It's Not Alabama This Time, Ladies and Gentlemen!

[Dalty]

Copy of speech, rings, vows, gun.....

http://news.sky.com/story/1478315/cop-a ... at-wedding

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Student Suspended over Facebook Photo of Teacher

[Mal Shot First]

Some of the quotes in that article are priceless.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

People think I'm exaggerating when I say southerners talk this way.

[Mal Shot First]

I understand that you have to be accurate as a journalist when you are quoting somebody, but I also find that it undermines the quality of your article when the quote you use is grammatically incorrect. Regardless of whether it's someone else who talks that way, it gives your text an unprofessional feel. Just go with an indirect quotation in a case like that.

[Mal Shot First]

People think I'm exaggerating when I say southerners talk this way.

"To me it looked like a leprechaun to me."

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

Regardless of whether it's someone else who talks that way, it gives your text an unprofessional feel. Just go with an indirect quotation in a case like that.

In some cases, it goes beyond giving the text an unprofessional feel. It can feel like the reporter is actively making fun of the person.

WAFF is an NBC affiliate in Alabama. That may account for some of the unprofessional feel.

[Dalty]

I really want to visit the South but with my faggy British accent I worry they might try and eat me or something.

[Mal Shot First]

Does "faggy English accent" translate to "smoky English accent" in American?

At least that would explain why they'd want to eat you - Southerners love their barbecue.

[Dalty]

Saucy!

[Space Tycoon]

I worked for these dickheads once. Once.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/tc- ... e24506521/

[Space Tycoon]

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/twi ... id=SKY2DHP

[Space Tycoon]

I wonder if there's any chance Neglet might allow us to use that most unsavoury of c-words to describe the woman linked to above.


Just once.

[Dalty]

We could think it!

This is exactly the kind of trip-wire protest-y/Che Guevera t-shirt wearing/student union political programming that many on the British left never truly grow out of.

[neglet]

She sounds like an idiot, but for me there's just too much oppression behind the term to use it on any woman. Sorry.

[neglet]

That being said, don't feel you need to censor yourselves if you feel strongly about it. It's not like I'd ever feel so offended that I'd leave all in a ... what's a good way to describe the action? It's on the tip of my tongue.

[Dalty]

She sounds like an idiot, but for me there's just too much oppression behind the term to use it on any woman. Sorry.

I have only ever meant it, or understood it, to refer to somebody who is on the evil side of the idiot scale. I was not aware of any oppression behind the word. I need to Google this now - God help my internet!!!!

[Dalty]

That was an interesting read. It seems it was always a slang term and a slur then it was taken, over time and particularly in the 70s, to be highly offensive to women. Then again I suppose if you go back far enough you could potentially argue that "Nigger" was taken from the entomology around Niger and Negro, itself taken from various words for black. So it's the context and application that infer the offence meant and taken, like all these words.

Like that word there is mention of the word being reappropriated by feminists.

I have a mate with a Masters in linguistics. Be interesting to chat some of this stuff through with him.

[neglet]

For me, I guess it's because women are too often reduced to their sexual parts by men, and then to turn it around and make that part a negative epithet, it's heaping insult upon injury.

[Space Tycoon]

Yeah, I guess that is pretty much a dick move when you think about it.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

I'm sure they didn't really mean it when they said it. It was a real cock-up on their part. A real boner. I'm certain they feel like ding-dongs now that their attention has been brought to it.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

[something about penal codes and chodes]

I can sympathize with neglet's position. Women have been marginalized in too many ways to count over the years. If a large number of US women finds the use of a word to be hurtful, and if they let you know its use is hurtful, you use it at the risk of hurting them and knowing you're hurting them.

I guess you can argue that you don't believe them, that they're exaggerating, that they're being too thin-skinned, or that it's a sad cry for attention to complain about its use, but that's a pretty crummy thing to do. If you're going to use it, use it. Don't try to find some way to shrug blame off or put the blame back on them. Admit to yourself and to them that you're doing it despite knowing it's hurtful to them--if you're using the word in a space where a distaste for the word has been expressed, I mean. Be honest about being a jerk.

If you're some middle- or upper-class dude, it's hard to argue that you know what does or does not hurt a woman's feelings. I believe Dalty when he says it has a different kind of cultural context in Britain. I'm not a Brit. I'll have to take his word for it. I also hear it getting thrown around a lot by Brits, so there's that. Whether this is because it really holds less weight for women over there, whether it's because women caved on the issue in a way they didn't in the US, or whether there's more at play, I can't say.

I don't mind hearing people use it, personally. Doesn't really bother me. If I'm ever bothered by the use of a word, it's usually on behalf of someone else. I'm rarely an offendee unless I'm acting as a sympathetic offendee. I realize there's an underlying condescension to this, and it makes me feel a little like an ass. Other people don't need me to fight their battles for them, and my offense/sympathy isn't really worth much. (I feel a little like an ass a lot of the time, by the way, with or without the help of recognizing this underlying condescension. I sometimes feel a lot like an ass, too, but that only happens a little of the time. I know. It's as surprising to me as it is to you.)

I don't really feel much of an inclination to use it, myself. It sounds kinda dumb when said with an American accent. It sounds more interesting/amusing to me when it's half-spat by a Brit.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

It's Pander Day in Goiterville.

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

[The Swollen Goiter of God]

(Every day in Goiterville is Pander Day.)