but where did they pick up such an obscure American colloquialism?
I’m Australian and I’ve always known the term - as an Americanism, not as something I’d expect to hear. American culture has a long reach and it’s a phrase I’d expect most educated English speakers to have heard.
Wow.
It’s like that moron thinks allies of the US aren’t determined by, you know, all the historical events leading up to now, but just whose jib he likes the cut of.
It’s simply amazing that such an epic fuckwit is allowed to be in charge. Inconceivable, even; on some level, my mind just refuses to register it.
Yeah well, the tokenism is important, because it’s all they’ve got… Underneath all that supposed concern for offense is just concern for social standing. According to Google’s data, Americans are racist as fuck, liberals notwithstanding.
Everybody lies: how Google search reveals our darkest secrets | Google | The Guardian (long read)
At the 1979 Logies awards Newton said to Muhammad Ali “I like the boy”, not knowing that “boy” could be taken as a racial slur
We absorb it through experience, through the media and occasional disasters like the 79 Logies, and the blackface incident o Hey Hey some years back.
Not the WORD, the PHRASE.
BTW, I’m not gonna pretend my country is any better in that respect…
When somebody says something like n-word, it makes me think about how the people in the Harry Potter universe won’t say Voldemort.
I don’t know, it kind of just seems like you’re all-to-eager for an excuse to say/type the n-word while feeling dubiously noble for doing so in the supposedly proper context. Alternatively, one might argue that voluntary censorship of the n-word rightly prioritizes tact over formalism, and that refusing to repeat the word underscores its terribleness, whereas repeating it normalizes its usage.
Way to judge an entire nation by one dickhead.
I see what you are getting at but there are two reasons why I don’t think what you are saying applies.
First, would you really think Doctorow was being racist if he actually quoted the MP? What about the BBC? You can make that assumption about me because you don’t know who I am and when you are anonymous on the internet, there are no real limits to how offensive one can be. But it isn’t really about what I say, it’s about what trusted news sources say (and I include Cory in this category).
Secondly, the tact over formalism argument bothers me because you can say the same thing over speech that some people find blasphemous or even just hurtful. We both know that sometimes language is a weapon.
Plus, the tactful approach blunts the MP’s statement (IMHO). When you read the two version of her statement, does one not make you recoil more than the other? I don’t think she deserves to have her words softened.
In that CNN video, do you agree with the person that asked for everybody to stop saying that word?
Not really surprising, as British TV in the 80s featured such prime-time delights as Jim Davidson doing “humorous” impressions of a fictitious black man called (I kid you not) “Chalky”, complete with cod Jamaican accent.
To be fair to Davidson, he later (much later) tried to make amends of a sort by writing and starring in a play about a washed-up racist comedian confronted by a younger black rival who’d suffered because of the stereotypes he’d helped perpetuate.
Right? I AM an American and I’d never heard that phrase. It’s not the kind of colloquialism you’d pick up unless you were used to speaking with bigots.
WTF does that have to do with this MP??
And as much as I disagree with those 17m, voting to leave the EU does not make one racist.
A spokesperson from campaign group Hope not Hate points out that, while not all Ukip voters are racists, it does “swallow up the ‘respectable racist’ vote that might have once gone to the BNP”. Bagguley agrees: “People have to be prepared to be more critical of them and the implicit racism that runs through much of what they say.”
Simon Woolley, the director of Operation Black Vote, goes further. “The Brexiters, with their jingoistic rhetoric, have put the country on a war footing. By framing the debate as ‘we want our country back’, they have made immigrants the enemy and occupiers who need to be expelled.”
That’s the point I was trying to make. I too have never heard it actually uttered. The only reason I am aware of it was from a forum admin cracking down on someone who used SIMILAR language over 10 years ago. It was too close for his liking and told the person to cut it out, at which point I became aware it was even a phrase.
Again, this has nothing to do with your original statement and you continue to judge the many by the actions of a few.
It has. I made a quick diagram for you: 
Cough. So you want to be judged by the 10.000s of Germans who literally are okay with extremist arsonsists who set fire to refugee homes? Because that’s how you get judged by these examples of German tolerance and non-racism.
No, not really. A part, sure. A bug part? Probably, but lots of leftist, non-racist people voted Brexit because they see the EU as a means of white corporatist supremacy.
