Why does no one in the press—including AIM—have the courage to print the actual word that Jackson used?

By refusing to make a direct quote, I think you are complicit in the lopsided demonization of certain words and “code words,” which has become an effective tactic for the Left.

Meanwhile, those same Lefties—not to mention any number of relatively apolitical “people of color” have cut themselves a convenient exception to the rules of linguistic sensitivity.

WE allow them to get away with it!

AMEN!

The four letter f—- word has become frick in polite society.  Fricken this and fricken that.  I propose something like nicker as a polite substitute for the n——- word.  Then we can all say it, even when granny is listening.

If you go back far enough in American literature—say to Mark Twain’s books—you will discover that even substitute words were once considered “swearing,” just as much as using the original. If I recall correctly, Huck Finn was punished for saying “shucks.”

My own opinion is more along the lines of what Lenny Bruce used to say—that it is up to us to decide whether or not words have shock value. The Supreme Court has been back-and-forth on the notion of whether “fighting words” actually exist.

I think that anyone—black people in particular, because the habit is most common among them—who is willing to fly into a murderous rage because one particular word was uttered, stands to remain at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

If all it takes to control someone is to utter one word, or offer one gesture, that person has no control whatsoever over his own life.

As a sixty-something black friend of mine observes, the best way to die at a premature age is to fly off the handle every time you hear that particular insulting word.

It might have been one thing to invoke past abuses three or four generations ago, but now it’s time for these individuals to GROW UP.

guns and bombs hurt ,names never;what!

I wouldn’t exactly say that, having spent most of my childhood as the last-kid-picked for team sports, etcetera.

But I got over it, got a life, and things are mostly OK.

On the other hand, you have these kids like Kleybold, who self-destruct and take a lot of others with them. That’s the same paradigm as with too many black Americans. Worse, really. I’ve seen people with pretty decent lives and careers throw everything away because someone called them a name they didn’t like. That’s just foolish.

Not only Jesse Jackson..I heard Whoopie Goldberg used the “N”word over and over again on The View until one of the other women got very upset. Whoopie claimed the blacks had “taken the word from the whites” or something like that. In other words, it’s now ok for them to say that to and about each other but God help the non-black that does it. Isn’t that reverse prejudism? What word do the non-blacks get to say that nobody else can?
And I agree with the comment about friggin…like nobody knows what they really mean. I HATE that word and even kids use it freely. What happened to my right not to be offended?

Alas, Marcia you’ve never possessed the specific “right not to be offended.” Time was, you did have the ability to criticize someone who offended you without risking a physical assault.

These days, it is apparently considered more “rude” to call a person on their language or public behavior than to mind your own business. Hardly a week passes that I don’t find myself in some such encounter, being an opinionated old fart. My best answer to the M.Y.O.B. retort is to remind the offender that when his/her language, behavior, loud music is heard in public it becomes not only MY business, but that of everyone else within earshot. But you can’t win a confrontation with someone of that ilk.

Having lived 1/3 of a century in a neighborhood that is (in the last decade) populated by far more blacks, Latinos, Asians and Middle Easterners than whites (“Euro-Americans,” as one of my idiot neighbors puts it), I am all too aware of the double standard. But being the shaven-headed old white guy with dogs and a NRA bumper sticker, I still command a certain amount of respect. And honestly, we try to befriend the neighborhood kids as they approach puberty, i.e. before they turn into monsters. Mostly that has worked, and most of them have gotten the message that if you are going to be swearing out in the street, you’d best put a lid on it while you are passing Mister Stan and Miss Peggy’s house.

The very first comment by blogger1947 was very well put.  I will add that the most embarrassing spectacle is watching our conservative talk-show hosts bending over backward to be linguistically correct.  God forbid they should utter that sacriligious word in any context, i.e., “the word ‘nigger’ can be found in the dictionary.”  We have capitulated to the PC language police and find ourselves in the humiliating position of being shamed for any use of a word that many blacks use frequently among themselves.  I don’t care that Jesse Jackson or Whoopi Goldberg used it.  I want to see the end of the zero tolerance policy toward the use of it by whites.  If it’s said in a pejorative context, that’s one thing, but otherwise this nonsense must end.  The point isn’t any desire to use the word, but to end the dhimmi-like status we’re subjected to in these instances.

I think that anyone—black people in particular, because the habit is most common among them—who is willing to fly into a murderous rage because one particular word was uttered, stands to remain at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
http://www.heycheckthis.com

Absolutely right, Visitor. A person who does not carefully choose his battles is bound to waste time on the ones that will provide no lasting benefit, even if won. You have to roll with the punches in this life. If you let rejection, verbal (or physical)abuse, failure or just plain bad luck stop you, your future will be easily predictable, and it won’t be a pretty picture.