Justin is more than just a little rough around the edges, with the tell-tale look that he’s involved in an… um, “alternative” profession.Beyond his belligerence, Justin is occasionally a pretty insightful individual. He stopped me the other day in a north campus bar that serves as his second home, to tell of an incident a few days earlier that upset him.Justin and his cohorts – with shaved heads and even bigger mouths – were dining at the Blue Danube at the same time a local anti-racism group was meeting there. The boys talk big and not with the most poetic language.The word “nigger” was a big component of the conversation, as it often is with them. The context in which Justin uses the word is actually pretty innocent. He doesn’t say it with hate in his heart and isn’t a racist.The anti-racism group didn’t see the irony in basing their opinions on outside appearance, and let the boys know they took exception to them. It quickly turned into an ugly shouting match, with Justin and company eventually getting asked to leave.Nigger is not a word that should ever be used in polite conversation, or any conversation if you’re a polite person. With this column being a rare exception, I don’t use it and don’t like it, which I let friends know if they throw it around.But it is just a word, and without context a determination shouldn’t be made on its usage. Some news outlets, as during the O.J. Simpson trial, won’t even write or say it, opting instead for “n-word.” But by giving it so much power, they are doing more for the word’s racist connotations than against them.People who get hung up on words are the worst zealots of all. The definition of a word is essentially determined by its popular connotation, so if we empower a word to mean something horrible it becomes just that.Comedian George Carlin called them the words “that will curve your spine (and) grow hair on your hands,” the infamous seven words you can’t say on television. Can you write them in a column? Let’s see: S–t, piss, f–k, c–t, c–ksucker, motherf—er and t-ts.If not explicit policy, it’s bad manners to put them in print, so there’s probably a lot of blank spaces or symbols inserted above. While this is my first time playing with the big baddies, I’ve slipped a few lesser words in my column before to the chagrin of, among others, our Internet Editor.Because of Internet screening software called Net Nanny, he’s quick to freak out over filth. For parents with web-surfing kids, Net Nanny blocks access to offensive material, which in addition to kiddie porn and the Michael Bolton home page includes dirty words. When a bad word is used in a column or story, our Internet guy quietly cries inside because Net Nanny blocks access to the Lantern web site.I’m not the only one to raise the ire of my cohorts because of my potty pen. Jeff Yoakum’s comic “The Neighbors” is more sexually explicit than any newspaper strip other than “Family Circus.” Yoakum usually gets the most heat from the lack of clothes he draws on characters, but he drove our head Editor nuts a few weeks ago by sneaking in one of the magnificent seven.It’s the one that rhymes with punt, and it got him temporarily booted from the paper. The c-word is another one of those juiced words, a word that stops most women dead in their tracks. A gal can be incredibly open-minded and talk like a sailor, and the word will still send her into spitting convulsions.Sexually and racially offensive words are now more taboo than ever. Hunter S. Thompson, the good doctor of gonzo journalism, once prided himself an equal-opportunity offender with his frequent use of racial epitaphs. In his recent release of a book he wrote in the early 1960s, Thompson removed some of the uglier language.When Hunter Thompson is toning things down, it’s clearly weird times. Maybe I should circumvent the censors and make up a dirty word of my own.Don’t like the idea? Go tribbey yourself.
Nathan Crabbe is a junior from Akron who believes Fred Ricart is the anti-Christ. E-mail him at [email protected]. His column appears on Wednesdays in the Lantern.
