We have loved Kathy Griffin because she is an outsider and a rebel. What,
then, happens when your favorite celebrity stone-thrower becomes a
fawning morass of sentimentality instead of a biting, vicious,
cutting-edge-funny razor?
We have wondered here in the past about the cultural constrictions we press into skin color, and a related and deeper issue is one of darker skin — Black skin in particular — and how it is socially demonized by negative, historical, intellectual and emotional touchstones associated with “Blackness.”
I love words. I love writing words. I love reading words. I love hearing words. I have a new WordPunk blog that deals with “words in the wilds.” The power of words is in their definition. Words have meanings only because they are shared in context and understood between people. Dictionaries help bridge the fuzzy confusion between definition and meaning. Imagine, then, my delight and horror in receiving this email from a university professor friend of mine:
Word came down from above that we are no longer allowed to use “niggle” or “niggly” or any variety thereof in writing or speaking with students because “they sound and look too much like that other word” (the N-word) and we don’t “want to upset the student body.” I thought they were joking at first until I also saw a warning against using “spook” in class, too.
On Monday, four star Marine General Peter Pace — speaking in his current role as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for the United States military — said, like adultery, being Gay is immoral and that Gays should not be allowed to “openly” serve their country in the armed forces.
Over 65,000 gay and lesbian soldiers currently serve in the military under the current “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” fallacy of a policy that General Pace, pictured below, must enforce.
Continue reading → Duplicity and Immorality: Women and Gays in the Military
In a recent article, The Bitch or The Black?!: The Politics of Division, we examined our national cultural prejudices in the light of settling new history in America: What would happen if we had the first Black president or the first female president?
Continue reading → President of the United States: Muslim or Native American?
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