OK, time for an alternative point of view. I was out of town last week, and kept repeatedly hearing on MSNBC how horrible Dr. Laura Schlesinger is, including Al Sharpton railing against her, but strangely I never heard a precise quote of what she
actually said that was objectionable. So finally I did a Google search and found the transcript. (I don't have the link anymore, but any of you can do the same and find it). My comments are based on the transcript found in the MediaMatters article. Of course the key is to focus on what she actually said, not on the editorial spin of the reporter. If she said anything other than what is reported in the MediaMatters article, I would like to know, as my comments are entirely based on what MediaMatters reported. As an aside, my understanding that her publicist (or some such professional rep) is black.
For heaven's sake. I'm no fan of Dr. Laura, but if you read the ENTIRE transcript of her comments, not snippets taken out of context, she was NOT calling
anyone a "nigger." Had she done so, I would be the first to condemn her. But she did NOT do so. She was simply commenting on the
common use of that adjective in the Black Media and Entertainment Industries. You
do hear "nigger, nigger, nigger"
all the time in music lyrics, by comedians, and so on. On that point, Schlesinger was completely correct. Even Al Sharpton has used the term, though this didn't stop him from bitching on cable news about Schlesinger's reference
to others using the term.
Even recently, on the Hudlin Entertainment Forum, we had a discussion of the disparaging phrase "House Nigger." Was it "racist" for me to respond to another Forum member's use of that description. Were my comments a "racist rant" because I repeated the "N" word used by someone else?
By the same token, one could condemn MediaMatters for printing the "N" word repeatedly in its story, as it, like Dr. Laura, was simply repeating what
others say. Both were quoting or referencing the comments and behavior
of others.
This bitch-fest is nothing but left-wing smear politics, using her
reference (not
use of) the term "nigger" as a pretense. To the extent that any person was offended by Schlesinger's use of the "N" word, in the
context that she used it, that person
is hyper-sensitive.
The use of the term "nigger" is clearly offensive when used to describe someone else. I have strongly made that point myself, here on the Forum (with some black forum members disagreeing with me). Its use is not offensive when quoting or referencing the quotes of others. In the latter context, it doesn't matter if the person quoting the term is black or white (or even the editor of MediaMatters or Dr. Laura). That was Schlesinger's point, in saying it should not matter if the person using the term is black or white. She was referencing the
context in which
she was using the term (as referencing the conduct of others), after the female caller attacked her in a "gotcha" fashion after hearing the term.
Now, you might object to her description of the female caller (a black woman married to a white man) as hyper-sensitive, but that is another matter. If that is all Schlesinger had said, without her reference to other folk's use of the "N" word, you would have
never heard about it, and nobody would have made a stink. Whether the woman who called her was hyper-sensitive or not, I've no way to know, as it is hard to discern from a short phone call if the caller's white husband's relatives are really jerks, or whether they were just innocently asking her what "black people" think about X or Y, in the same way that if a Christian were married to a Jew, the Christian relatives might ask the Jew "What do Jews think about that." (Indeed, Schlesinger made this very same point). Now one might be offended by being treated as a "representative" of an entire group simply because one is a member of that group, but ... at times people (including sometimes on the Forum) have asked me about the Jewish perspective, and so forth, and I don't take offense. It all turns on whether there is a sub-text of bigotry or not. The female caller did not articulate
why she assumed a sub-text of racism. The women did not describe any conduct that was clearly and overtly racist. Perhaps had she done so, Dr. Laura would not have gone off on the "hyper-sensitivity" issue.
