Of course! He's been making an ass out of himself for most of his career, and it's been funny - that's why we're so ready to quickly forgive and forget. And Jerry obviously still goes for laughs with Sicilian ethnic stereotyping. It's all good, I reckon. Except the Seinfeld cartoon, it was lame.

But I still can't understand the point of the entire routine. Even if he was trying to be all edgy and dangerous and everything, it seemed more like crazy ranting than anything with a... well... point. Or punchline. Or anything vaguely funny, which is what I'm assuming that the people in the comedy club were paying to see.

I recall an incident many moons ago when I called into Dan Savage's radio show and kvetched about the fact that we weren't allowed to listen to his show at the pizza place where I worked because some of the drivers said it offended them. I pointed out that we were allowed to listen to NWA, and that it therefore seemed to me that the thing people were offended by was not so much the supposed impropriety but more the "queer content" of Savage Love Live.

So Dan goes, "What's NWA?"

And I go, "It's a hiphop group out of Compton. Stands for Niggaz With Attitude-"

Next thing I know I'm listening to a dial tone. I turn up the radio just in time to hear myself being bleeped and disconnected and Dan's going, "Whoa! We don't use that word on this program!"

So, you know, hello irony, this is Dan Savage.

Mostly I think it's kind of sad and fucked up that the alterna-crowd, who are supposedly all about challenging taboos about saying cursing and nudity and whatever else are the ones who work the hardest to create this new taboo around a word. It's just a fucking word, and it's intellectually dishonest to pretend a word carries the same moral weight as, say an act of violence or political oppression.

Yes! Anyone who spent four years tip-toeing arround all the thought police there would have at least least much pent-up rage.

I watched Letterman last night and it seems like Richards isn't even sure what happened. When he started talking, people started giggling...they thought it was a joke, or a bit. Seinfeld had to tell the audience to stop laughing, that it wasn't funny. He seemed totally shell-shocked. Or totally fucked up. Probably both.

What is shocking to me is that Laughing Factory chose to put him on for ANOTHER night after his tirade. Now with all the press they are saying that he is not welcome. But why did they put him on the second night? Greed most likely. I'm emailing Laughing Factory and telling them that I'm never going to their venue again. Fine, I've never been before but whatever, details...

My hand wasn't on the dump button back in the day when I did a radio show. And I'm such a geek that I had never heard of NWA, and didn't know it from Adam. But if you were dumped, the producer dumped you. And I covered. Surely you can say the name of popular group with "niggaz" in its name on any radio show, even my dumb, late radio show.

Mistakes were made, Joshua. Sorry about that.

I agree with Davida in that it is not *just* a word.

Yes, it is. Every chump who tries to sell it as something more than a word tries to do so with some line about how "words have power." To which I reply that yes, words-- wurdZA --do have power. In which regard "nigger" is no different than all the other words. For example, the word "racist" has power. And yet-- nobody seems to have any special compunction about using that one.

(Perhaps indicative of that is that I paused before even typing the word.)

Yeah. Tell me, does it occur to you that the reason you paused before even typing it is that you've been programmed to be afraid of a fucking word? That the social consequences of being seen to use that word are so totally out or proportion with the consequences of using any other word in the English language that you actually have to make a conscious effort and force yourself to type it? Try this: try saying it. Say it out loud. Feel that little hitch, like you're forcing it out? Like something awful's going to happen to you if you say it?

That's a taboo; a crude and unreasoning superstition. There's a difference between knowing what a word means-- recognizing the power associated with its meaning --and living in fear that you'll be hounded from the village just for uttering it.

Indeed. I don't blame us for creating it, but I do blame us for perpetuating it when breaking taboos is supposedly sort of our raison d’être.

it can be argued that in some instances the 'n' word is at least synonomous(sp) with acts of violence and political oppression

Sure it can. It can also be argued that every time you masturbate, God kills a kitten. It can be argued that the earth is flat and that if we allow gay marriage the human race will die out in 100 years because everybody will stop breeding. All kinds of silliness "can be argued." If you'd actually like to make that argument, I'd be willing to test it. But please don't short sheet me with "it can be argued".

In the absence of that argument, no, the n-word all by itself is not remotely synonymous with acts of violence and political oppression. How do I know this? I can't honestly say I know it with one hundred percent certainty, but I've been called pretty much every name in the book and I've been beaten, bashed and threatened on pretenses ranging from robbery to race and my experience is that I'd much rather be called a name-- even a name with hateful historical and social connotations --than have my ass kicked or be politically disenfranchised.

And, just as a point of order, I'm not defending Richards' behavior in particular. I'm discussing the n-word generally.