Holy Shit. I Had To Play The Video To Make Sure the Headline Was Right

[Minimalist]

I haven't heard that term in 30 years.  Brings back memories.

It's true though. It's all in the skull dimples.

So, 30 years ago more or less I'm sitting in my office when the union local chapter president called.  I was VP.  We had two stewards in our Brooklyn headquarters and they were brothers.  I'll make up names.  Bob and Bill Jones.  Bob was a hothead, always yelling about something.  Bill was a lawyer and the most soft-spoken person you ever met.  Carson reminds me of him except Bill was much, much, smarter.  Bill was the kind of guy that when you were speaking to him face-to-face you stepped closer to hear him.  Anyway the phone call went something like this:

Him:  I need you to call Bill Jones and calm him down.
Me:   What happened?
Him:  The chief of the Taxpayer Service Division just called and said Bill called one of the members of his team "a house nigger."  (Some silly committee meeting)
Me:   You mean "Bob" not "Bill." 
Him:  NO!  I mean BILL not BOB.
Me:   You're shitting me.  Bill said that?
Him:  So they say.  I'm going to call the chief you call Bill and find out what happened.

In the days before cell phones it took nearly two hours for us to actually connect and by then he was calm again...except I could hear his brother in the background shouting "house nigger is too good for him."  Anyway Bill fully admitted that he lost his temper with one guy who was a bargaining unit employee on a temp detail to management and seemed to forget that it was only "temporary."  By the end of the call he had me agreeing with him that the guy was a house nigger but I reminded him that even though speech was protected in a labor-management setting we didn't want to push the envelope too far.  At the end he apologized for causing the president and me any problem but not for saying it.  I settled for that.

Funny how one simple phrase can trigger a memory, isn't it?