotations based on context. “Snipe” in one instance means to shoot a gun from a distance or concealed location, while in another case, it can mean to issue an attack against a person or their work. Thus, when one adds “snipe” into the thesaurus, the original word is in the center, while the various possible synonyms branch out from that point, with different “stems” representing each different possible denotations.

So, with “snipe,” we might get something like this:

Credit: dictionary.com

Once the application is open, users can select from numerous display, language and interface options. In 3D display mode, users can rotate the map around and then click on other associated words to pull up their respective synonyms. Choose your test word or two carefully. You can apparently only enter a few before you have to pay. Bummer.

Hella uncool, or, hella no!

I’ve never liked this word and think it takes the English language, dare I say civilization, back about 500 years, but apparently

UC Davis physics student Austin Sendek is petitioning the International System of Units to declare hella as the official designation of 10 to the 27th power, or, a trillion trillions. As in, The word hella is used by people in NorCal hella times a day.

So,”hella” is now grouped with “uber,” “totes” and “full on” as California-drenched words that are slowly eroding the fabric of society.

Here’s the rest of the hella goofy story from this source, which lists these other totally far-out words:

*Epic. The diameter of the observable universe is 1.4 epicmeters, dude!

*Gnarly. 1,000 yottabytes is gnarlybytes. That’s gnar gnar bytes. Dude.

*Dude, alternately, lebowski. Dude, the mass of the earth is six lebowskigrams.

*Insane. The power of the sun is 0.3 insanewatts.

*Have we said dude yet? Dude, people in SoCal use the word dude, like, dude times a day. It is still less annoying than hella.

Sendek’s Facebook page for the cause currently has 32,612 fans, and he’s created a company that sells MakeHellaOfficial merchandise. Still, Sendek admits that the odds of his petition being a success are “hella small.”