Roseanne Barr was canned this week for tweeting something bad (racist). People never learn, don’t twitter in your shorts while downing some brewskies(or pills). In fact, don’t use Twitter, you are just propping up an epic fail company that doesn’t deserve a second life. By using Twitter you are putting your career, and maybe your whole life, in jeopardy. Just say no.
Samantha Bee wasn’t canned for saying something bad although her slurs were arguably much worse. Fortunately she does not live in North Korea or her whole family for generations would end up in labor camps for dissing the supreme leader and his daughter. Whereas VJ wouldn’t get the time of day. So there is a double standard and the first one to shout “racism” wins. Well, no, the first one on the left to do it wins. Anything else goes, C word, no problem. Bash women, fine, filthy remarks about the President and his daughter, fair game.
But don’t utter the phrase “Planet of the Apes” which is now the equivalent of the N word. Who knew? Curiously there are several movies out by the same name and I am pretty sure people are still making money by selling or renting them. So why all the uproar? I admit I thought “Muslim Brotherhood” was the offending phrase but I stand corrected. POA is taboo, but I haven’t a clue why. I googled it and the cerebral critics think there might be “metaphors” drawn between blacks and apes. I suppose there could a metaphor between anybody and anything. Darth Vader should be a banned phrase, for having one James Earl Jones as the voice and having dark clothes.
The Muslim Brotherhood, which is a fact, is much worse than Planet of the Apes which is fiction. I will, however concede that POA, has a much sillier ring to it and could be used as an insult in a variety of childish ways. However, I can insist with certainty that both of those phrases by themselves have nothing to do with racism. MB is a group and POA is a movie. Everyone I think would agree. It is only when you add the complexities of language and culture to the mix do you infringe on race. But then books have been using racist language and treading on racist issues for centuries without being banned, except in Fahrenheit 451. God help us if we lose this right to free speech.
Have you every heard a rap song call anyone an ape? Or a Muslim? Nope, only the N word is bad enough for rappers, that says it all. Now, what about MF’er or C word? Are those racist? Well if you are a woman you may well think so. VJ has to endure Planet of the Apes, Ivanka has to endure feckless C word. Is one worse than the other? Well it depends on how you look at it. If you view it as a emotionally charged race issue, calling a black person an ape may well be the moral equivalent of calling then an N word – although I have been around a long time and I haven’t seen it used as such. However, look at it a little more objectively. An ape may well be a bad word in certain contexts, but only after assigning the worst possible meanings and connotations.
But Planet of the Apes? The movie is now the bad word? I am sorry but that is a huge overreach. That is allowing too much of the English language and pop culture to be claimed as racist. That provides too many opportunities for mediocre wordsmiths and drunken twitterers to make mistakes.The activists and rappers can have the N word and in certain situations they can even have “ape”. and they can even disgrace themselves by calling each other their own banned words with impunity, But they can’t have “Planet of the Apes”, just as they can’t have Star Wars. Not unless they want to pull the movies from the shelves. By same token women, being a protected class as well, are entitled to their own N word and if there ever was one it would be the C word. Feckless C word is even worse.
The process by which you take a phrase meaning one thing and apply to it a whole slew of other sinister meanings is standard in this culture and is now used to destroy careers. Unfortunately it is difficult, or perhaps impossible, to compartmentalize racist, or perhaps offensive, remarks, because there are too many to control. They have been extrapolated to include increasing elements of the culture, contexts and language. There is little that can be freely said anymore without fear of ridicule and consequences.
Regulating the English language isn’t a new phenomenon. Similar stigmas are found all throughout American culture. There is plenty to get upset about if you are a somebody who thinks you, or your ancestors, have been unfairly persecuted or discriminated against. The N word used to be used way back in my generation all the time, in jokes too. But because it was thought to be derogatory it became frowned upon, then a banned substance, now it is used all the time, but only by one subculture of the population that evidently has the moral authority to use it. God forbid somebody uses it in Twitter.
However this process has run amok. Remember the word Sambo? Sambo’s the food chain went out of business because Sambo the name became a bad word. Obviously it wasn’t always a bad word as Sambo’s was very popular just like Denny’s is now, Sambo doesn’t strike me as a bad word. In fact I will bare my soul now and make apologies to the black person I called Sambo some decades ago while playing table soccer with him in college.He got upset and I kind of didn’t know why. Call me naive but to this day nobody quite knows why Sambo is a racist term. :Little Black Sambo was a children’s book written by a mother about 100 years ago. It is a benign story about Tigers turning into butter. It had nothing derogatory to say about race or about Sambo. The book did, however, have different editions with illustrations and portrayals of the little boy Sambo, Not all illustrations were flattering enough for civil rights activists and the rest is history.
Other cultural racial taboos stem from the same progression of discontent. Blackface, Amos and Andy, Stepin Fetchit and so many other pawns in the racism game serving to curtail and control the otherwise free speech and culture we have come to expect and enjoy.