A girl at a school in Santa Rosa, CA said "That's so gay" in response to an insult she recieved and has already undergone rehab and has now filed suit to get the suspension taken off her records.

This is the insult she responded to:

SANTA ROSA, Calif. - When a few classmates razzed Rebekah Rice about her Mormon upbringing with questions such as, "Do you have 10 moms?" she shot back: "That's so gay."

I guess Mormons aren't a protected class. Too bad. I'd like a couple of extra wives. Let two of them fight it out while the third and I go off to do something useful or exciting.

The British ruled an Empire with tactics like that.

From the Historical Dictionary of American Slang (Lighter)

faggot n 2.a. an effeminate, weak, or cowardly fellow,--usu. used tontemptuously; (also) a male homosexual.

I don't have the W volume to cite for "wuss," but it is essentially the same as faggot.

Eric, isn't the real issue the audience response to Coulter's use of the word faggot? Substitute the "k" word for Jew, and would they have applauded? She knew she could get away with it because she knows the conservative base.

CPAC should have gone all the way and invited Michael Savage.

What the Republican Party needs right now is something or someone to run against, since they have all but abandoned their core principles. It's so pathetic to watch them flail about in the sewer of bigotry.

I'll admit my confusion at all this. Coulter has been saying crazy, offensive shit for a decade or so, and all of a sudden it is too much, seemingly, for everyone. I don't really understand, but, needless to say, I condemn her (and have for some time).

Frank: Putting words in someone's mouth--kike--isn't a winning argument--it just means you have a vivid imagination. It's called projection--keep it to yourself.

I don't know where or when any of you grew up, but of course "faggot" is a school yard taunt, used by children long before they know anything about homosexuality or gays. This whole kerfuffle is so silly. And it's no different from one boy calling another a "girl." They both have the same meaning as "sissy." Wuss is a put down used by adults--with the same meaning.

And certainly such word choice is juvenile when used by adults, but don't feign a pose of a new puritanism--of virginal ears never exposed to trash-talking athletes, vulgar hip-hop lyrics, radio "shock" jocks, and truck drivers. Selective defense of free speech is pure hypocrisy.

Cheers.

I try not to be terribly selective in my defense of free speech. There's a free speech right to call people anything. The use of the word faggot, though, is nearly always vulgar and rude, and nothing changes that. Nor does anything change it's common meaning. Anyone who uses language like that can expect criticism. I repeatedly criticized Andrew Sullivan for using the word "Christianist" (a word I don't use), and I try to be consistent.

But this is a blog discussion, where anything can be said. Something said in a political event with reporters and VIPs present can expect to have predictable political consequences, and it remains to be seen whether any of this will resonate with ordinary voters. (I suspect the activists will agitate constantly about how "the Republicans" publicly call gays "faggots." And Ann Coulter will continue to be in the news.)

I'm getting a bit tired of the shrillness all around.

Forbes:
Let me make this perfectly clear. I did not suggest that Coulter would use the "k" word; and if someone had dared to utter it at that gathering they would have been booed and hissed off the stage.
The issue is not Coulter's free speech, but the audience reaction to it. It's a lowering of the political dialogue to street language.

I grew up in and around U.C. Berkeley in the '60s. Nothing could shock me after the Free Speech Movement, Mario Savio et al. So please tell me how she differs in method from her mentors on the left? And do you remember how that decade ended with riots and rampages?
Is she unwittingly joining forces with Michael Savage to make it OK to openly demonize an already despised minority?

She has not an original idea in her brain. She's adopted a political "shock and awe" to gain what? More book sales? Certainly not an advancement of conservative values, unless you think that bigotry is a part of it. (I fear that it is becomming a part of the conservative agenda with the inclusion of so many Dixicrats.)

Every afternoon on my one hour commute home from work, I listen to Michael Savage on KSTE 650 AM from Sacramento, California. His bigoted rants have built a nationwide following. He's actually considering a presidential run. Couldn't possibly get elected could he? No of course not, given current conditions. But who knows if we are nuked and chaos follows.

Coulter is helping to lay the groundwork for acceptance of such a candidate.

Forbes:
"I don't know where or when any of you grew up, but of course 'faggot' is a school yard taunt, used by children long before they know anything about homosexuality or gays."

I'm not buying it. Coulter is not a child; she's an adult with a law degree who knows full well that, whatever happen on the playground among pre-pubescents, grown-ups use "faggot" to mean "homo." Mind you, I believe her when she says that she herself meant no insult to gays and just wanted to imply that John Edwards is namby-pamby. What I'm not convinced by is the line her supporters are taking that, well, of course it wasn't an anti-homosexual slur and that you have to be odd in the head to believe that it might have been.

Well, Coulter's juvenile remarks are a "dog bites man story". If anyone's selling books for her, it's folks with their over the top outrage and expression of being offended--equally juvenile behavior. People are responsible for their own feelings, Coulter's not. (Or perhaps some are just easily manipulated.)

For all I care, you can use "faggot" to mean "homo" all you want. But then if you mean homo, why don't you use the word homo? You're not going to argue that homo is even more rude and vulgar than faggot, are you?

Coulter used a common rhetorical technique to associate a recent tabloid event--an actor going to rehab over speech--with a reluctance to speak on a topic, so as not to suffer the same fate at the hands of the PC-speech police. Folks complaining have proved her point. Congratulations.

Maybe it's too subtle for some, but the use of any other word would've been pointless, for no rhetorical association would've resulted because the reference to the tabloid event would've been lost. So it's not a slur on Edwards, and it's not an expression of bigotry, it's a critique of PC-speech police.

When the only tool available is a hammer, pretty much everything looks like a nail that needs to be pounded. Here's a suggestion: try a different tool--you might get better results.

I'm not defending Coulter, I'm defending speech. There will be no free speech when the PC-speech police win this argument, for the only thing that won't be disagreeable or offensive will be Hallmark greeting cards. I don't care to live in that world.

Cheers.

"There will be no free speech when the PC-speech police win this argument"

What argument is that? The one here?

While it's fine to contrast free speech with the PC-speech police, that's not what's going on here -- any more than it's a "PC-speech police" argument to disagree with Andrew Sullivan's use of the word "Christianist."

What I think is going on with Coulter is she has simply offered a very contrived definition for a vulgar insulting word to get herself off the hook. Not that there's anything worthy of censorship there, but I see no reason not to call her on it. Ironically, her invocation of Isaiah Washington makes it quite clear that she was in fact contemplating the traditional definition, as well as the traditional use of the word. Considering that during his rampage Washington reportedly assaulted a heterosexual member of his cast who had objected, I think it's disingenuous to characterize this incident as simply one of "an actor going to rehab over speech" -- much less to champion him as a victim who suffered a "fate at the hands of the PC-speech police" for speaking on a "topic."

http://www.classicalvalues.com/archives/2007/03/isaiah_washingt.html

As to Frank, well, I don't normally weigh in by interpreting commenters, but Frank...

Aren't you being a little coy?

It won't work, because I have figured out your little play on words joke!

I find it tough to believe that you're really "forgetting" to tell us what you meant to insinuate with the "k" word. I don't think I am putting words in your mouth here, because I am 99% sure you realize that Ann Coulter is trying to have her cake and eat it too. Doubtless you were making fun of her slippery style when you pronounced the word "cake" with a Cockney accent.

Come on, now, let us in on your joke!

You can't expect that everyone will get it.

Well Eric, I think the only argument I see is one that says the word faggot is a vulgar, insulting and rude word, a word that should not be uttered in public, and those who let it pass across their lips are to be condemned in no uncertain terms. (I hope I'm not putting words in anyone's mouth.) Someone should tell George Carlin that his list of 7 words you cannot say has a new addition. (That's my speech police allusion.)

As to your update, I'm struggling with this little gem: "I will defend the First Amendment right to hurl insults as long as I draw breath, but I think insults like these insult everyone's intelligence."

Is this a rule stating: "Clever insults, only"? I think it will be hard to enforce. Though, I do laud your efforts at civility, none the less, it does seem to hearken back to a prior, non-existent period of placid rhetoric, as if muck-raking journalists and 19th century newspapers were models of decorum.

I will grant that I am not as informed of the details of actor Isiah Washington's story as you appear to be--these gossipy tabloid entertainment stories hold little sway over my feeble mind. As to my ingenuity, I do as best I can with the NYPost and Page Six, so perhaps the deeper meaning behind Washington's story is that he is a cad.

"It is not he who gives abuse that affronts, but the view that we take of it as insulting; so that when one provokes you it is your own opinion which is provoking."--Epictetus

Cheers.

Enforce? Rule? Words you cannot say?

I think if you familiarize yourself with this blog, you'll see that I'm not much enamored with enforcement of any kind of rules. I'd lift the ban on Carlin's 7 dirty words (whether I'd say them or not) so your suggestion I'd add a word to the list is ridiculous. I just think what I think, and if I disagree, I say so. I think Ann Coulter was wrong to use the word as she did, and I've criticized countless people (mostly on the left) for using insulting language. There's a right to insult people, and to use the seven dirty words, derogatory epithets, whatever. That doesn't mean it's good. (If Ann Coulter had used the word "cocksucker" I'd feel pretty much the same way, even if she made clear it was just her way of expressing contempt and didn't mean Edwards literally engaged in oral intercourse with men.)

I speak for myself, and what I write at this blog, of course, and enforce nothing. Whether you think my not-always-successful avoidance of vulgarity "hearkens back to a prior, non-existent period of placid rhetoric, as if muck-raking journalists and 19th century newspapers were models of decorum" is about as relevant as if you said it hearkened back to the 1950s. It's my own standard, and I don't see why it matters what time frame (existent or not) might be attached to it.