Gaffer Tape

Don't worry, everyone.  I've already stopped.

...

DAMNIT!!!

You might know him as Captain Tightpants from Firefly.

TV's Frink said:

C3PX said:

Yeah, I can kind of see you being the type who easily becomes addicted to things.

5406 posts in less than a year is not an addiction!!!

*sob*

(5407 now...)

What the hell?!  I'd never bothered to notice your post count before!  At this rate, you'll surpass my carefully-accumulated-over-five-years post count in just a few more months!  THIS CANNOT BE ALLOWED!!!

Well, I'm flattered, but Xbox has just never done it for me.  And as far as I can see, their catalog is mostly FPS and other shooters, and those games just aren't my forte.

I never thought the time would come when I'd be so out of the loop of the video game thread.

Well, I'm sorry, but I haven't yet limbered up today.

Wouldn't that be chepassgamer.com?

Everybody, everybody, don't get excited.  I'm sure the change will be something perfectly reasonable and horrifying:  Vader yelling, "NOOOOOOOO!" from the end of Revenge of the Sith.  I know that would cause me to flee in terror.

Wow, that's pretty cool.  I also enjoyed reading the description.

I agree.  A bear caught in a bear trap probably could use a hug.

Hmm. Nobody's on my nerves.  I hope I'm on nobody's nerves.

Well, ultimately, I am reminded of the very last quote in that Wikipedia article:

"In theory, you, I and the columnist next door will defend to the death our right to say 'niggardly'. But in practice, will we use it?"

I feel we've done a good job in defending the use of language and education while condemning hypersensitivity and lynch-mob mentalities in regards to race.  But, ultimately, it doesn't matter.  We will lose in the grand scheme of things due to paranoid political correctness.

EDIT:  Oh, and I sniggered at niggled.  Maybe that's taking it a bit too far, but I honestly didn't even think of the implications when I initially constructed that sentence and only laughed about it after I made the realization that I was actually using "sniggered" in the context of this conversation.

I see fireworks

I see the pageant and pomp and parade

I hear the bells ringing out

I hear the pageants roar

Etc...

Eh, I'm not exactly fond of meat... ball form or elliptical form or phallic form or even sarlacc form.

Well, I'm not sure exactly if this proves or disproves anything, but I did take this opportunity to contact a friend of mine who just finished her junior year at the high school I graduated from six years ago and ask if she was familiar with the word.  To my surprise, she told me it had appeared in her vocabulary book, and she did know what it meant.  And keep in mind that my high school is in Mississippi, a state that doesn't exactly have a sparkling reputation when it comes to public education (ie. if we're not bottom in the nation, we're pretty damned close).

So make of that what you will.

1776, hmm?  I seem to recall some handsome, talented young videographer tackled that subject once upon a time.

EyeShotFirst said:

Gaffer Tape said:

Ugh.  Why are they rebooting this franchise?  It's only been three years since the last one!  That was the amount of time in between the second and third movie!  Couldn't they at least give the old series a decade or so to get cold first?  I mean, continuing the same film continuity with new actors would be bad enough, but THIS?!

Yeah, but after Spider-Man 3, The franchise needs all the help it can get. That movie sucked.

Maybe so (although it was flawed, I still enjoyed it), but it did bring everything to a conclusion.  When franchises conclude, they don't need help.  They just need the respect to be allowed to end gracefully.

Sure you can, at least with me.  If things ever start to get heated, we call it off and take a moment.  I don't take offense easily.  I admit I'm sensitive, but I rarely just assume a friend is trying to seriously take the piss out of me.  But like I said, always feel free to let me (or anyone else here for that matter) know if I go too far as well, because I certainly don't want to hurt anyone's feelings, and give me the benefit of the doubt that I would certainly not intend to.

So, carrying on...

Warbler said:

except he wasn't on trial.

let me put it this way.   We back when this originally happened and first heard the word niggardly, which sounds just like the n-word with a suffix added to it.   You never never heard nor knew anything about the word niggardly.   If you had to bet your whole life savings on whether or not niggardly had something to do with the n-word, and you couldn't look it up or do any research on it,  what would you do?  I bet that it had something to do with the n-word cause 99% of the time, I'd be right.   This was just the 1% that I wouldn't be. 

Except he was on trial.  Not an official one.  But he lost his job over it.  Debating over someone's job is not an instance where you have to bet everything in a single moment without the aid of any kind of resource materials.  And it certainly isn't an instance where it should be.  Not that I think that's what happened in this scenario.  I really think it's more of a case of bowing down to pressure.  Playing the racism card is really an easy out for pretty much everything.  It's the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.  And it's because of that that the idiot aide isn't the focal point of this controversy.  HE should be.  Because he passed from ignorance to idiocy when he lost a man his job on a ridiculous, trumped-up charge, without bothering to educate himself before foolishly playing the race card.

I'm not sure if you read through the whole Wikipedia article I linked to, but this is what Julian Bond, then head of the NAACP had to say about the incident:

"You hate to think you have to censor your language to meet other people's lack of understanding", he said. "David Howard should not have quit. Mayor Williams should bring him back — and order dictionaries issued to all staff who need them."

Also, according to Wikipedia:  "Bond also said, 'Seems to me the mayor has been niggardly in his judgment on the issue' and as a nation we have a 'hair-trigger sensibility' on race that can be tripped by both real and false grievances."

So, yes, a quote from not only a black man, but a black man in the number one position of wanting to stop racism against black people condemning the reaction of ignorant, overly-sensitive people.  Because he realizes, I'm sure, that playing the race card prematurely and being hypersensitive will do nothing to either further race relations or further intellectual enlightenment.

Warb, I think you're confusing the word ignorant.  Again, it's not an insult.  It just means a lack of knowledge.  You admitted you did not know what niggardly meant.  Therefore, you were ignorant to its meaning, just like I am ignorant in the realm of cars.  "Reasonable" and "ignorant" aren't antonyms.  They aren't in any way related, actually.  If these "reasonable" people you mention didn't know what the word niggardly meant, they're still ignorant, no matter how reasonable they are. 

My main problem is that this reeks of a reversal of "innocent until proven guilty."  Just like in the Politics thread before, I get the impression that you take circumstantial evidence and assume someone is racist due to related, but not necessarily damning, information.  Like when you insinuated earlier in this thread that a person who uses the word "niggardly" might just be using it because they're aware of its connection to the other word and have some hidden, racially insensitive meaning. 

Just to make it clear, I'm not trying to call you out.  I'm genuinely enjoying this debate, and I hope you are too.  If not, or if you feel I'm saying anything out of line, let me know, and I'll lay off.  But if you're willing to keep going, so am I, and you can feel free not to hold back.

Ugh.  Why are they rebooting this franchise?  It's only been three years since the last one!  That was the amount of time in between the second and third movie!  Couldn't they at least give the old series a decade or so to get cold first?  I mean, continuing the same film continuity with new actors would be bad enough, but THIS?!

Oh, whoops.  Sorry, Warb.  I should add that when I said I "didn't get" what was up with that word, I didn't meant that I don't know why it's considered offensive.  I certainly do, and I should also mention that I never say that word (although it's equal parts not wanting to offend and not wanting to be beaten up).  What I meant by that statement was in what I said later:  that members of the same group of people can both lobby for its status as the filthiest, most offensive word but simultaneous use it as a silly slang word.  That's what I don't get, not the reason for its offensiveness.

Yes.  You were ignorant.  That's nothing to be ashamed of.  But it shouldn't be up to ignorant people to decide these things.  For example, I am ignorant when it comes to cars.  Therefore, someone shouldn't come ask me if their car is broken or not because I wouldn't be an authority.  But if you don't know what a word means, a simple trip to the dictionary would be all that's required to clear anything up.  And if somebody has never even heard of this particular word before, why in the world would they immediately feel comfortable in assuming it has anything to do with that other word?  If something I didn't know anything about made me uncomfortable, I would immediately find out more about it to make sure I had a legitimate grievance before running up and making a fool of myself.

And I'll know you'll (rightfully) argue that this example has a much more common word, but having to "immediately explain himself" (which an innocent person shouldn't have to do) is silly.  It would be like saying, "My pop, and by that I mean my father.  It has nothing to do with the derogatory term for Italians."  I mean, where does it end?

And then, of course, are the cases where teachers have been fired or asked to resign or issue apologizes for using the word in academia?  Talk about shooting yourself in the foot!  Teaching the word in schools is precisely the way to END the ignorance and avoid situations where people fly off the handle for no reason.  But instead they succumb to the pressure and punish people for TEACHING, see, EDUCATING a purely innocuous word.

Sigh, I really hate political correctness gone mad.

Warbler said:

to be honest,  until that incident with David Howard, I hadn't ever heard of the word niggardly.    To use such an unusual word, knowing how similar it sounds and is spelled to the n-word,   and not immediately explain the difference between the two words is asking for trouble.   David Howard(unless he is real stupid) had to know that what is said was going to be misinterpreted.   

No, no, no, Warb!  That's terrible logic!  Again, see my mention of the word "snigger."  Should we remove any word that sounds remotely like other offensive words just because we're afraid IGNORANT PEOPLE (not an insult, just a statement of fact) are not familiar with certain words and will take them the wrong way?  I'm sorry, but I don't feel comfortable censoring myself just because other people don't know better.

C3PX said:

*snip*

Yes, yes.  I do love a quote in that article that mockingly says we should stop saying "snigger" because it's too close to that other word.  I'm certainly not in favor of anyone saying hate speech that offends anybody, but I just can't wrap my head around this particular word.  First off, I've always been of the mind that a word or symbol only has the particular meaning that a context imbues itself with.  I believe we talked about this in the Politics thread last fall.  And apparently this particular word started out in a very benign context.  But my main beef is that, if it's so terrible a word to use, why are those insulted with it okay with using it in regards to one another?  I mean, it's a bit of a leap between "terrible offensive hate word" and "modern slang."

But, yeah, it's really the oversensitivity that gets me, particularly in regards to niggardly.  I honestly can't believe there's ever been a real controversy over that.  Anyone with the least bit of sense should look at that and immediately laugh it out of court.  But the sad thing is, that word is going to die.  Why?  Because white people are genuinely afraid of getting fired/beaten up/called a racist.

Aw, come on.  No one wants to discuss the suppression of the English language when people confuse a totally innocuous word like 'niggardly' for... that other word and actually cause people to lose their jobs over it?  Not that it's as amazing as seeing a Sailor Moon-themed Sparta, but still...