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Authors: Matthew Chapman
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falling down, you feel you are watching not someone who has been saved, but someone who has merely found another outlet for her hysteria.
The racial composition of the bus has changed. When I got on in New York there were almost four times as many African-Americans as whites. Now the ratio has been inverted. There are eighteen white people, five African-Americans, two Hispanics, and unless I’m much mistaken, a Redskin just got on board. Oh, no, I’m sorry, Native American . Oh, no, sorry again, I just heard it ought to be First Nation Person.
How I despise this Index Expurgatorius of ‘inappropriate’ words. I understand what it is attempting to do, but as a writer it feels like someone’s putting a hand in my toolbox. The whole concept seems Orwellian to me, a way of changing appearance without changing substance, a hypocritical ploy designed to varnish brutal reality, a means by which self-satisfied closet racists and bigots can safely hide behind a set of linguistic rules and so feel immunised from either criticism or the need for action.
My paternal grandmother was a kike, my sister is married to
a nigger, my favourite uncle is a fag, and my wife is a spic. Is the world changed by that sentence? Of course not. Crime against language is committed every day in America, but it has nothing to do with the use of ‘bad’ words. No, the real crime is the theft of good words by corporations: brutal oil and timber companies crooning reassuringly about how much they ‘love’ and ‘cherish’ the great outdoors, Insurance companies, who’d rip your liver out and stomp on it for a buck, sentimentalising about how they want to ‘nurture’ you, ‘care’ for you, and be your ‘lifelong friend.’ Younger, smarter black people see this linguistic fraud for what it is and mock it with their own inversions: ‘bad’ means good, ‘down’ means up. And when did you last hear one black man say to another, ‘Whassup, African-American?’ Consciously or not, they give the finger to it all.
Moronic racial epithets flourish on the Internet, empowered by denunciation, while the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is made to blush. This double attack upon the vocabulary is akin to Necrotising Fasciitis, that flesheating bacteria which greedily consumes a leg in an afternoon.
We arrive in Knoxville and I have to wait an hour and then change buses to get one to Chattanooga. A woman sits in the bus station holding a large bed-pillow complete with pillowcase. A man comes up to her and says, ‘Came prepared with a pillow?’
The bus is late and I soon find out why. The driver is incredibly slow and verbose. As we finally leave the station, he starts his routine: ‘Smoking is prohibited. If you don’t know what prohibited means, it means, don’t ask for it, don’t do it, don’t even want it. No boomboxes and no sex in the bathroom. If you get the desire, I’ll pull over at a motel, but I won’t wait.’ He then goes on to explain where we’re going, how, and at what speed. He’s like one of those airline pilots who just as you get to sleep insists on telling you his name, the kind of plane you’re on, how fast you’re going, at what height, ‘and if you look out the left of the plane, you may just be able to see Las Vegas …’ But this driver is worse. It seems like he’s never going to shut up. A woman across the aisle from me says, ‘What’s he goin’ on about?
I can’t understand a word he says, it’s like he talks with his mouth shut or somepin.’
In front of me, a one-legged man discusses the pros and cons of city life versus country life. ‘I just can’t believe people spend $200,000 on a house that’s so close to another one that you could spit on it, an’ it’s like everyone’s flinging around attitude an’ he’s gonna hit you before you hit him ’cause maybe you’ve got a hidden gun. I was in auto-repair—expect you to do work for nothing, don’t even want you to
The racial composition of the bus has changed. When I got on in New York there were almost four times as many African-Americans as whites. Now the ratio has been inverted. There are eighteen white people, five African-Americans, two Hispanics, and unless I’m much mistaken, a Redskin just got on board. Oh, no, I’m sorry, Native American . Oh, no, sorry again, I just heard it ought to be First Nation Person.
How I despise this Index Expurgatorius of ‘inappropriate’ words. I understand what it is attempting to do, but as a writer it feels like someone’s putting a hand in my toolbox. The whole concept seems Orwellian to me, a way of changing appearance without changing substance, a hypocritical ploy designed to varnish brutal reality, a means by which self-satisfied closet racists and bigots can safely hide behind a set of linguistic rules and so feel immunised from either criticism or the need for action.
My paternal grandmother was a kike, my sister is married to
a nigger, my favourite uncle is a fag, and my wife is a spic. Is the world changed by that sentence? Of course not. Crime against language is committed every day in America, but it has nothing to do with the use of ‘bad’ words. No, the real crime is the theft of good words by corporations: brutal oil and timber companies crooning reassuringly about how much they ‘love’ and ‘cherish’ the great outdoors, Insurance companies, who’d rip your liver out and stomp on it for a buck, sentimentalising about how they want to ‘nurture’ you, ‘care’ for you, and be your ‘lifelong friend.’ Younger, smarter black people see this linguistic fraud for what it is and mock it with their own inversions: ‘bad’ means good, ‘down’ means up. And when did you last hear one black man say to another, ‘Whassup, African-American?’ Consciously or not, they give the finger to it all.
Moronic racial epithets flourish on the Internet, empowered by denunciation, while the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is made to blush. This double attack upon the vocabulary is akin to Necrotising Fasciitis, that flesheating bacteria which greedily consumes a leg in an afternoon.
We arrive in Knoxville and I have to wait an hour and then change buses to get one to Chattanooga. A woman sits in the bus station holding a large bed-pillow complete with pillowcase. A man comes up to her and says, ‘Came prepared with a pillow?’
The bus is late and I soon find out why. The driver is incredibly slow and verbose. As we finally leave the station, he starts his routine: ‘Smoking is prohibited. If you don’t know what prohibited means, it means, don’t ask for it, don’t do it, don’t even want it. No boomboxes and no sex in the bathroom. If you get the desire, I’ll pull over at a motel, but I won’t wait.’ He then goes on to explain where we’re going, how, and at what speed. He’s like one of those airline pilots who just as you get to sleep insists on telling you his name, the kind of plane you’re on, how fast you’re going, at what height, ‘and if you look out the left of the plane, you may just be able to see Las Vegas …’ But this driver is worse. It seems like he’s never going to shut up. A woman across the aisle from me says, ‘What’s he goin’ on about?
I can’t understand a word he says, it’s like he talks with his mouth shut or somepin.’
In front of me, a one-legged man discusses the pros and cons of city life versus country life. ‘I just can’t believe people spend $200,000 on a house that’s so close to another one that you could spit on it, an’ it’s like everyone’s flinging around attitude an’ he’s gonna hit you before you hit him ’cause maybe you’ve got a hidden gun. I was in auto-repair—expect you to do work for nothing, don’t even want you to
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