Bill Maher 6/9/17

[Brian37]

I don't think we should be invalidating the feelings of any black person that were hurt by saying disqualifying things like "it's just a word". It was completely up to old Bill to want to apologize or not, he has that right and others have the right to not give their audience to his shows.

In my personal opinion, he deserves the backlash. As a side note, I don't think it's possible for Bill (anyone really) to piece together house and nigger so effortlessly in a conversation unless they frequently use it or are surrounded by people that use it. At the end of the day Bill does what he does for his own profit and not for some superior moralistic reasons.

I'm going to take the side of people should grow the fuck up. We need to start invalidating derogatory terms and start treating them like words that have no meaning. 
No one takes offense to these words anymore Gadzooks, Bejabbers, Dad-Sizzle, Tunderation, Consarn it!, G. Rover Cripes!, By the double  barreled Jumping Jimiinetty.
See these swear words are hilarious does anyone find them offensive no because they are just words hilarious words. And consarn it im gonna have a muckspouting good time 
using them.

It is a utopia to think words don't matter, but they do.

Pejoratives are a way of a majority demonizing a minority. 

"Nigger"
"Rusky" 
"Spick"
"Wetback"
"Cracker"
"Commie"
"Faggot"
"Redneck"
"Jap"

And even "atheist"

I am quite sure there are many atheists here who have run into the far right bigots who have used the word "atheist" as a pejorative and equated us to monsters like Hitler and Stalin and Po Pot. 

Now you tell me, if you don't believe in a god, do you think you can tell the difference between when a fellow atheist is joking about that word and when an asshole bigot uses it? 

Sure sometimes people who are not bigots use any word are merely making a point that the bigots are bigots, but if pejoratives didn't affect any society people would not use them. So words do matter and context does matter. The left didn't jump on Bill because they thought he was a bigot, they jumped on him because of a long history that even today blacks are still dealing with.

"Let it roll off of your back" is what someone who is used to being in the majority says. There is a long term history going on and it is not always a good tactic to say "It's just words".

---

I can remember back when I was married to my x wife who is Japanese, showing up to the factory she worked as as a chemist to pick her up after her shift. The security guard was a "redneck", southern draw, didn't know his politics, but every time I saw him he seemed to get along with everyone.

So that one day I pulled up to the employee entrance he was standing outside, I asked him, "Can you page my wife and let her know I am here". He was familiar with her and responded "Oh, you mean the Jap"..... I was a bit stunned by that, but considering his history of interaction with others I chalked it up to a very bad joke. I told my wife driving her home and even she knew he didn't mean it but agreed, wasn't the wisest attempt at humor.

But here is the joke I could do with her that would be inappropriate for him. We would get into play arguments, not real fights, but silly "oh yea well", and when I realized she got 1 up on me I once said "Well, just remember, we(meaning America) kicked your ass in WW2" 

There are simply some things you can say among friends and family that you would not say to the general public. That is where Bill's FELLOW LIBERALS were coming from. 

Even with my friend from Oklahoma, when I call him a Redneck, he gets it, but I would not go to red states and say that to strangers I have never met.

[Rev. Rye]

Some one on the show said something like, 'Bill, you can come work in the fields with us' and Maher replied, 'Work in the fields?  I'm a house nigger.'

'House nigger' is a reference to slaves who worked in the house (duh) as maids, cleaners, cooks and such.  I have trouble seeing Maher's use of the word in this context as anything approaching racism.

Boru

That just makes the complaints all the more petty. He can't even make a self depreciating joke now?

I guess it's a lot easier to focus on some sort of unseemly bullshit (and I use this in the Frankfurtian sense of the word) than to focus on the larger issues, or to think that somehow by fighting that, you're somehow helping the larger issues.

[brewer]

The simple fact is that the word nigger is offensive.
It has no other meaning or context.
Maher shouldn't have used it and I'm glad he apologised even though he clearly didn't mean it in an insulting manner.
But for someone who has made literally millions from songs featuring the regular use of the word nigger to tell him he can't use it because he's the wrong colour is beyond hypocrisy.

bold mine

Didn't he? If he is the house........., what does that make the people in the fields?

[Zen Badger]

It would make them slaves..... obviously.

And here's another thought to ponder, if he had used the word slave instead of nigger( and the meaning would've basically been the same) would we be having this discussion?

[vorlon13]

Hmmm . . .

Let's say I'm doing some role playing, and do I want a "house nigger" forcefully having his way with me as a sexually repressed women folk of the slave master?  Or do I want to be the hated overseer out behind the barn relieving tensions for the hot and bothered, sweaty, strong, masculine, forceful, virile . . .


I need to go take a break . . . . 

[SteelCurtain]

And here's another thought to ponder, if he had used the word slave instead of nigger( and the meaning would've basically been the same) would we be having this discussion?

I don't think we would. It was the word, not the context in which it was used, that was across the line.

It is a double standard, and white people are just going to have to accept it. I'm sorry, but most systematically oppressed peoples usually coopt words used against them, and once those words are exposed for what they are, the majority loses them---forever. You can't say it. If you do, you do it knowing that the word, especially in America, has a specific meaning, and that meaning is, as Ice Cube put it, like a knife in the chest to brown people. It is our word now, we have taken it, and you can't have it back.

As a black man in America, I don't like using it, I don't like hearing it in rap songs, but that is a different section of my culture that may or may not ever change.

I am a fan of Bill Maher, and I fully understand his point. He went for the joke; he---more than 99% of all other comedians, makes his living on the razor edge of 'appropriate.' He knows he crossed the line. He made an apology, then nutted up and invited critical voices on his show the next week, and let them speak. I commend him for that.

[brewer]

It would make them slaves..... obviously.

And here's another thought to ponder, if he had used the word slave instead of nigger( and the meaning would've basically been the same) would we be having this discussion?

Yes, maybe about race (this discussion taking place in the US and all) but it might also add a different twist in the discussion. Culture/class?

[Silver]

I honestly believe those people who are complaining about a comedian being a comedian are the same people who cannot properly fathom anything ethical outside of what the bible proscribes for them.

[Minimalist]

The simple fact is that the word nigger is offensive.

Depends.

[vorlon13]

when a black man is fucking me in the ass and calls me a nigger lover, I find it  . . . .





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