By now everyone has seen or heard about Michael Richards losing it and spouting the "N word" while on stage at a comedy club in California. Not only did he come out with it, but he repeated it so many times I thought it was part of his routine. God bless the media for blowing it up larger than life itself and letting me know otherwise.
I mean, what would I have done or become if I had never known?
The truth be known, my life probably wouldn't have changed an iota without the education. And now with it, not so much, either.
Sure it was offensive. He intended it to be. But that doesn't make it lethal or truly injurous beyond someone's ego, regardless.
If those of us who can do so, were to call on the memory of the late Lenny Bruce we would see that he was a champion of trying to bring the "N word" and just about every other ethnic label and stereo type to their knees by pointing out that they were all, after all, simply words and in fact meaningless. And more to the point, these words were benign in their own right. It was Bruce's contention that it was our own sensitivity that was the malignancy. That and the nasty habit of human nature that creates these nicknames and euphemisms to further drive wedges between all cultures on a global scale. His repetition of the N word, the K word, the W word, the S word...you name the "word" he used them all over and over again in an attempt to desensitize us to them.
If the same words "Kramer" used had come from say, Eddie Murphy or Redd Foxx and was equally inclusive of the wrath that Richards felt he was somehow justified in publicly delivering, it would have never made YouTube, let alone the national news for 72 hours.
Certainly not when there's a whole lot more going on at this minute that hangs like the sword of Damocles over billions of people suffering the uncertainties and injustices of the human condition on this planet.
Forget the label folks and our differences will fade away, as well they should have by now.
The real offense of this whole "racist" incident...(I personally consider it a linguistics incident myself and little more) was the comment made by fellow comedian Paul Rodriguez who opined that "Even freedom of speech has its limitations..."
This is the only genuinely offensive and, yes, frightening thing I heard uttered with regard to the incident in the last three days!
Because when we start to believe that "freedom" of speech has any limitations what so ever, we're not only buying in to a whole 'nuther package than the one laid out by our constitution and the dreams of our founding fathers, but we're pretty much making a conscious choice between limitations AND freedom.
To accept the two concepts spoken in tandem and forget that they are mutually exclusive, is to accept an oxymoron of the highest order.
You either live with freedom or you live with limitations.
And so...while a few patrons of the Laugh Factory may have felt offended by what was said from the stage, I think the real problem, the real erosion of the fabric of our society and culture was ultimately dealt by the interviews afterwards.
By the way...have you ever heard Paul Rodriguez' routine especially in his younger days? I thought his depictions of street Latinos and blacks were often irreverent and could have been regarded by many as offensive. But I simply found him to be a funny guy, just like Michael Richards, actually. Rant or no rant. The words are the same, whether the passion was or not.
But Oh, I stand (somehow) corrected. He was, after all speaking of "his own". So that was perfectly acceptable.
Until that is, you realize that the worst ethnic slur and divisive remark that has been spoken for decades in this country and others is this whole attitude that, "I can talk about my own and call them anything I like but you can't talk the same way about my own! Because they happen to be MY own"...It's just an elitist wedge that keeps us from recognizing and accepting the fact that we're all really all from the same damned family after all.
And there really is no "(insert letter here)-word that can change any of that...unless you choose to buy in to it because you find it satisfying to have some illusionary badge of honor that sets you apart from that which you can never subtract yourself from in the first place. Well, that's the way it would seem until you're offended by mere words spoken to you from the stage of a small comedy club somewhere.
It's just a word, an outdated and tired label.
Stop using it to distance yourself and perhaps others will use it less.
Doing anything less to put an end to constantly being offended when other people (not of "your own") use it and then claiming you've been offended is pure bullshit!
Oops. Now I've offended the bovines!
