A J-Word of Rum
I am going to try to write this entire piece without referring to the famous word we should not say: and I want to do so without using the surrogate for it. What I wonder is why, if a certain word is so bad, we have to talk about it all the time by referring to it by its initial. My suggestion is:
- Relax about the word. Use it.
- Or stop using it, and stop referring to it. Bury the damn thing.
- But, either way, do not insist on this Third Way of relentless enwordification.
In one of the James Bond novels, which one I forget, there is a memorable scene – it must be set in Jamaica – where Felix Leiter tells Bond to ask for a ‘jegro’ and not a ‘jigger’ of rum’ as there is a lot of sensitivity about words among the locals. This amused me, whenever it was I read it, though of course, nowadays, Ian Fleming would have to change the line so Leiter encouraged Bond to ask for a j-word of rum instead.
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I would just have one word for these people.
The C-word.
With an S on the end😁
Btw, this guy really looks like the chap that used to bang a tray against his head! Bob the tray, mule train:-
https://youtu.be/o3WENICRfoM?is=e2IjiKKWF7nRHwDZ
Yes, Carrots to them, the whinging lot.
A member of my family who recently retired from business, had a Hong kong chinese colleague who had Tourettes, the man was extremely bright and quite brilliant at his job, clients and co workers understood this, and so in meetings with clients and others the Man would some times shout out obscenities, including the C word, which was until recently a word we didn’t use as it was considered the nuclear swear word, now of course its very fashionable to use if you are a member of the BAFTA crowd.
My point is, that clients and colleagues alike, accepted this as part of his condition, it wasn’t personal, and he could not help it. No one complained to H.R and he was very much part of the team.
How things have changed, I suspect the luvies in BAFTA will only be happy when the man they have attacked is without work and confined to a gutter somewhere, as no doubt these very “kind” people will think he deserves it.
Strange that he didn’t “involuntarily” blurt out obscenities in his own Hong Kong Chinese dialect, but chose English instead…
It’s such a “fascinating” disease… I was just reading about the episode when the same John Davidson was guest at Buckingham Palace and, hearing about his reaction to Prince (back then) Charles (he shouted “f***ing parasite!”), I just found it so particular to that very context that there must be some seed of thought that the condition immediately takes and externalises. However, reading more about the condition, I now understand that the tics are the extreme opposite of what the person thinks at that moment and the more they try to suppress it, the more it rebounds. Clearly a bit of investigation would calm these idiots down, but as we all know, empathy is not a wokist’s strength.
Gordon Brown accidentally blurting out “bigoted woman”
Interesting that far from disappearing, it is go-to word for many black male youths when talking to each other so I do find it odd that the two black fellows on stage reacted as they have.
You find it odd only because you have not learned the lessons of history. Its not for the pale skinned ignorant to judge the sensitivities of others.
See my comment here perhaps?
It’s a word. Interestingly, the words “White Trash” have a lot more intent and meaning, yet seem to be far more socially acceptable and thrown around by certain people as if they’re handing out smarties.
I remember being called a ‘white honky’ many decades ago. It was meant as an insult, but for some reason I couldn’t get worked up about it. The phrase somehow doesn’t have much bite about it.
Now if you called me a liberal progressive, that would be a different matter…..:)))
There seems to be the assumption that if ‘that word’ comes out of a white person’s mouth then it is always to be treated as racist even if the person is not being racist. Ironically, therefore, censoring white people so that they cannot say ‘that word’ is racist in itself. I think that if black people weren’t regularly referring to each other ( either within the context of music or conversation ) using this word then it would have naturally dropped out of usage and now be considered obsolete within the English language, but it’s black people keeping the damn word alive. There will be a tonne of English words that are no longer part of our vocabulary and have basically become extinct. Just look at anything by Shakespeare for examples. Here’s a few from a quick search; Doxy – a lover or mistress Snollygoster – a shrewd, unprincipled person Dandiprat – a small, insignificant person Darbies – handcuffs. If we still used half the English words we once did, we’d be sounding like one of the giants from the BFG, but this is where the silly ‘N-word’ belongs: in the museum of Forgotten Words, lost in the mists of… Read more »
I rather like Louis CK’s rant against ‘the N-word’ and how when ‘you’ say it, ‘I’ have to translate it… he does it better; worth a watch if you have time.
A son was in a friend’s car. The friend is black. They were singing along to a track which my son suddenly realised used the ‘n’ word. What to do, continue singing & commit the sin? Self censor & miss out the offending word? Or mumble indecipherably?
It’s a minefield.
And there’s the case of Carl Borg-Neal, the dyslexic guy who was sacked from Lloyds after using the never-to-be-used-by-a-whitey word purely as an example during one of those painful Unconscious Bias trainings… He did later win at the Employment Tribunal with the FSU’s support.
Flavor Flav sang about it in 1991. How using the word keeps it alive. “Take a small problem, make a small problem bigger…. I don’t want to be called Yo ______…”. Pubic Enemy Apocalypse 91 – the enemy strikes back..
Doxy is a useful scrabble word…dandiprat should be revived.
The man was not sufficiently privileged by his Tourette’s to use the word though… because he was white, hence the furore.
if he had been black, or Black as we should say now, and had uttered the word ‘please’ afterwards, everyone would have laughed, applauded and carried on.
I am pretty sure that I read of the harm the uttering of that word did. And if — in contradiction of the nursery rhyme about the difference between sticks and stones and words — harm is what it did, what gave it its power to do so but the taboo on it and the angry fuss that results when the taboo is broken? (The best bit of the story, of course, is that in this case the taboo-breaker wasn’t really a person but his ‘condition’ and the occasion one where the ‘condition’ was supposedly being indirectly ‘celebrated’. Mightn’t the two fellows orchestrating the ‘celebration’ at that point have just enjoyed the joke? And the rest of the world with them? And if they had been p-nk–gr-y and the word had been ‘h-nk-y’, isn’t it likely they would?)
Ah! But ‘silence is violence’. So unvirtuous words have to be replaced by a proxy – but those proxies are rarely as grounded in emotions (as intended) and fail to exert as much ‘virtue’.
As a corrective, consider the dialogue of the video game Grand Theft Auto San Andreas ( https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/924362-grand-theft-auto-san-andreas/faqs/36175 ). First released more than 20 years ago it was criticised for its language and racism but it was designed to reflect the language of the street gangs. So the black people often use the forbidden word as a conversational noun of little import. Not virtue signalling but as gang or possibly ‘race’ argot.
Still love that game.
Another word which the virtue-signalling language police have apparently banned is f aggot.
Which has rather ruined Dire Straits “Money for Nothing”
“The little f aggot with the earring and the make-up
Yeah, buddy, that’s his own hair
That little f aggot got his own jet airplane
That little f aggot, he’s a millionaire”
And “Fairytale of New York”
“You scum-bag, you maggot
you cheap lousy f aggot”
I think the former example was referring to Elton John.
It’s just a bundle of sticks
Or a meatbally thing.
While we are on the subject of “offensive” words – P stands for Punjab, A for Afghanistan, K for Kashmir and S for Sind. signifying states that are muslim hence East Pakistan. All perfectly reasonable until it isn’t.
I have never understood why these overpaid, over pampered idiots, whether actors or musicians have to have these ‘oh aren’t we so marvellous, be astounded at our amazingness ‘ events. We don’t have televised plumber of the year or truck driver of the year and they are far more valuable to society. And, the painful truth, as the news media is now understanding, is fewer and fewer people want to see it. So what to do if you are the BBC and BAFTA. Give the award to someone we have never heard of for a film most won’t see. Plant a microphone next to the subject of the film, knowing you will get a juicy outburst and, joy of joys, that outburst wasn’t just a swear word, as he used to the queen, but the n word, guaranteeing weeks of coverage for an event no-one watched. Result
“We don’t have televised plumber of the year or truck driver of the year”
They may not be televised but, I can assure you, the events exist!
I hope they do exist, including Farmer of the Year, Binman of the Year, Street Cleaner of the Year, Supermarket Shelf Stacker of the Year, Pub Owner of the Year, Garage Mechanic of the Year, Factory Worker of the Year, Train Driver of the Year, and all the other useful jobs that Unsung Heroes do, which are manifestly of greater benefit to society than lawyers, judges & politicians.
Sorry, my point was poorly made, yes I am aware that they happen and many trades are especially good at celebrating/promoting the young tradesmen of the year. My point was that these are not televised, don’t have hordes of talentless ‘journalists’ lining the entrance for facile photographs and interviews, the important people in society just get on and celebrate their success amongst their own and not with the world at large.
Ah, but are the frocks worth looking at?
I don’t believe in all these “syndromes” like the so-called “Tourette’s”, which somehow makes humans blurt out obscenities in the English language, even when their native tongue is Chinese, for example.
These people are just Taking the Michael.
a brand of toothpaste in Hong Kong used to be called Darkie, with a beaming white-teethed Negro in a top hat. In the 1980s it had to change its name to Darlie.
What if you just started referring to them as ‘n-words’? Yo n-word!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVN_0qvuhhw
Sorry James but your article confuses issues. The n-word is now the n-word because of its history and connotations. And it is to the USA we must turn for an understanding of its historical usage and meaning. It was used in an off-hand and flippant way to refer to people as if they were no more than dogs or some unwanted animal. So it was and remains deeply offensive to a great many people when emanating from the mouths of people with light and not dark skin tones. Unless and until the people the n-word was used to describe are comfortable with others using that word then we of lighter skins should respect their dignity and not use it at all. “Coloureds” was also eventually considered offensive in the liberal northern parts of the USA in particular and in South-Africa and that interpretation extended eventually to other parts of the world such that the word is now rarely if ever used. We cannot of course call it the C-word without confusing ambiguity in the English language. “Black” was adopted particularly in the 1970s to take over and remove the negative connotations of anything black – black comedy, black humour, a… Read more »
Calling someone coloured was considered a big no no but around 15 years ago I noticed referring to “people of colour” was ok.
Is your approach in irony though?
Deadly serious.
I was quite taken aback when reading a 1963 US newspaper article about the assassination of Kennedy.
As I read down the column I arrived at a part referring to the account which was of the eye-witness evidence of two people and it was only then that it struck me how offensively off-hand this slang word was for an oppressed people in a white dominated culture.
An oppressed people any of whom could at any moment be taken off the street and by tortured and hung summarily for no good reason other than their skin colour and whose families lived in abject poverty and under an oppression imposed by white majority rule – indeed for decades by law with apartheid practiced in many states.
And this is an advanced Western democracy supposedly during much of the last century.
It was two words which hit me more than even the account of one of the most devastating events in history.
The part of the article started with these words to begin the account of what these people saw: “A couple of niggers ….“
We still call that cocktail a Negroni. Shock at the N-word? Fine. Offence in the circumstances? Unnecessary and demeaning to the poor chap with Tourette’s.
Article is spot on. The word has power only because they have given it power.
But they are totally hypocritical because black rappers use it all the time.
This morning my 9yo grandson asked who he was playing at football on Saturday.
“Totternhoe”
“Oh that has the t-word in it”
“”What?”
“Twattern-ho and the h-word too”
It was very hard not to laugh and we all failed. Very clever word play.
I blame the grandparents 🙂
Those who fail to learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat its mistakes.
My comment here perhaps?
Why not go straight to ‘The N-biscuit’ ?
You mean the word Agatha Christie used in title of one her best selling books…oh, that word 😁
I read one Agatha Christie book and vowed never to read a single one of her books ever again.
I got to the last page where her intrepid whodunnit solver introduces the one piece of evidence not mentioned anywhere else in the book which solves the crime and identifies whodunnit.
I woz robbed. Total fraud.
It was Aggie whodunnit. Bleeding crook.
We can all write whodunnit books like that.
Sorry if the woke might be offended by this comment but doesn’t the word negra mean black in spanish and the word negro mean black person. Is it ok to call someone black in English but not in Spanish. Don’t the people who spout this rubbish not realise all they are doing is forcing people to hide their thoughts and let them fester within.
Anyway I think this is intended to control thought but not to educate.
This issue is nothing to do with being ‘woke’. You don’t get it at all. The historical and other associations with the n-word and so the word itself are deeply offensive to the point of being raw to those to whom and at whom the word is used. This is especially so in the United States but it is still so in the UK. It is a word of white domination against historically oppressed peoples who even today remain oppressed. The torture, murder, severe physical punishments, misery, sexual abuse and poverty imposed by a white majority against their forebears was more intense then but not forgotten today. Those living today are highly aware [‘awake’, the original ‘woke’] of the history and the meaning and connotations of this word of the most vile and severe oppression. Hundreds of thousands of white people in places like Manchester in the fight to abolish slavery signed petitions and campaigned against slavery. They understood and had empathy for those enslaved and the severe hardships they suffered. Those people were not ‘woke’. They understood. You just don’t. I dislike modern wokism intensely but on this my memory is long enough to know but yours clearly is… Read more »
Someone else might have told you to F Off but I am far too polite.