Brian Lehrer of WNYC had a segment onhis show this morning discussing The N Word that I found interesting. For the sake of this blog post, I’m going to USE the ACTUAL word’s. The N Word is nigger, the B Word is Bitch, Queer is Queer, etc.

Here’s the back story: A city councilman in Queens submitted a “symbolic moratorium” bill on the banning of the word “nigger”. According to him, he want’s people to stop USING the word, but to continue to TALK about the word. He says that they use the word incorrectly and not he way it was historically meant to be used: “to hate and subjugate people”. He states that when people use the words that were hate driven as a term of endearment or expression it shows they are not understanding or respectful of their history and are unaware of the emotional impact it has on people around them.

When I was first listening to this and was thinking about blogging about it I was kind of upset that SUCH a big deal is made out of this ONE WORD when people commonly throw around words like bitc, or queer… and the list goes on and on but for the sake of this blog post I’ll focus on these three. I agree that originally the word was born of hate and misunderstanding and ignorance and in THAT time, to use it was wrong. But so were the other words I mentioned. You speak of a time when black people could not vote, or own land, and were enslaved to do the work of a master and guess what! There was a time when WOMEN could not vote, or own land, and who’s sole purpose was to serve a master (husband, kids, etc). And NOW, TODAY, AT THIS MOMENT, we will not let two people who love eachother, who want to vow their lives to the other, to do so because they share the same anatomical organs used to reproduce and urinate. Now, the difference between not letting two people get married and lynching and mob killings is big and I acknowledge that. Those things are wrong. The ACT was wrong. Inexcusable, really. But we are living in a different time and place now and we’ve evolved and changed and now african americam people have the same rights and privelages as every other American (unless, of course, you are gay).

And I realize now what made me upset. This guys is spending FAR too much time (and tax payer money) on a word that has a HISTORICALLY negative context. Any of these three words can be used to demean somebody, but they ALL have alternate meanings now also. I’d think the fact that the word has evolved into something more than a derogatory slur would MEAN something. The people that once let the word make them feel fear and shame have turned it into something they can “own”. Women call their friends bitches all the time and what they mean by that is YOU ARE FIERCE, GIRL!! WORK IT!! And queer? Not only has the gay community embraced the term but Queer Eye for the Straight Guy is a massive success! These words can still be used to try to harm somebody but by taking the word and changing the meaning and OWNING IT, they’ve taken some of the power away from those that use it in a negative context. And the more they make the word into something they own, the more the power will continue to dwindle until there is no negative power left in the word.

It’s time to leave the past and evolve. TEACH the past, KNOW the past, LEARN FROM the past, but GET OUT OF the past. Spend time at press conferences problem solving and planning the FUTURE for the very youth you seem so concerned about instead of dwelling on something has already grown past the point of no return. In short, quite your whining and focus on POSITIVE things you can do for your community, instead of trying to hold on to the negative.

*climbs off soap box*

Disclaimer: This is my opinion. You might disagree with it and if so, I encourage you to speak up and let me hear your side because I know that I can always learn more by hearing what you think and feel. But! Please do so calmly and respectfully.

Please stop shooting our children. Please stop walking into schools (the ONE place our kids should be allowed to roam and learn and grow without being scared and paranoid) and molesting, terrorizing and shooting our FUTURE.

10/02/2006: At least six killed in Amish school shooting

Three girls, all critical with gunshot wounds and ages 6 through 12, were admitted to Lancaster General Hospital, spokesman John Lines told NBC affiliate WGAL-TV.

When you walk into a classroom and shoot a SIX YEAR OLD, you are not allowed to take your own life. You aren’t allowed to take the cowards way out. How dare you.

On Friday (09/29/2006), a 15-year-old student fatally wounded his school’s principal in western Wisconsin. A drifter in Colorado Wednesday (09/27/2006) took six female high school students hostage, molested them and then shot one to death and killed himself as police closed in.

How is it that we let people walk around who are so unstable that walking into a school and killing innocent children has happened TWICE in less than a week? How do students get so infuriated or frustrated that the answer becomes walking into a school and shooting the principal?

This is our future, OUR FUTURE. How do we go about saving everybody else in the World when our own house is in such a state of disarray?

I’m not even sure what to say about this. Seven children in less than a week. Seven families. Seven moms with broken hearts and who’s CHILDREN have been stolen from them. Seven children who had all the potential in the World to grow into flourishing and productive members of society… Seven kids who could have been my own.

I’m not which emotions is stronger. Sadness by the pain so many people are going through right now? Anger at the assholes who felt the need to kill innocent children? Fear of sending my daughter to school and assuming she’s okay and the future that seems to be unfolding before her…

Ben and I have determined the President is gay. In a completely non-heterosexual kind of way.

In other news, as much as I love MSNBC, this article has a completely over the top (and way way way too far to the left) headline:

Bush to stem cell community: Drop dead

President Bush’s embryonic stem cell policy began with lies and has now ended with one.

Bush reserved his first veto as president for one of the only valuable things this do-almost-nothing Congress has managed to actually get done.

With a flourish of a veto pen that has remained dormant no matter how dopey Congress has been, the Senate bill allowing public funding of embryonic stem cell research has been consigned to the legislative trash can.
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An administration that has shown itself over and over again to have trouble telling the truth is now telling Americans in wheelchairs, those with damaged hearts, babies who are diabetic and those left immobile by Parkinsonism not to worry. The president, whose grasp of science left him unable to identify creationism as a fundamentally religious idea, and his trusty sidekick Karl Rove, rarely seen in a white lab coat but who knows something about rats, having been in Washington for some time now, claim to know best which medical research is most likely to benefit diseased Americans in the future.

While the bolded line actually made me spit water with laughter, the entire point of the article was lost to Arthur Caplan, Ph.D.’s leftist diatribe. We lib’s are fighting the good fight, Art. You don’t need to hand them loaded guns!! Not that Fox News is any better when swinging the other way, but sheesh, that even made me wince.

Maybe I just needed something publicly acceptable to whine about…

I feel lately like there’s an invisible force holding my creativity hostage. Like there are 10,000 funny stories and comments and commentary fighting to get out and when I sit to let it out I just… I just sit. I think the problem is that I’ve been throttling what comes out of my mouth and when I feel like I have to do that it starts to effect me in multiple areas of my expressive self. Like here on the blog.

For the first time ever the thought of closing the site to disappear back into obscurity has occurred to me. Open up somewhere else and use an alias where I can be free to speak openly about the things I used to be able to here but can’t anymore because too many people out there don’t have skin thick enough to take me. It’s an internal battle I hate fighting. I have a very short path from brain to mouth. In real life that can get me into trouble. Here in the site however where there are backspace and delete keys I feel like the words that do come out are viewed as more calculated and sharp. Even though they really aren’t.

That path goes against every fiber of my being though. It’s not ME to hide my thoughts or, in this case, my words. I need to find an acceptable balance somehow.

Lioness in zoo kills man who invoked God

KIEV (Reuters) - A man shouting that God would keep him safe was mauled to death by a lioness in Kiev zoo after he crept into the animal’s enclosure, a zoo official said on Monday.

“The man shouted ‘God will save me, if he exists’, lowered himself by a rope into the enclosure, took his shoes off and went up to the lions,” the official said.

“A lioness went straight for him, knocked him down and severed his carotid artery.”

The incident, Sunday evening when the zoo was packed with visitors, was the first of its kind at the attraction. Lions and tigers are kept in an “animal island” protected by thick concrete blocks.

I like my title better. heh

So Ben sent me the link and says:

Ben: *reading from a work email thread about it* How do you think the lion knew where his carotid artery was?
Me: DUH!! God told him!!

He PROVED His existance!! And apparently He thinks that Darwin was on to something…

Teen charged in parent killings ‘confused’

“He was a really good guy,” said Frederick, a college student. “He was friendly and joked around. I considered him to be a good Christian — he brought his Bible and read it during breaks.”

It’s going to be interesting to see how the media treats this. The normal cop-out excuses like video games and Marilyn Manson are out, although I’ve heard MySpace come up in conversation. I’ve been to his MySpace though and honestly, he really didn’t seem like a bad kid from what little he had on there. The left wing could totally lash out and go bonkers and blame God. What sucks is that is not so unlikely.

Anyway, I’m curious to see where he got the gun. And I really hope that if it’s his parents, they get punished in some way. Endless ridicule by the media at the very least. I’m all for gun ownership in American. But RESPONSIBLE gun ownership.

*climbs off soapbox and goes back to work*