I'm Just Sayin'

Duane Dog Chapman used the "N" word. Now he's  making the talk show rounds offering tearful, no excuses apologies. I've been thinking about this issue for some time...the celebrity delivered racial slur or racial rant or racial degradation. After all, there's been a slew of them lately. I don't need to list them here. They have been all over the news... and that is my point. We have, in no particular order, a deranged president, a stupid war in which we don't even know who, exactly, we are fighting, wild fires, drought, the largest deficit in the history of our country (which was a surplus 7 years ago), damn near $100 a barrel oil, illegal activities on the part of our government (wiretapping, torture, lying and stuff we have yet to find out about), global warming, illegal aliens, the falling value of our currency, a shot to hell housing market coupled with unprecedented loan defaults, poisonous China imports, oil spilled up and down the Pacific coast near San Francisco, the assault on our Constitution by fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, all the usual stuff...violent crimes, white collar crimes, government waste, drunk drivers, obesity, medical malpractice, stupid children who leave high school unable to read...okay, okay..I'll stop.

With all this crap going on, we focus our attention on celebrities who use the "N" word.  White people are embarrassed, black people are indignant...I'm sick of it. I am sick of all this hoopla about name calling. We have the right to call others names. We have the right to be crude. We have the right to insult others. We have the right to be an asshole. We have the right to call a fat person "fat", a skinny person "beanpole", an asshole "asshole" and so on and so forth. I KNOW the "N" word the the most hurtful word a person of color can be called...if the insulter is a white person. But it is still just a goddamned word. It is not a stick and it is not a stone. It cannot break a bone. It can, however, hurt and I am in no way advocating the use of hurtful language of any kind. I only want to put the subject of name calling into some sort of perspective. When a white person calls a black person a nigger, it is not the black person who is demeaned..it is the name caller who has demeaned himself.

We have, collectively, as a society, condoned bad behavior. We have condoned lying and cheating. We love violence. We love to hate. We teach our children to hate. We may preach civility and tolerance, but we demonstrate hate, distrust, dishonesty and narrowmindedness. Our reward for our bad behavior is more bad behavior.

Dog Chapman used hurtful language during a private (he thought) phone conversation with his son. So what?