News and Politics Forum

So the left once again steps up to warn us about racist code words or enumerate for us the words that we simply cannot use anymore. 

The new one? 

Disrespectful. 

Let us say that a person is governor of a state.  You continually belittle their position by referring to them as their former title - mayor.  You also further this condescension by mispronouncing the name of the city as "Wasilly" instead of Wasilla.  Since we are told on a near constant basis that you are brilliant beyond our comprehension and that despite ample evidence to the contrary when off script are a brilliant orator, we can assume you are doing this on purpose. 

If that person's campaign has the audacity to point out the fact* that you are being disrespectful to that person's accomplishments it is obviously a racist code word. 

After all, who else but the most vile and deeply racist person uses such incendiary terms as "disrespectful"? 

Brent Stapes @ NYT wrote:

In the Old South, black men and women who were competent, confident speakers on matters of importance were termed “disrespectful,” the implication being that all good Negroes bowed, scraped, grinned and deferred to their white betters.

In what is probably a harbinger of things to come, the McCain campaign has already run a commercial that carries a similar intimation, accusing Mr. Obama of being “disrespectful” to Sarah Palin. The argument is muted, but its racial antecedents are very clear.

Once again we are being told which words are off-limits by the free speech loving left.  After all, if the right refuses to rise to the bait and inject race into the campaign you must do so on their behalf.  I would see this as more calculated than it is except for the fact that I truly believe that many of them simply cannot comprehend that all Republicans are not racist.  The feeling is so ingrained that when no racism is shown they experience a nasty cognitive dissonance.  To borrow an analogy; when there's no water at the oasis, they drink the sand. 

I will say that while most literate people understand the meaning of "niggardly" it would be a stupendously moronic word to use in this climate; and I can even say that while it can be used in this day and age in a non-racial way I would avoid referring to a black man as "boy" simply to avoid the fallout coming from people so bent upon injecting race into a campaign that showing your opponent in a setting he himself chose is racist and sexual. 

However this angst over the use of "disrespectful" is stupefyingly loony.  It's stupid enough that I thought to myself "is this The Onion?" 

Any serious person sees the silliness in these charges and those prone to find them compelling are unlikely to vote with reason anyway. 

No thinking person can read this tripe in the NYT and take the paper seriously afterward.