Some people have gotten really upset today, with a diarist who titled his piece something like ..."Trolls: The New Niggers of DailyKos" His diary compared troll-hunters to the Ku Klux Klan, hunting niggers (trolls) down. A lot of people wanted the diary struck, and some have recommended that the diarist be banned. They're saying so, in yet
another diary. Which leads us to today's word:
"Bubblegum"
Now, calm down, everybody. Just...take a deep breath. I want you to say the word "nigger" to yourself, out loud, about 100 times: niggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernigg
erniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerni
ggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggernigger.
Please, people, please. Please follow me below the fold.
If you say the word 'nigger' enough times, then like every other word you repeat, it becomes just an absurd collection of meaningless sounds, stripped of any emotional baggage
(Love strippers. Hate emotional baggage).
I was born black (OK, so I'm not Stephen Colbert) I'll die black, and I'll be black at every moment in between. (Stephen Colbert's new black friend).
When I was a kid, I got called nigger. I hated it. But then, one day, something happened. I stopped being a nigger. (Punched somebody hard) That was a long time ago. And I stopped being offended by the word "nigger" a long time ago, too. Because I stopped believing in magic a long time ago.
If you believe in magic (Black magic) --if you engage in magical thinking -- then you believe that a word has power over someone. (Black Power!)
You engage in magical thinking when you act as if using the word 'nigger' can cause someone else pain, can diminish someone else in the fullness of their humanity, can intimidate someone else, can define someone else. Can change someone else.
In other words, when you practice magical thinking, you believe -- and act out the belief -- that using a word can give you power over someone else. You believe that by hearing the word 'nigger,' a speaker can strip the listener of the listener's power.
I don't believe in magical thinking. Let me repeat that. I don't believe that the word 'nigger' has any power over me, or anyone, at all. And that's the key. (ebony and ivory keys)
Let's test this hypothesis, OK? If one word has that kind of power, then another word must have the same or similar power. Hmmm. Let's try ..."waterbottle:"
waterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlew
aterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottlewaterbottle
Nope. Doesn't do a thing (It's just backwash).
OK, how about ... fishtoaster. Well, let's see: fishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterf
ishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoasterfishtoaster
Unh-unh. Still nothing. (Something fishy about this diary).
Jews recognize and honor the power of The Word, by rendering God, G-d. That is entirely fitting. (It may not be part of my particular religious tradition, but it is fully consistent with it) (Unfortunatley, religious tradition of treating Jews like niggers).
Americans recognize and honor the power of 'nigger' by rendering it 'the n-word.'
Can we agree that this is not fitting? Can we agree not to do this? Can we restore the word 'nigger' to what it really is, which is a collection of sounds to which we have assigned an agreed-upon meaning, but nothing more than that.
The substance of the original diary -- troll-hunting, troll-hunters, trolls ...got no real discussion, because everybody got distracted by the "offensiveness" of his use of the 'nigger.'
But look: if the diarist made a dumb suggestion (viz. --let's rein in troll-hunters), then it was dumb on its own merits. It wasn't any more or less dumb because he used an analogy to make his point. The analogy either works or it doesn't work ... but the words used to make the analogy don't make it any more or less effective, any more or less persuasive -- unless, of course, you think the words he used to make the analogy have a power somehow above and beyond the power of ordinary language to convey an idea. And that's magical thinking in a nutshell. (Bigger nuts than other people's).
Think of where we were with the word 'bitch' 20 years ago. It was already getting to be a little funny because Joan Collins was using it on Dynasty But it still had power; it could stop women in their tracks. It could shut a conversation down. It could hurt feelings.
Then, the hip-hop culture came along and deliberately distorted the sound of it: be-otch! That's now been taken to an extreme: be-yah-yah-yotch! And the power of that word to offend is reduced directly in proportion to how much it has been stretched, distorted, and reduced to its component sounds. The word bitch has no power anymore. Oh, sure; it still has meaning (although even it's meaning is being reduced to a 'felt' and fuzzy concept of ...I dunno, like ... the funny side of someone being unworthy of respect). Whatever else has happened, the word 'bitch' just ain't hardcore anymore.
By the time Vince Vaughn chews it up in Be Cool, it's got nothing to do with women, or moodiness, or nastiness, or much of anything ... it's just funny.
Keep saying the word nigger. Chew it up like a piece of Bazooka bubblegum, then pull it out of your mouth in a loooong string. Wrap it around your fingers. Make a mustache out of it. Just don't get it stuck in your hair. (Especially if your hair is nappy). Stick it on your bedpost at night, then put it back into your mouth in the morning. Chew away that wood-y taste (Your morning woody), until it tastes like bubblegum again. You'll notice something:
The longer you chew the word nigger, the less flavor it has. Just like bubblegum.
And that's the word.