and yes, that piece of slime, McConnell now owns this just as much as Trump does.

McConnell has completely abdicated his job as a Senator, as the Senate is to act as a Check & Balance on the Executive Branch.

it's NOT his job to only send the President bills that the President will sign.
by blocking floor vote on the House Bills (one of which is the bill the Senate has already passed prior to end of 2018), McConnell now owns just as much blame as Trump does.

Not sure where else to put this, because the "Sociology" Thread seemed to die a quick death a while back, but this isn't really politics, so I'm going to put it here and see what happens.

I've been reading with some dismay over the situation concerning Jeremy Kappell, the Rochester, NY, weatherman fired recently for saying "Martin Luther Coon" during one of his weather segments.

The Rochester mayor, Lovely Warren (who is black) and the city council, issued a statement reading "It is wrong, hurtful and infuriating that WHEC Channel 10 broadcast a racial slur in reference to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during its Friday News broadcast. It is beyond unacceptable that this occurred. There must be real consequences for the news personality involved and also for the management team that failed to immediately apologize and address the slur."

The Rochester Association of Black Journalists (which I would not imagine to be a terribly big group, but regardless) issued their statement reading "This is completely unacceptable and contrary to all standards of broadcasting. We expect a complete explanation of what happened, who was responsible and why nothing was said immediately after the Friday broadcast. We also want to know what measures will be taken to prevent incidents like this from occurring in the future."

Listening to the audio of the news report, yes, Kappell does say "Martin Luther Coon King Junior Park". It's an instantaneous correction, however, as though he realized he made a slip of the tongue, maybe even not recognizing WHAT he said, just that it wasn't "King", and he put the right word in there. In his apology, after being fired, he stated that he didn't know what he said and did not use that word in his regular life.

Al Roker, noted TV personality, sided with Kappell, saying that he had made many on-air slip-ups and anyone could Google them to check, and Don Lemon, during an interview with Kappell, said he believed Keppell when he said it was wholly unintentional.

My question is, have we reached a point now where even what appears to be an innocent mistake, made with zero malice aforethought, warrants ruining a person's career? This is being called a "racial slur" but was it? Is the punishment far more severe than the slight, particularly since he didn't seem to be trying to get away with something by slipping the word into his broadcast?

Just some thoughts and something for discussion.

Personally I hear "Küng", with a short ü instead of a long "oo", and a clear g at the end. Plus, as you say, he instantly corrects it and continues as if nothing had happened.



I would believe him too. Slips of the tongue happen all the time, and unless there's a reason to believe otherwise I would accept a person's explanation that there was nothing more to it. Plus, not being socially sensitive to the word "coon", I do not react to any sound that might somehow resemble it; in this case, I don't even hear it at all. I really hear "küng¨.

Plus, of course, there's what the guy says when his tongue is not slipping: that he considers Dr. King as one of the greatest figures of the civil rights movement, and that he sees him as a hero. That should settle the issue, unless we can provide past instances where Roker acted like a racist. (Some people have argued that it was a genuine slip of the tongue, but one caused by Roker's probable frequent use of the word "Coon" instead of "King" when talking about Dr. King. Fine conspiratorial hypothesis, but I wait for the evidence).



We have reached a point where as soon as someone feels they have been offended, then the "offender" is guilty in the court of social media, where is no such thing as a presumption of innocence. In the court of real media there is no way a broadcaster can risk offending anyone by suggesting that a calm and rational analysis of the case might be warranted before taking drastic measures.

I am very much reminded of the 1999 fiasco about an assistant to Washington's mayor using the word "niggardly" in a meeting, concerning the city's budget. Someone thought it was a racial slur and lodged a complaint, and many voices clamoured for the guy's resignation. I was living in Maryland at the time and recall that even when it was explained that "niggardly" was a synoinym for "miserly" and had no racial connotation whatsoever, many people argued that the nefarious employee should have known that his word might be misconstrued as such, and was insensitive. He ended up resigning to avoid putting his boss in hot water, and the mayor accepted the resignation. The mayor felt remorse a few weeks later and offered him his job back, but he ended up accepting a different position instead. As I recall, he was even pretty gracious about the whole incident.

In any case... People have always taken offence easily, but thanks to the power of social media nowadays such offence carries a very heavy punch... even if there is no ground for it. Offence 2.0, they call it.

It is very sad that someone's career is currently being destroyed for what really looks like an innocent slip of the tongue, while so many people who plainly and clearly utter racist and heinous things are not held accountable.

Will that guy have to look for word at Breitbart, now? Is that the message we want to send? Beware of the slip of the tongue: if you ever say something that someone can misconstrue as an offensive word, you'll have to join the alt right or starve? That's a pretty lousy message, IMO.

Very few want to come forward, because as soon as a person does, everything they have ever done is fodder for public consumption. Every tweet, Instagram or Facebook post, organization they've been part of, person they dated once in the 10th grade, and kid they bit in kindergarten; it will all be dredged up from the bowels of history and over-analyzed ad nauseum. Heaven forbid they once made even an innocent remark in a text or e-mail about another person, as it will be judged in the court of public opinion without any consideration of context or intent.

If I were one of the "best and brightest", American politics is the absolute last place I would consider putting my time and energy, because it's an ugly game that is only going to get uglier.

Very good and fair point. I think people also forget how much more drastically civilized and accepting/understanding society has gotten in just the last 20 years on things like LGBTQ+ rights, women's rights, understanding of brain development, etc. I think this is largely due to the internet allowing rapid exchange of ideas and viewpoints along with new research, etc.

Point is, you don't even have to go that far back to find commonly-held viewpoints and statements that would be archaic and offensive by modern standards but were quite commonplace and normalized as recently as the late 90s/early 00s. We know a lot better now than we did then, thank God, but it would not be hard to find something for a lot of people that would be disqualifying in 2019 that was part of the common parlance in 1998 or something (obviously making up numbers, not a specific instance in mind).

That word pops up in Twelfth Night (Toby Belch describes Malvolio as "a niggardly rascally sheep-biter" ) and in my experience, it's now simply cut or replaced.

I get it, though. "Niggardly" has not been a commonly used word -- I'd rank it far below "penurious" as a frequently used synonym for cheap -- for a very long time. Anyone with the kind of expansive speaking vocabulary that encompasses it should also be aware of the way it sounds. That, combined with its infrequent use, makes the word a candidate for retirement. 

In The Winter's Tale, a servant speaks of a traveling salesman who sings songs with "dildos." Again, often dropped now because its original meaning -- a verse at the end of a song -- is obsolete.

There are other examples of words like this, but the point is that if a word is going to distract -- notice I didn't say offend -- the audience in any way, a director or speaker should weigh his or her options. Language changes and we should be sensitive to those changes, though I am sympathetic with anyone who hasn't always kept up.

In 1999, I once asked a student on my yearbook staff who had been slated to interview a coach if she had managed to hook up with him, completely unaware that among kids, that expression had morphed from meeting someone (as in "I hooked up with him at work yesterday") to having casual sexual relations. She was shocked, I was embarrassed, and apologized. You can bet I never used that term again.

I also think that we need to think about the difference between someone's being hurt and someone's being offended. The latter word itself has become associated with oversensitivity and the so-called snowflake mentality. Free speech can be offensive, for all kinds of reasons. But I find that different from speech between and among individuals. If you're a comedian or satirist who uses the word "retarded" in a column or on stage, you're going to offend people. That's the price of free speech. However, if I were to call a student or colleague "retarded," their "offended" might more readily be understood as "hurt." And I think that does make a difference.

Yeah, he can't help being a classless cheapskate.