Month: October 2011

Gotta question? askandrew@thedailybeast.com

An instant classic:

"Several recent studies have found that 95 percent of climate scientists are convinced that the planet is rapidly warming as a result of human activity. But a George Mason University-Yale University poll in May found that only 13 percent of the public realizes that scientists have come to that conclusion. You would expect conservatives to stand with 95 percent of the scientific community and to grow the 13 percent into a working majority. Normally, we deal in facts, we accept science and we counter sentiment," – Former Congressman (2010 Tea Party casualty) Bob Inglis (R-SC).

A reader writes:

Here's something I've observed about profanity on television: when it's wiped clean from a show, the dialogue feels inauthentic. You're really telling me that in twenty whole seasons of "Law & Order" no person on that show ever got pissed off enough to drop the f-bomb? Scripted cable shows are more honest when it comes to language. And take "Louie." It's a terrific show, not just because it's funny, but because it delivers brutal truths about life. And yes, profanity is part of it. Anyone who doesn't think profanity is mainstream in American life is living in a fucking fantasy land.

Sex was once a network taboo, but I didn't hear anyone complain about that "Good Wife" scene. And aren't half the women on "Desperate Housewives" basically nymphos? Network TV is okay with sex and violence, but those things are more about actions than words. We're more honest about our actions than we are with our words, because no one wants to acknowledge the brutal truths of language.

Another:

Contrary to Alyssa Rosenberg's assertion that "'bitch' has essentially no uses except to degrade people," the term can be also used in the context of just complaining, as in bitching about the weather.  When I was in college in the 1960s, our campus held a Bitch-In, which had nothing to do with women. Bitch is the only word that has gone from acceptable in casual conversation to unacceptable within my adult lifetime.  Everything else has become MORE accepted. 

Another:

While it's true that the uses for the word "fuck" vastly outnumber the uses of the word bitch, to say that it "has essentially no uses except to degrade people" is simply not true.  The term "son of a bitch" is not only used to insult a man but also a synonym for phrases like "God damn it".  As an avid viewer of South Park, you should be well aware of just how often Cartman uses the term in this manner.

Though his application towards Kyle's mom would surely raise Alyssa's ire. Another reader:

Your post on "fuck" made me think immediately of this classic scene [NSFW] from the first season of The Wire that shows how the word communicates in a surprising variety of ways. The writing is brilliantly simple.

The video of the cop and a stray dog linked in this post has been removed but can be seen again here. I'm sure some advocates for the deaf will find the young woman's tears excessive. But for me, the video, which I keep re-watching, transcends the particulars. This is about a human being suddenly introduced to the miracles of our ordinary life. Her response is to weep. Why is not ours'? Every day.

Another classic in the Bad Lip Reading series:

More coherent than the actual Michele Bachmann at times. It had Aaron pissing himself.

Her greatest hits in 100 seconds. Some classic moments.

Buttonwood details Europe's options:

The echoes of 2008 seem to be getting louder. We have a debate over whether to mount a financial rescue with a dispute between those who worry about moral hazard and those who fear the consequences of a bankruptcy. Greece has just been substituted for Lehman in this equation. One solution is for a massive transfer of funds from northern Europe to the south but politicians in the former region fear this will be about as popular as the bank bailout proved with US voters. So they are pursuing other technocratic options to prop up the system.

Wolfgang Münchau compares the technocratic option to "the subprime CDOs of ill-repute":

The latest crazy idea, which is being pursued by officials, is to turn the eurozone’s rescue fund into an insurance company, or worse, a collateralised debt obligation, the financial instrument of choice during the credit bubble. This is the equivalent of putting explosives into a can, before kicking it down the road. …  The big difference between a eurozone CDO and a subprime CDO is the the nature of the backstop. When the eurozone CDO fails, there are no governments that can bail it out because the governments themselves are already the equity holders of the system.

Drum watches the window closing:

Europe either ponies up eye-watering amounts of money for its teetering banks and teetering countries or faces financial catastrophe and the end of the eurozone. Eventually they'll have to decide which fate is worse.

(Photo: German Chancellor Angela Merkel attends a session of the Bundestag in which members will vote on an increase in funding for the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) on September 29, 2011 in Berlin, Germany. Many analysts see the increase as crucial for safeguarding the future stability of the Euro in the face of the current debt crisis in Greece. By Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

The Dish's collective mind shows off a bit:

When I was  growing up in southern Mississippi in the 1950s, most grocery stores carried Niggerhead brand shrimp, which was canned in southern Louisiana. The label featured a drawing of a old black man with a lined face and nappy hair.

Another writes:

Growing up in South Florida and the Florida Keys in the '60s and '70s, I learned that large brain coral specimens were commonly called "niggerheads."

Another:

I heard this term from people in Kentucky and they were referring to geodes, which are common there.  The racist joke was that a geode is a hollow rock. Ahh, the casual racism of the American South.

Another:

I heard this once just a couple months ago and took it to mean a large rock outcropping or boulder. The idea behind it is that a black person's head is as hard as a rock, or that he's as dumb as a rock. There was no mistaking this derivation when I heard it from the older man in his late 70s.

Another:

Growing up in a family of stonemasons, the term niggerhead referred to a stone that couldn't be cleanly split due to a lack of veins.

Another:

Here in the deep South, I have heard the term many times, mainly by my stepfather.  It is used to describe a state of extreme laziness, such as after eating a big meal and wanting to take a nap.  For example, "Those chicken and dumplings were good, but now I have the niggerhead."

Another:

Growing up in Memphis in the '60s and '70s, my family called Brazil nuts "Nigger Toes." That is just what they were, it never was discussed.  You just asked for a Nigger Toe if you wanted one.  It wasn't until college that I learned the real name.  Needless to say, as the older generation has aged and been replaced, and as times have changed, no one in my family calls them that now.

It's not just the South:

I spent many of my childhood summers in the middle of rural Michigan, near the Howell/Pinckney area. This area is famous for being the home of the KKK Grand Dragon (or whatever silly title they give their leader), as well as for housing several training areas for the Michigan Militia. It wasn't uncommon, on a warm autumn night, to see large crosses burning in the center of a Klan gathering as we drove to Grandma's house for visits. 

My family isn't particularly racist. I have Vietnamese aunts, mixed-race African-American/white second cousins, and now adopted black nephews and nieces. But one thing I have always remembered is – during numerous holiday gatherings – everyone referring to Brazil nuts as "Nigger Toes".

Another:

Back in 1971, some folks objected to two location names, one Niggerhead Pond, and the other Niggerhead Ledge, both in the same small town of Marshfield, Vermont. Details here.

Another:

I grew up in southern New Jersey, and I remember back in the '60s that people used the term for eggplants.

No region is spared:

In my twenties, while living in the Pacific NW in the early '90s, I worked as a deckhand on a tugboat, a salmon tender (off the coast of BC) and an intercoastal freighter in the north Pacific and Bering Sea. The term "niggerhead" was used frequently by some of the older salmon fishermen to refer to the main hydraulic windlasses on the decks of fishing vessels, which were often coated in a thick black marine-grade paint. I cringed when I heard the term. It seemed such a discordant and stupid thing to hear on lonely pitching waters or in the fog or rain or in the unusual light found only at sea – far from the mainland of the US, which I took to be the unhappy home of that term. But nautical terminology changes very slowly, and I realize now how intrinsic maritime trade was to the history of racial othering.

Speaking of older salmon fishermen:

I have been a commercial fisherman in Alaska since 1975.  My first year I worked on two boats, purse seining for salmon in Southeast Alaska. The winch that the purse line was tightened up with was called the "niggerhead". Everyone used the term to reference the seine winch. This link is to a picture of the winch on the Kolstrand Marine Equipment website. The term "niggerhead" specifically referred to the two black spools on either side of the stand.

Another reader:

After working in the natural resource world across much of the western US for the last 15 years, I’ve seen the term "nigger fill-in-the-blank" referring to a multitude of geographic locations.  Spend some time looking on older USGS topo maps and you can find it all over the place.  The Bureau of Land Management or any other federal land agency and their recreation folks have had to deal with the legacy of local place or landmark names when they make trail maps.  One of my favorite canyons to hike in southwest Utah is called Negro Bill Canyon and we all know that that’s not what the locals called it 40 or 50 years ago…

Another:

In rural western Alaska, old timers call tussocks – firm mounds of grass growing out of tundra – "niggerheads."  In fact, it's still a name you see on a US Geological Survey map to mark a certain hill outside of Bethel, AK.

Another:

There used to be a racist common name of a California cactus: "Niggerheads" (now "Cottontops") for the multi-headed barrel cactus, Echinocactus polycephalus.

One more:

Upon moving to California after grad school, I got interested in the local flora and a particular pine tree with some of the heaviest pine cones in the world, Pinus sabiniana. This pine tree is commonly called a "digger pine". And yes, it shares more than two g's and an 'er' with the term nigger; "digger" was the racist term settlers applied to Californian Indians whose non-agricultural society exploited native tubers and bulbs (as well as pine nuts) for food. Just as the term "black-eyed susan" has thankfully come to replace "niggerhead", I hear "digger pines" more frequently called "grey pines" these days.

Now, what I'd really like to hear from your readers are the racist colloquialisms in minorities' vocabularies. I know they exist but have never figured-out how to politely discover them.

(Photo by Photobucket user miamimax)