The hard-working nannies in the city that watch thousands of children every day do a great service. The ones that sit in city council and other spots around New York are not. Instead of real legislation that makes a difference in the lives of New Yorkers, they come up with ridiculous laws and stunts that are aimed at potty mouths. Oh my, those dangerous potty mouths.
From The Huffington Post:
First the city voted to ban the Noun that Begins with N -- the derogatory term for blacks that has been pushed out of public public speech but shoved its way into entertainment, chiefly rap music. A local NAACP branch even gave the word a funeral, coffin and all, as a show of hope that ugliness can be buried along with a word that is freighted with ugliness.
The city ban has not been accompanied by any enforcement measures -- police, for example, cannot slap a strip of duct tape across the offending mouth and effect an arrest. But so successful has this legislation presumably been that New York City Councilwoman Darlene Mealy, of Brooklyn, now wants to add the word ''bitch'' to the no-no list.
(snip)If the players in this would add a little Harry Potter to their summer reading, they'd learn at least as well as George Orwell could demonstrate that fearing a word gives it power, and banning it makes it more powerful still.
Look at how the word "queer" has evolved from an insult -- which it still is in some people's minds -- to a word that some gays embrace defiantly. They use as both a shield and a weapon, to make its original ugliness boomerang back on the person who hurled it so viciously in the first place.
This post is right on. Giving words power with fear of the law makes them so much worse. Laughing at the words is what we need most. It isn't about the word, its the power behind it. This is why I love "Borat" so much. Both of us are Jews, and his use of the character to laugh at anti-semitism is pure brilliance.
Words change in meaning all the time, that is how language works. Just think about how one interprets "colored" and "negro" now, thirty years ago, sixty years ago, etc. So to Councilwoman Mealy and other morons like her, stop with this crap and draft laws that make a difference for your constituents that improves their lives and not their mouths.
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