Monthly Archive for May, 2006

Insensitive language and public discourse

Published
by
Dave
on May 18, 2006
in Washington DC, language, politics and race
. 3 Comments

I got an email from an acquaintance and Word Nerds listener yesterday, alerting me to a flap created by the brand new White House press secretary, Tony Snow. A Google News search lists a report in the ThinkProgress.org blog as the first reporter of this unfortunate gaff.

(Bizarrely enough, the Washington Post largely ignored this moment, at least in the print edition. Dana Milbank, in his gushing review of the new press secretary, mentioned in passing, deep in the middle of his column, that Snow “risked some loaded language.” According to the Post website, this piece appeared on page A2 of the print edition, although I did not see it. A more critical piece by Dan Froomkin appeared only on washingtonpost.com, not in the print edition.)

In his very first briefing Tuesday, Snow casually used the term “hug the tar baby,” apparently to refer to refer to what might more neutrally be termed a “sticky situation.” His reference seemed to be to an old children’s story by Joel Chandler Harris, in which Brer Rabbit tricks Brer Fox into hugging a baby made out of tar, and thereby traps his nemesis the fox.

However, it is probably more commonly understood in American discourse as a racial slur, a very rude term for African Americans.

The thread of comments on ThinkProgress.org (at the time of this writing already numbering 291 comments) shows how racially charged this careless use of language is. While a lot commenters claim the whole flap is an instance of political correctness run amok, many others hear in the off-hand remarks by this occasional substitute for Rush Limbaugh an extraordinary insensitivity to the perception of this phrase.

Even if Snow was only thinking of the Brer Rabbit story, which is generally perceived nowadays to be somewhat racist on its own, he seems to have a tin ear when it comes to hearing the voice and lexicon of 21st-century America.

Race is still the big taboo of American life. This country, which was founded on a slave economy, is still trying, 142 years after our Civil War, to figure out who we are and how we should talk to each other. The Word Nerds did a show recently on Race and Language in which we tried to explore the edges of this taboo zone. In the back of our minds, Howard Chang and I know that there is a wide spectrum of possible reaction to racially charged speech, from very sensitive to very thick-skinned.

But whether you think the uproar is obviously justified or is a case of exaggerated political correctness, one would have to acknowledge that the choice of the term “tar baby” was a rather bizarre turn of phrase for Snow to use on his very first day on the job in front of the White House press corps. Whether Snow was subconsciously using the phrase as a racial slur or simply recalling the Brer Rabbit story, there is no way he should have let it pass his lips.

In our podcast, Howard Chang introduced the concept of “homophonic creep,” which is what happens when words that sound like offensive words become taboo, just because of their sound. One very well known example is a controversy in the Washingtron, DC local government in 1999 over the use of the non-offensive term niggardly.

But the Tony Snow flap this week is nothing like that. “Tar baby” is either a nasty racial slur, or else it’s a plot feature in a story that no one tells any longer because of its racial overtones. It is certainly not a phrase any educated public speaker should get away with using nowadays.

Certainly not a White House press secretary.

A roller-coaster baseball week

Published
by
Dave
on May 10, 2006
in Washington DC and baseball
. 2 Comments

For the first time in my life, within the past week I attended two, count ‘em, two major-league baseball games. Because I was sitting both times in my season-ticket seats, I now truly feel like a baseball geek.

I must state, here at the very beginning of this post, the unpleasant fact that the Washington Nationals lost both games I saw. Against two of the palooka teams of the National League East–the Florida Marlins and the Pittsburgh Pirates–the Nats went down to defeat.

(Since then the Nats have beaten Pittsburgh once at home and Cincinnati once on the road.)

But there was good news, too–more important than wins and losses. After something like 17 months of procrastinating, Major League Baseball awarded the right to purchase the team to a group of investors led by Ted Lerner, a local developer with very deep pockets. The announcement was made late in the day on Wednesday. We halfway expected to see the Lerners at the ballpark on Wednesday, but they didn’t come until Thursday evening.

Then on Thursday morning, ground was broken for the new stadium. Many DC politicians, including race-baiters-come-lately Marion Barry and Vincent Orange, participated in this event. The Lerners were at the park on Thursday to watch the Nationals lose again.

Friday the Nats began a series against the Pittsburgh Pirates (even worse than the Florida Marlins) with a decisive win, 6-0. I had high hopes when I went to the stadium on Saturday to see game two against the Pirates. But no, after the batters got the score to 3-0 in favor of the Nationals after two innings, pitcher Ramon Ortiz gave up the entire lead before he was pulled from the game. Our guys ended up losing 5-4.

What does it mean that we will now have an owner? Most importantly, it will mean that our team is not owned by the other 29 teams in Major League Baseball. That is the status quo. The sale to the Lerner group will not be finally closed until mid-June. This means that for another whole month, the Nats are quite literally owned by the other team every time they play.

Most people I know are very excited about this new ownership group. The group centers on a business-oriented family that is very wealthy. They are a local family, which means there is no reason to worry that the team will leave DC any time in the foreseeable future. They are joined by Stan Kasten, who turned the Atlanta Braves into “America’s team” in the late 1980s-early 1990s.

In a way this feels like we have become subjects of a benevolent princely family of sport. But there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ll be a happy subject.

The discipline of regularity

Published
by
Dave
on May 4, 2006
in blogging and podcasting
. 9 Comments

You four people who continue to faithfully read this blog deserve my heartfelt thanks.

The problem with my blog (well, one of the problems with my blog) is that it’s so hit-and-miss. I don’t write to it regularly. This is probably why nobody reads it except my closest friends.

So here’s my blogging regime from now on: I’ll post something on or about every Wednesday. Never mind whether I have a big, earth-shaking essay to write. I’ll put up something every Wednesday at least.

Regularity is, I think, one thing that has enabled The Word Nerds to develop a considerable worldwide following. It’s a pain in the ass to crank the thing out every week, but it makes all the difference in the world. It’s the basic time structure of the show: whatever we have to say, we say it every week.

Eating our own media

Published
by
Dave
on May 2, 2006
in blogging, magic, media and podcasting
. 2 Comments

Today I found out, somewhat by accident, that the first “mainstream” magazine about podcasting, ID3 Podcast Magazine, would not appear in print after all.

I had signed up to subscribe to this through Dan Klass’s website, and expected to get a print copy in the mail this month sometime. I also received a login ID and password to get access to the online features of the magazine.

When I tried to log in today, my information didn’t work. The magazine’s website didn’t recognize the information they had given me. Frustrating!

But I also found out, just by prowling around the site, that the print edition of this magazine will never come out. This is instead going to be solely an online publication, and paid subscribers will receive their money back.

This is no surprise to me, really. I always wondered whether the podcast world really had need of a paper magazine that arrived in the snail-mail every month, just like Atlantic Monthly or National Geographic. This is Web 2.0, after all! We can create radio shows that go out to the whole world and each other. We’re all subscribed to 20 or 30 bulletin boards or RSS feeds or blogs or whatever. I read the New York Times online. I link to the Washington Post whenever I can in my blog.

In contast to all this new online media, I received my subscription renewal notice in the mail yesterday for Genii, the Conjuror’s Magazine. I will renew my subscription to Genii, because it makes sense. The secrets of magic are ancient and arcane, and they resist being disseminated wholesale on the internet. (Which is not to say they cannot be found on the internet; but serious magicians deplore the internet publication of the arcana of magic and illusion.) Magicians do love their books and paper magazines. 

There’s a place for old media, and there’s a place for new media. But the fate of ID3 Podcast Magazine makes me wonder further what the future of “paid” media will be.

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