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Comment on Happy Holidays! by Keith Kisser

Keith Kisser — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 02:21:53 +0000

Yeah, I just bumped the post up from last year. Lazy Xmas blogging for the win!

Comment on Happy Holidays! by Bryan

Bryan — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:53:06 +0000

It was a bit of a shock seeing last year’s comment tied to the post.

Have a Happy anyway.

Comment on The Skywalker Twin Delimma by Frighten library | Jilleppe

Frighten library | Jilleppe — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 03:48:43 +0000

[...] The Skywalker Twin Delima | The Invisible Library [...]

Comment on What’s Wrong With the World Today, Part Eleventy Billion by john horse

john horse — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 15:03:17 +0000

“Whats Wrong With The World Today, Part Eleventy Billion”

They say if you keep peeling that cosmic onion, you’ll eventually get to the truth. Truth may be whats left after you peel away all the bullsh*t. Keep peeling my friend.

Comment on The Word That Shall Not Be Named by Keith

Keith — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 02:31:12 +0000

Any school age kid who would call his classmates the N word isn’t going to wait for Mark Twain’s permission to use the word. But by reading Huck Finn, they may think about the circumstances of how the word came to be used in the context of the society Twain depicts and why it’s still wrapped up with so much tension today. Authors use words for a reason and censoring them just to avoid talking about the reasons they were used does a disservice to the author and the reader. Censorship is cowardly and in this case, it’s extra cowardly as its being done not just to avoid discussion but to whitewash history. It’s part of the conservative movement’s ongoing attempt to minimize their own role in opposing civil rights.

Comment on The Word That Shall Not Be Named by Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:59:09 +0000

Oh yeah, also also *also* meant to mention! I got here via that smug little comment about ignorant, racist white people that you left on the Pandagon thread about Taco Bell. Ain’t that some choice fuckin’ irony?
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You don’t even notice black people exist — and how easy does it make avoiding that knowledge, living in a state where they make up one fiftieth of the population? — unless you’re forced, or you want to imagine yourself as egalitarian for a while.
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You’re perfectly happy to defend the presence of the word “nigger” in American high schools, which apparently aren’t already suffused *enough* with words hateful white people can use as weapons, without pausing an instant to consider what anyone who isn’t white or you might think about that, and this gives you not a moment’s pause to wonder why any white person really *needs*, or needs to defend, a word like ‘nigger’.
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And your argument from Harry Potter fails to impress, too, I’m sorry to say; ‘nigger’ is not a magical word (because here in the real world we don’t *have* those), just a vicious and nasty one, and it doesn’t lurk in some secret back corner of the universe husbanding its strength for the day when it will return in triumph and turn us all into Evil Racist Zombies. Here in my world, where the sky is blue on a clear day, words which fall out of use…well, they *fall out of use*. Meaning they gradually cease to be used. There’s lots of racist slurs which have done exactly that; to pick a few examples, when was the last time you heard “sheenie” or “christkiller” or “spearchucker” or “smoke” or “spade” in live use?
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Just because “nigger” is the granddaddy of all of ‘em doesn’t make it somehow magically evil. It’s just extra nasty and will take longer to die — especially when we’ve got folks like you, just so damn anxious to keep it alive. This is where you make your stand against Newspeak? Fine, I guess, but you have to understand that that knee-deep pile of dogshit you’re standing in is going to make it hard for people to get behind what you’re saying.
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And yet, in spite of it all, you know *exactly* how much better you are than those awful racist bastards who go to Taco Bell in Bumfuck, Tennessee every day because it’s the only place still open after they get off their Rubbermaid shift at three o’clock in the morning, and they’re way too tired to cook.
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Does it take practice to be this hypocritical, or does it just come to you naturally?
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Here’s a hint: Turn off your monitor for a while. Maybe by using its blank display as a mirror you can recognize in yourself that very same thing over which you so laughably proclaim your imaginary superiority.

Comment on The Word That Shall Not Be Named by Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:22:43 +0000

Also meant to mention: the Twitter link on your about-the-author page doesn’t appear to go where you mean it to.
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Also also meant to mention: I heard about this new edition before you did, and apparently unlike some, I did the tiny modicum of research (i.e., two minutes with Google) necessary to learn that the house putting it out is “NewSouth Books”, based in Louisville, Kentucky. That sound real conservative to you, bright fella? Y’all hear a lot of Southern conservatives, up there in Oregon, talking about how much they want a “New South”? Y’all ever *heard* of Louisville, or taken the interest to learn that it, like Austin, Texas, is a paradoxical liberal and left-wing mecca in the middle of what you coastal types used to get off so much on calling “fly-over country”? Yeah, I’m sure a Confederate-revanchist publishing house is going to open up shop *there*!
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Tell you what: Before you turn to open your broadsides and start returning charges of grapeshot like-for-like, why don’t you visit NewSouth’s “About Us” page (http://www.newsouthbooks.com/pages/about/), reevaluate the situation on the basis of more information than you’ve got right now, and maybe realize that you’re looking through the big end of the telescope at this one?

Comment on The Word That Shall Not Be Named by Aaron

Aaron — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 11:05:19 +0000

Jesus H. Rectal-Prolapse Christ, have you ever even *heard* of people who aren’t white?
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(Then again, you *do* live in the whitest state I’ve ever seen — and I’m from Mississippi, for God’s sake — so why am I expecting you to remember that black people actually exist and might even have their own opinions, not merely equal to but in fact *more* valid than yours, on a word as incredibly hateful and divisive as ‘nigger’?)
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And oh my God, you have a master’s degree and you really think the reason white people in America don’t confront our history is all because of this perennial flap over a single six-letter word? Changing ‘nigger’ to ‘slave’ throughout one edition of the book, so that ignorant little teenaged white shits with not enough brains to wipe their own dicks can use the book as an excuse to throw ‘nigger’ at their black classmates who’ve already heard it more than enough, and so people who really *do* want to ban it because it’s anti-racist don’t have such an incredibly easy excuse to do so — *this* is the one single thing that’s stopping American white people from going “oh hey, we wouldn’t even have a *country* if we hadn’t exploited the living shit out of black people, and we’re still exploiting the living shit out of them so maybe it’s time we really fair things up a little”?
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And you know what else? Much as I’ve loved Huck Finn since I was a child, it was published in eighteen-eighty-fucking-five. Surely you can imagine the possibility that, in the hundred and twenty five years since then, someone has written and published a book which both “forces the reader to confront the prejudices of himself, &c., &c.” — which, for modern audiences, Finn does *not* do, instead providing the easy excuse that, hey, I’m not a slaveowner or a fugitive-taker and *I* don’t say “nigger” as an insult, so I must be an enlightened white person and not part of the problem! — and which finds itself able to do so without using the word “nigger” even once. Something, in short, which has the same message, but presents it in a way which is remotely relevant to the times in which we’re actually living — a century and a quarter, and you’re going to tell me there’s *nothing* better to teach on racism than Huck Finn? I mean, I’ll grant that Twain was progressive as hell for his time, but — and maybe you haven’t heard about this yet — since then, there have actually been a few books written on the subject of racism, some of them even by *gasp* black people, who — and you may want to sit down for this one — actually know a little more about what it’s like to experience racism in modern America than did a rich white guy, no matter how progressive for his time or delightful in his satire, who wrote a half-century or more before they were born. Shocking, I know, but what can you do? (Judging by your example here, ‘remain entirely oblivious’ is a workable option.)
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Say all you like about the quality or incisiveness of his writing, and I might well agree — but if you try to tell me Mark Twain is the last *or* the best word on race in America, for white people or for anyone at all, then you ought to damned well be sensible enough not to expect anything better than this unlettered slob laughing in your well-credentialed face.
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And, yes, I realize you’re a librarian and that your default position is therefore that every word is sacred, no matter the context or the situation. That’s awesome and all; in many circumstances I’d be the first to agree. But here it is leading you into making arguments which imply you don’t know or care whether black people even exist, much less whether any of them might have opinions on this subject, *much* less whether maybe those opinions are better informed by experience, and therefore whether they agree with you or not *yes more worthy and valid*, than yours, just as your opinions on library science are more valid than mine. I dunno about you, but I’d hate to realize I had been shining my ass like this in front of God and everybody.
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Yes, yes, I know, you’re a Super Oregon Liberal and can do no fucking wrong (or else you’re a Super Oregon Libertarian and about four times as bad) — but I’m just going on what you’ve actually said here, you know? And it only makes sense if it’s addressed entirely, *exclusively*, to white people. Because black kids? Don’t need a fucking high school English class to teach them that ‘nigger’, in the mouths of white people, is bad. That’s one educational service that many, many white people are more than happy to provide black people free of charge.
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(For that matter, white kids ought not to need a high school English class to learn that shit, either; I didn’t. But I guess the state of the pedagogical art in Oregon must not be quite up to the standard set by my Mississippi redneck mother.)
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And I can’t help but find it an incredible fuckin’ hoot that it’s me, a foul-mouthed dumbshit hick who dropped out of college halfway through his first semester and never even tried to go back, who has to explain this very basic shit to you, who have more years of schooling than I’ve ever even spent at a single job. Goes to show I didn’t miss out on as much as I thought, I guess.
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And if, rather than take the point I’m trying to make and try to maybe do something with it, you’d rather sit there and be all offended that I was not sufficiently nice to you, well, then, to hell with you — but hey, maybe that won’t happen; after all, you apparently like this laughable jackass who calls himself “Rude Pundit”, so who knows, maybe I’ve finally found somebody with enough backbone to handle a real argument. Here’s hoping, anyway.

Comment on If I was President, This is the Speech I Would Give Tonight by Keith

Keith — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 04:19:49 +0000

Also, this is clearly why I am not President.

Comment on Happy Holidays! by Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 22:21:57 +0000

You realize that you are setting yourself up for coal in your stocking.

Have a Happy Solstice Celebration of Your Choice anyway…