When did it become wrong to have an opinion? Why do people continue to suck up? Please, someone break down this politically correct society before I am pushed to the limit.
Example #1:
While answering questions from the crowd at the team's Fan Appreciation Day at training camp on Friday, Gibbs said: "I know we don't have any Dallas people here - they are the ugliest people in the world."
Gibbs later stressed that he was joking, but he felt the need to address the matter again after Saturday's scrimmage against the Baltimore Ravens.
"I tried to make a joke," Gibbs said. "I was joking. It didn't come out probably like a joke or like it should've. I hope all my buddies in Dallas - because I've got a lot of buddies down there - took it the right way. I hope they thought it was a joke.
Are you kidding me? He can't even say Cowboys fans are the ugliest people in the world? Oh no! That's horrible! Please Mr. Gibbs, issue and immediate apology in case someone somewhere gets offended.
Example # 2: (This Starts with SF Giants manager Felipe aloe)
"He came to apologize to me? You have to be kidding me," Alou said Saturday, one day after the suspension. "There's no way to apologize for such a sin."
Alou said he wasn't in position to accept an apology on behalf of the "hundreds of millions" of people offended earlier this week when Krueger went on the Giants' flagship station, KNBR, and went off about the struggling club and its "brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly."
"All of these people have been offended by this idiot," Alou said. "I can't speak for hundreds of millions of people. This guy offended hundreds of millions of people."
KNBR program director Bob Agnew said all comments on the subject would come from Tony Salvadore, the station's senior vice president. Salvadore did not immediately return a message left on his cell phone seeking comment. KNBR owns approximately 1.5 percent of the team.
An unhappy Felipe Alou says he will no longer do his pregame radio show. Krueger, who apologized on the air Thursday and offered to apologize to the team, will not be on the radio again until Aug. 15. In his comments after Wednesday night's game he also criticized Alou, saying "you have a manager in Felipe whose mind has turned to Cream of Wheat."
Okay, lets analyze this for a moment. The first inflammatory quote is "brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly." I don't think singling out 'carribean' players is necessarily racist, simply because Caribbean is not a derogatory name for any ethnic group. It is an ethnic group. That's all. So all I can infer from the outrage is they think it means they're stupid for swinging at slop all night. So lets see-Caribbean players=stupid. If that's the formula, then I can see it's an insult. If they he said, white players swinging at slop all night, I guess I would feel a little singled out, and maybe even a little pissed. Though I doubt it. How many Olive Garden commercials showing barely literate Italians do I see , yet they don't offend me. Am I to get mad at The Simpson's for the Italian chef with the horrible accent? Or that Fat Tony D'Amico is a mobster? I don't think so. In fact, Matt Groening, creator of the simpsons has said Irish and Italians are the only ethnic groups they can make fun of with minimal complaints. I wonder why that is?
But anyway, should this guy have to issue an apology because he has an ignorant opinion? Is apologizing for a dumb off the cuff remark really going to do anything? The next quote: "you have a manager in Felipe whose mind has turned to Cream of Wheat". People are saying it's an insult because of the picture on the box of Cream Of Wheat. Now that's ridiculous. I'm sure he used it in a way of saying 'his mind is mush'. Insulting as that alone is, this is a radio jocks opinion. That's all. So he sounds like an idiot, so what? Are we this uptight as a society now, that any mention that could be stretched into an insult by any minimally creative person has to be retracted immediately? What happened to let a moron be a moron? You made your bed, now sleep in it? Now the saying is, you made your bed, now apologize, lie, and make it again until we all agree you can go to sleep. It's a really sad state of affairs right now. It has been getting progressively worse since the mid eighties and the whole Tipper Gore led PMRC started tackling the music issue.
How many of these people are there? 5? A million ? Ten Million? Whatever it is, I can assure you we out number them. And it's about time we do something about it.
Sunday, August 07, 2005
Our Balls Are Tied In A 'PC' Double Not
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4 Comments:
Unrelated to the post, sorry.
Taxi Driver is one of my favourites and that photo you've got as your profile picture is one of the sexiest DeNiro photos I've ever seen. My favourite scene is when he's sitting on the couch and he lifts his bloody hand to blow his brains out. Absolutely breathtaking. I just ordered a fabulous Taxi poster offline the other day and I'm waiting impatiently for it to arrive.
Hey, I have your favorite scene as my avatar over at the DVD Verdict forums. Kick ass minds think alike.
OK. So PC language codes don't matter to you. Let's think carefully about this.
So. What is the difference between Jay-Z using the word "n*gger" to describe a brother affectionately in a song and a old, white Southern man yelling "n*gger" at a black man standing in the middle of a town mob?
It's just words, right? And they don't matter?
Seems to me like words have power and meaning. They connect us to each other and to the society in which we live. They have their own histories and they can change they way think and feel.
So, this word: n*gger. The identity of the speaker matters. The context matters. The intent matters. And its history as a word matters.
We can't discount its connection to the history of lynching and violence and chaining men up to the back of pickup trucks and dragging them until they bleed to death, like what happened a few years ago in Jasper, TX.
In other words, you calling your neighbor a "twit" is not the same as a white man calling a black man a "n*gger" because there is a history of violence against black men in America and that history is fundamentally -- if mysteriously -- connected to that word.
Hence, we try to avoid the word, unless we're Jay-Z and engaged in the process of reclaiming a nasty word from the powers that be. That's what PC terms dictate. It doesn't change any racist peoples' minds, but let me tell you, it does make some difference. At least racists folks can't go around openly terrorizing people with a word.
So: I get it -- PC stuff is a crock, most of the time. It doesn't change much. And sometimes we're just splitting hairs on things that don't matter. But I'm a writer, and to me, words ARE important. Funny that you should be so convinced otherwise, as a person who crafts ideas out of words -- any writer knows, language is a complicated matter. And it matters what words mean.
Well, lets see, ANONYMOUS. Did I say it's fine for me to go call someone a ni*ger? I mean, I really don't understand where you get that out of this blog entry. This was about a man saying something stupid. He didn't even use a racial slur for god sake! So, he's an idiot guy who lumped all 'brain dead' Carribean players together. That's the extent of it! You have got to be kidding me with this comparison. By the way, I believe it's not the words at all, it's the intent behind them. So going by that logic, the real insult is the intent, correct? Don't you think if these words were just robbed of that intent they would cease to be so insulting to you? There's one way to do this. Use the word in different ways, where there is no intent to hurt. Then , after a while, the word itself does not bring the intent with it. Seems easy enough to me. But how you got here form what I posted is truly on of lifes puzzles.
I guess I don't sufficinetly fit into your typical writer stereotype.
Independent Thought Alarms