not_Scyess

Is that an old phrase? Because I thought it was a They Might Be Giants lyric.

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it was my understanding that they took the phrase from somewhere else...

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Our liability coverage is zero. Our balls however are enormous.

Results are inconclusive.

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peddling the funny around since 09/24/2002

Misdirected or not, I think I pretty much said all that I needed to say on the subject.

It all comes back to not being able to please everyone. Apparently, you can't avoid offending people, either. For example, I just recieved an email from my brother's retarded girlfriend a few days ago stating that she is offended about where I live. I had no idea geography could be so offensive.

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Mediocrity at its most average.

Maybe the girlfriend-in-law thinks there are too many niggots and fagbacks in your neighborhood, Chicka? It's pretty easy to tell the people who got Geography and Art Appreciation classes mixed up. It was pretty funny when my sister ranked on her apartment complex as "becoming [town we grew up in]" due to the influx of Hispanics playing their 'carnival' music too loud and spending all their time under the hoods of cars in the complex parking lot, checking out her tight haunches every time she'd take out the trash.

If it hasn't been injected already (I only read the first and third page of this), gay columnist Dan Savage used to demand that letters to the column be addressed as "Hey Faggot" as a way to take the language back. I've heard gay men use the word "Faggot" many times, in regard to the more swishy, flaming members of the community -- same as I've heard black friends call the less model black citizens (the ones who enforce the stereotypes by being lazy or dishonest, the criminals or drains on the help systems) "niggers".

Anyone else miss Polish jokes?

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Say something cryptic then leave snickering.

attitudechicka

Well, you knew the risks when you moved to Killwhitey, Ireland...

And as for "avoiding offending people", I totally agree. An editor I once worked with made the observation that "too many Americans believe that free speech only applies to people who agree with them."

themushroom

I've heard people embracing their own hate-speech as well.  I've also seen people start fistfights with total strangers, take people to civil court, and lose their television shows on A&E over use of those words.  It goes both ways.

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

The reason why it goes both ways is because communication goes both ways. While I'm sure it's happened, I have never heard of anyone losing a job for saying "I am a [classification]", it's almost always when someone says "You are a [classification]" that things happen.

Additionally, if a person calls himself a 'nigger', those around him will probably say "well duh" or some other expression that no one is surprised that the speaker is black. It's visible most of the time. Gets a little trickier if someone says "I am gay" because this isn't always apparent (not all gays walk this way, talk with a lisp, dress in bright colors, or joke about sucking cock every other minute)... as in, Jethro never knew he hated Bob after being a kindly neighbor for years until that moment.

There's a time and a place for everything, and a way. The higher up a ladder one is, the more the presumption exists one won't use the base language -- this is what slapped Mel Gibson and Michael Richards upside the head, some people might be thinking similar things as what they said that got them in trouble but we hardly expect these guys to say them out loud! And off with their heads for saying it even if we repeat the same shit daily in our own heads.

 

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themushroom

OK, I can see your point here, and I can even concede to it. Then again, we'd be talking about quite a liberal boss, one who hears her employees calling themselves [classification] in casual conversation, and doesn't at least remind them that they're in a professional environment. Or, for that matter, doesn't question their decision to hire someone who so closely identifies with a term denoting "lowest common denominator amongst my type of people". But then again, I work around people who reach for the smelling salts if I utter "dammit" too loudly, so this opinion probably has more to do with personal experience.

themushroom

This I have to disagree with, at least from a personal perspective (I can't speak for everyone, after all). I have no trouble whatsoever thinking of black people and gay people as "jerks", "lowlifes", "assholes", "fuckwads", "scumbags", "dipshits", "dickheads", and, on occasion, "a nice person". The same goes for cripples, women, Arabs, telemarketers, and just about everyone else, really. OK, maybe not furries. But non-furries are all equal in my book, and I don't need a special set of words to segregate one race's dumb-assery from the rest of the dumb-ass pool.

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

ZMannZillachange the word "need" to "prefer" and you'll be a bit closer to understanding why your "perfectly usable words" are perfectly user-specific

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what if nigger meant kite

So a Jew, an Arab, and a black guy walk into a bar.

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the kid's getting old, the kid's getting old

ZmannZilla: Glad that we can agree on plenty of points. :) I've worked in places where looking both directions when coming to a hallway intersection was mistaken for sexual harassment (someone though I was scoping out the approaching person's tits), while in others like my current temp gig you could practically discuss eating babies and no one would bat an eye. Yes, a good supervisor will say "now, now, we're at work" or something stronger if [classification] is used -- and good employees will remember that before using such words in the workplace. There's a whole different weight to the only black person in the office saying "I'm the office nigger" (meaning token black) verses a white person saying "I'm the office nigger" (meaning the one doing the drudge jobs).

Discounting furries, of course, your statement about dumb-assery isn't that far from how I think regarding other people. There was a comedian that said that being prejudice against others based on their skin is stupid because there are plenty of valid reasons to hate someone after you get to know them. Like the other day, when my wife and I were discussing her brother's wife -- I said that I don't dislike her because she's Filipina, I dislike her because she's egotistical and stupid, two charges my wife fully agreed on. I take it the point you disagreed on in that paragraph is whether people are hypocrites and judge 'heroes' by a different scale -- whether it's bad for popular people to say what average people say or at least think. You may not draw a distinction, but do you see others drawing one?

 

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Say something cryptic then leave snickering.

And then, these twin supermodels walk in.

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the kid's getting old, the kid's getting old

CUNT-BUSTER!

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The following statement its true. The previous statement is false

C-C-C-CUNTBO BREAKER

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the kid's getting old, the kid's getting old

themushroom

What I was disagreeing with was the generalization that "we all think those things", which I can say from a personal perspective is untrue. I can, and do, see other people drawing that distinction.

I also think that the real difference between celebrities being taken to task for using those words, as opposed to non-celebrities, has more to do with scale. If you or I used those words, a small amount of people would probably be a bit pissy about it, because only a small amount of people are going to hear about us saying them in the first place. However, celebrities reach a far larger social circle, and so it's only natural that the reaction to celebrities would be far larger. It's not necessarily a higher expectation, just a bigger audience.

mandingo

Yes. I already got that. I even said as much. Repeatedly.

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

ZMannZilla

Yes. I already got that. I even said as much. Repeatedly.

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then what's your argument, my man? if you get that point, then you know you're doing the logical equivalent of stating your favorite color... repeatedly. this is a non-issue without the assumption that others should be made to conform to your preferences on the matter, which you say you aren't saying, and i tend to believe you, or the assumption that people shouldn't be forced, but rather shown the errors of their ways, a sentiment made nonsensical within the framework of relative value systems, a point you say you get. if you're just expressing your opinion, that's cool, but i got the feeling you were trying to convince people of something

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what if nigger meant kite

mandingo

The statement you pointed out was a response to themushroom's previous statement, and was part of that particular sub-discussion, one which had expanded into a different aspect of the topic at hand (namely, the nature of celebrity as related to the use of these words). If this entire discussion were taken as a whole, then yes, it would appear as if I'm trying to argue folks into my own way of thinking. But it's not really like that - my posts in this thread have been aimed at people's individual responses, and were intended to be viewed within the vacuum of that seperate sub-discussion. It's never been about "show them what they're doing wrong", in this case, it's really just a matter of saying "I agree with this part of what you said, I don't agree with this part, and here's why, take it for what it's worth, even if it's nothing."

Another thing I said before was, "This is how I get my shits and giggles." I enjoy discussing this stuff, and will continue to do so for as long as people keep the discussion going. If this thread were about, say, digital art techniques, Nintendo DS, graphic novels, bowling, fishing, creative writing, or any of the other things I have an active interest in, I'd be just as persistent - Not because I'm trying to make a point or change people's minds, but because I like to discuss those things. As it stands, I have my own "user-specific" reasons for taking such an active interest in discussions about race-speak.

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

Why are you guys still arguing with long paragraphs? This thread should be reduced to two-word insults and lolcats by now.

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Mediocrity at its most average.

I think special interest groups just want their own equivalent of the "N" word these days so they can have  personalized be-all and end-all super-offense trigger like black people have.  So now there's the "C" word and the "F" word.  It seems like the increased offensiveness that words like "cunt" and "faggot" have acquired recently is partially a deliberate artificial construct.  Why is "faggot" more offensive than "queer", "fruit", or "homo"?  Why is "cunt" more offensive than "bitch", "whore", or "Mommy"?  Because they've been chosen to function as offendo words?

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

attitudechicka

Better?

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

biped

This sounds a lot like the "chicken v. egg - which came first" argument, to me anyways. Contemporarily speaking, yeah, they seem to be the agreed-upon worst possible slur, but then again, before any current example of "The X Word, Where X Is Equal To The Maximum Level Of Hate I Can Express For Your Kind", there was one before it, and one before that. And even before the word, there was the idea. The Old Testament, for instance, is pretty rough on foreigners, women-folk and homosexuals - granted, there's no USE of racial slurs (at least none I remember), but the ideas were there.

I guess what makes them "the MOST offensive word of the lot" could have something to do with the consensus of members of the offended group, however I'd also be willing to bet that it has a lot to do with the frequency and context with which the word is used by people attacking said group.

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

holy shit. this thread's still goin?

some of you, and i'm not naming any names, have way too much time on their hands.

seriously, can't we just fling poo at each other?

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Kill Whitey.

I just want to know, am I still allowed to giggle like a schoolgirl when Bowie sings "wop wop wop" in "Golden Years"?

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I has a flavor!

No, that's the "W" word.

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Legend, oh legend, the third wheel legend...always in the way.

AngryAmerican

You can if you want to, I don't have time right now. I still have a six-page discertation to put together on the origins of my opinions and why they rule.

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"He was cursed with a horrorshow of a face, like Guiseppe Archbold doing a study of mollusk tumors."

All I want to know is, why has no one quoted and dissected MY intellectual contribution to this debate?

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The following statement its true. The previous statement is false