What Makes A Word Offensive?

What Makes A Word Offensive?

A cranky opinion for

Cranky Opinion Saturday

The following is the opinion of a cranky old man.  Opposing positions are welcome (wrong, but welcome) but please, no name calling.  And that means you…you big stupid-head

Boy do I miss George Carlin.  He was a word master.  I did not particularly like his politics, but I admired the way he could put any politician in his place.  (OR HER place…jeez do I have to say “his or her” for the rest of my life?  When you speak Spanish do you have to say “la or las” in front of every noun?...sorry to get off track.)

Anyway.

Carlin knew the power of words, and he knew how to take the power away from them.  His “Seven words you can’t say on TV” masterfully put the silliness of “dirty words” in perspective.

What makes a word bad?

George pointed out that is perfectly alright to “prick your finger," but it is taboo to "finger your prick!”

Why can you say caca, poop, turd, or doody but the world recoils when you say shit? What makes referring to your penis as your ding-a-ling, member, pee pee, willy, pecker or trouser snake acceptable, but the world gasps at the word cock?

Most people hate the word nigger.  It is not a nice word, especially when it is directed at someone, but are we really so sensitive that we need to refer to it as the “n-word?” 

What is more meaningful, “I hate the n-word”, or “I hate the word nigger?”  If you walked up to a Shaquille O’Neil and said, “Hey Shaq, I think you are a lazy n-word” do you think he would sink his size 21 boot less far up your ass than if you said “nigger?”

If you tap dance around a word, you give it power, confront it and it weakens.

A crucial scene in “Brian’s Song,” the story of the relationship between Gale Sayers a Hall-of-Fame black football player and Brian Piccolo his white back-up involves the word nigger.  In an effort to spur Gale onto a tough rehabilitative workout, Brian calls Gale a nigger.  Given the relationship the two had it was so out of character for Brian Piccolo to use this word that Gale Sayers broke into uncontrollable laughter.  The last time I saw this movie on TV, they replaced nigger with BEEP.  If you had not seen the movie you might have thought Brian called Gale a shit, or a fuck, or an asshole, or worse. 

Thank you TV people from protecting me from that awful word, allowing everyone to decide what Gale Sayers was really called and pretty much ruining a crucial and poignant scene.

Maybe TV is right.  Maybe politically correct elimination of a word is the right thing to do.  Maybe we cannot handle certain words regardless of the context.  Maybe we should rewrite “Mark Twain” and "Huckleberry Finn.”

Or maybe.

We could all just grow up.  There is nothing wrong with the word nigger, or kike, or wop, or honkey, or spic, or gook.  They are just words. The words are fine; it is the context of their usage that makes them ugly.  If you don’t like these words, they are no less ugly when we call them the n-word, or the c-word, or the g-word, or if we just use “beep” to keep everyone guessing.

I try to use words responsibly in my posts.  I often substitute friggin for fucking, shoot for shit, and dipstick for dickhead. But there are times when I deem it appropriate to use the real word.

I assume my readers can handle it or they would not be my readers, and please, don’t refer to me as the C-word Old Man.

The preceding was the opinion of a cranky old man, and not necessarily that of management…Mrs. Cranky.