Meathead's World

Meathead's World

How sad is it when CNN, a NEWS network, devotes time to something like this when there are so MANY other events that could be covered?

So a comedian called out a couple of people who had been heckling him at a comedy club. So what?

So he used a word that only one group of people can use without fear of reprisal. So what?

What has America, "Land of the Free"(tm), come to when a mere word (in this case, nigger) can end someone's career, or at least put a limping career out of its misery? What does the word mean? Seriously.

What does the N-Word mean?
According to the Merriam Webster dictionary:

Main Entry: nig·ger
Pronunciation: 'ni-g&r
Function: noun
Etymology: alteration of earlier neger, from Middle French negre, from Spanish or Portuguese negro, from negro black, from Latin niger
1 usually offensive; see usage paragraph below : a black person
2 usually offensive; see usage paragraph below : a member of any dark-skinned race
3 : a member of a socially disadvantaged class of persons
usage Nigger in senses 1 and 2 can be found in the works of such writers of the past as Joseph Conrad, Mark Twain, and Charles Dickens, but it now ranks as perhaps the most offensive and inflammatory racial slur in English. Its use by and among blacks is not always intended or taken as offensive, but, except in sense 3, it is otherwise a word expressive of racial hatred and bigotry.

Hmmm...so, the N-word means black.
And the black americans object to being called the N-word. It's a word that has been reserved, through pop-culture, as usable only by one class or group of people and whose use by anyone not of that race incites charges of racism and hatred.

Funny, but I don't recall ever reacting as violently as I have seen blacks react to being called the N-word when someone has called me a fag, a slope, a chink, a slant, a cracker, whitey, etc. Why is it that a little 6 letter word so inflames one race, but similar insults thrown at other races don't prodice the same reaction?

Hopefully someone can help me understand this, because as a nitro-hauling, slant-eyed, dry-cleaning penny-pinching chinkie, I just don't get the furor that shutting down a heckler has caused.

I'm not trying to start a blogspot flame-war, I'm really trying to understand. And I know that some of the first responses that I will get will be of the "You don't understand, you're not black and your people were never enslaved..." but I'd like to point out that for decades, Chinese immigrants were paid less than nothing, forced to carry unstable nitroglycerine and tri-nitro-toluene into rail tunnels while being held hostage in the American west to build railways for the white man. I have been denied a hotel room in the American South, I have been spit on by people in my home land of China and politely ignored in Scotland, my other homeland. I have been on the other end of racism, but of all the epithets I have had thrown at me, I never understood the furor over the N-word...

Meathead's World

Meathead's World

Murder Suspect Gunned Down by Police

Recently, and I'm talking yesterday recently, I found out some shicking and saddening news. Yesterday morning, an online friend of mine was stabbed to death in a domestic dispute with her husband. He was later gunned down by the Philadelphia Police when he came at them with a knife.

I wanted to take a few minutes to pass on my condolences to her teenage sons and to the rest of her family. I know that these are difficult times, but the night is always darkest just before the dawn and the new day will bring new hope and hopefully the start of the healing process.

You are gone, Louise, but not forgotten. Your legacy in photographs lives on. We shall not forget you or David.