Okay, this is a touchy subject. If you're looking to get pissed off or up in arms about a particular topic not concerning the government and the Bush administration, then this is the place for you.
I, of course, am referring to Armando's diary from yesterday about the "C-word." And no, the word isn't "chasm."
Warning: everything after the jump will be fully spelled out.
I think we have to start our reasoned conversation with this Lenny Bruce bit:
"What did he say? ïAre there any niggers here tonight?' Jesus Christ! Does he have to get that low for laughs? Wow! Have I ever talked about the schwarzes when the schwarzes had gone home? Or spoken about the Moulonjohns when they'd left? Or placated some Southerner by absence of voice when he ranted and raved about nigger nigger nigger?"
Are there any niggers here tonight? I know that one nigger who works here, I see him back there. Oh, there's two niggers, customers, and, ah, aha! Between those two niggers sits one kike-- man, thank God for the kike! Uh, two kikes. That's two kikes, and three niggers, and one spic. One spic-- two, three spics. One mick. One mick, one spic, one hick, thick, funcky, spunky boogey. And there's another kike. Three kikes. Three kikes, one guinea, one greaseball. Three greaseballs, two guineas. Two guineas, one hunky funky lace-curtain Irish mick. That mick spic hunky funky boogey. Two guineas plus three greaseballs and four boogies makes usually three spics. Minus two Yid spic Polack funky spunky Polacks.
AUCTIONEER: Five more niggers! Five more niggers!
GAMBLER: I pass with six niggers and eight micks and four spics.
The point? That the word's suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. If President Kennedy got on television and said, "Tonight I'd like to introduce the niggers in my cabinet,: and he yelled "nig- gerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggergigger" at every nigger he saw, "boogeyboogeyboogeyboogeyboogey,nig-gerniggerniggernigger" till nigger didn't mean anything any more, till nigger lost its meaning-- you'd never make any four-year-old "nigger" cry when he came home from school.
Get the point yet? No? Okay, Armando is trying to suppress free speech for speech that sounds more comfortable to him and to a lot of other people, too. The c-word, or "cunt" can definitely be substituted for the n-word, or "nigger" in this case.
Let's take a look at what Armando had to say:
one might compare to the offense with profanity - which we have faced often here. I reject that comparison. Profanity which does not rely on racial or sexual or ethnic or orientation epithets is simply not comparable to that that does.
Asshole does not equal K-K-.
Bullshit does not equal Spi-.
Fuck does not equal Nigg--.
Prick does not equal c--t.
Son of Bitch does not equal fagg--.
I think this is obvious. An asshole is a personal attack of someone behavior. I am an asshole as is well known. But to call me a spi- asshole is offensive. I would hope that it is obvious why.
At the very least, I hope that liberals can understand that the words on the right above simply do not add to the discourse - they detract from it.
An insistence on using those words strikes me as an act of bad faith to the Progressive Discourse. Whatever you may think, understand that it gets in the way of your point. And why would you want to do that?
To me, "progressive discourse" means anything goes. It's discourse unlimited. If you try to limit it, it's not progressive.
Further, words only have power if you give them power. "Cunt," or "nigger" or "spic" are not magic words. They can only hurt you if you let them. Remember the old adage, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me." That's the old-fashioned way of making Lenny's point.
I'm not interested in the origins of these words. I'm only interested in what they mean to you now and why they mean what they mean. To me, you can ban a word, but you can never ban hate, intolerance or feelings of superiority. What does that mean? It means that if you had the power to ban one word, then another word will be created to take its place. Therefore, it makes no sense to object to the word "cunt." What does make sense is to object to the idea that women are inferior, or blacks are inferior, or spics are inferior. It's not the words that matter. It's the prejudice behind the words.
Okay, having said all that, I still say that the best way to get a woman to act like a cunt is to call her one. So use it at your own risk.
hink