I find strange the practice pf mostly Left-leaning commenters to make much of “offensive words.” My reaction comes from some very early experiences with co-workers in my first jobs as garbage man, construction worker, and jackhammer operator (8 hours per day with the subsequent diminution of my hearing—What’s that you said? Huh?). Yeah, those guys (May I say “guys”?) were rough-speakers. F-bombs fell around my naive mind like Ukrainian drones attacking a column of Russian tanks. They effectively destroyed my innocence.
There went my youthful innocence as no one was spared. I mean NO ONE: Every race, creed, skin color, and gender (There were only two genders at the time). Rough language prevailed, so rough that today’s humorless snowflakes would be driven to boycott, cancel, file law suits, impose fines, and threaten or even carry out imprisonment.
Poor Tom Brady (Well, Not Poor in an Economic Sense)
During a discussion about Josh Allen, the talented QB of the Buffalo Bills, Brady said he had acted like a “spaz.” Brady said, "Sometimes he played like a spaz, like a grade-schooler on a sugar high, but now he’s controlled the chaos. He’s like a storm coming into town and you don’t want that storm coming into this town.” The term spaz, derived from spastic, has been used to describe and to define the uncontrolled actions of people afflicted with neurological disorders. Hmnn. Brady’s use of the term generated a ruckus among sports news writers and commentators.
Having had a minor stroke in February, I might be included in that category of “spastic” because for a couple of months I had difficulty controlling a spasmodic shaking in my left hand that has since abated because of physical therapy. BUT I TOOK NO OFFENSE AT WHAT BRADY SAID.
I know Brady meant no harm. He might not have used the most precise term to describe Allen’s play during the Bills’ loses, but on-the-spot comments are often punctuated with inaccurate language.
Drawing comparisons is one way a “color commentator” complements the dry descriptions of the play-by-play reporter. Language we might have heard as children and sometimes overheard in background conversations can surface during such out loud streams of consciousness, especially during ongoing comments made under pressure. Brady, like all people in front of microphones during sports broadcasts, probably had a greater fear of silence than of saying something he never thought offensive. He gets paid to talk, to fill airwaves, to fill the assumed void in the minds of football fans unable to assess what they see on the field of play even with the play-by-play commentary.
Ask me to show you a person who has never regretted using the wrong word, and I’ll show you the guys I worked with on those hot humid summer days when we all drank water from the same galvanized bucket and galvanized long-handled ladle. Dip and sip; maybe we spread germs, but we shared them, also, adding to our long term immunity. And my teammates and I did the same on the football and baseball fields. Thirsty? Go to the bucket to drink on those hot days made hotter by physical activity. Imagine the sense that even though we might have thought each other individually guilty of a different race, creed, gender, political leaning, or educational level, we thought all were related enough in our humanity to drink from that common long-handled ladle. (It wasn’t the South of segregated water fountains)
Probably more troubling to me than the online rapid reaction to Brady’s use of spaz are the multiple stories that sprang from it in the main news outlets. I asked myself, “Do the criticizing reporters and commentators have no contact with everyday people? Did they grow up in vacuums outside of which real people dwelt in the “beyond”? How verbally safe was their universe?
Is it possible that the very people behind malicious defaming comments in false news stories are hypocrites? The media seem to have no problem with saying something that destroys a reputation while they shame people for a word or phrase uttered in haste or under pressure. Think of MSNBC’s labeling the thousands who went to hear Trump speak at Madison Square Garden as Nazis. Think of the writers at the NY Times, for example, who had the time and resources to research and revise their stories about Russian Collusion, but chose instead to write methodically about a lie. Think of Harris’s calling Trump a Nazi and the echoing of that term in the sycophantic punditry. Is the appellation Nazi not as offensive or even more offensive than spaz? Yet, Nazi met mostly silence in a mainstream media ready to attack Brady for a hastened expression used with no maliciousness toward people with neurological disorders.
Imagine yourself in the press box commenting on games these days. “What word am I allowed to use?” “Is what I’m about to say offensive to someone somewhere among millions of viewers?”
Am I arguing for crude expressions and insensitivity? No. Definitely, no. We can adopt language that doesn’t insult, defame, or belittle--when we have time to think and when we recognize an obviously offensive term.
But in an age when some claim that there are hundreds of genders and when criminal perpetrators can’t be described by their dominant features, then we might as well relegate ourselves to sign language (Oh! No, here come the comments about deaf people—sorry, hearing-challenged people like me) “Officer, the mugger was a human being whose skin was not as light as mine. How old? Well, he—Sorry, the perpetrator was not my age, was a different age, and was not my height, was a different height. Hair? I’d say yes. Color. Well, not mine. I hope this helps you capture the perpetrator.”
We’ve all be subjected to the whining of the easily offended. They have already changed how we speak. The people I played with as a child and worked with as a teen and young adult all grew up with the expression “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” As the Eagles sing, “Get over it.” Brady meant no harm.
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this victim of that
Your mama's too thin and your daddy's too fat
Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit…
You wallow in the guilt
You wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter bringin' everybody down
Bitch about the present blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick it's little ass
Get over it
There went my youthful innocence as no one was spared. I mean NO ONE: Every race, creed, skin color, and gender (There were only two genders at the time). Rough language prevailed, so rough that today’s humorless snowflakes would be driven to boycott, cancel, file law suits, impose fines, and threaten or even carry out imprisonment.
Poor Tom Brady (Well, Not Poor in an Economic Sense)
During a discussion about Josh Allen, the talented QB of the Buffalo Bills, Brady said he had acted like a “spaz.” Brady said, "Sometimes he played like a spaz, like a grade-schooler on a sugar high, but now he’s controlled the chaos. He’s like a storm coming into town and you don’t want that storm coming into this town.” The term spaz, derived from spastic, has been used to describe and to define the uncontrolled actions of people afflicted with neurological disorders. Hmnn. Brady’s use of the term generated a ruckus among sports news writers and commentators.
Having had a minor stroke in February, I might be included in that category of “spastic” because for a couple of months I had difficulty controlling a spasmodic shaking in my left hand that has since abated because of physical therapy. BUT I TOOK NO OFFENSE AT WHAT BRADY SAID.
I know Brady meant no harm. He might not have used the most precise term to describe Allen’s play during the Bills’ loses, but on-the-spot comments are often punctuated with inaccurate language.
Drawing comparisons is one way a “color commentator” complements the dry descriptions of the play-by-play reporter. Language we might have heard as children and sometimes overheard in background conversations can surface during such out loud streams of consciousness, especially during ongoing comments made under pressure. Brady, like all people in front of microphones during sports broadcasts, probably had a greater fear of silence than of saying something he never thought offensive. He gets paid to talk, to fill airwaves, to fill the assumed void in the minds of football fans unable to assess what they see on the field of play even with the play-by-play commentary.
Ask me to show you a person who has never regretted using the wrong word, and I’ll show you the guys I worked with on those hot humid summer days when we all drank water from the same galvanized bucket and galvanized long-handled ladle. Dip and sip; maybe we spread germs, but we shared them, also, adding to our long term immunity. And my teammates and I did the same on the football and baseball fields. Thirsty? Go to the bucket to drink on those hot days made hotter by physical activity. Imagine the sense that even though we might have thought each other individually guilty of a different race, creed, gender, political leaning, or educational level, we thought all were related enough in our humanity to drink from that common long-handled ladle. (It wasn’t the South of segregated water fountains)
Probably more troubling to me than the online rapid reaction to Brady’s use of spaz are the multiple stories that sprang from it in the main news outlets. I asked myself, “Do the criticizing reporters and commentators have no contact with everyday people? Did they grow up in vacuums outside of which real people dwelt in the “beyond”? How verbally safe was their universe?
Is it possible that the very people behind malicious defaming comments in false news stories are hypocrites? The media seem to have no problem with saying something that destroys a reputation while they shame people for a word or phrase uttered in haste or under pressure. Think of MSNBC’s labeling the thousands who went to hear Trump speak at Madison Square Garden as Nazis. Think of the writers at the NY Times, for example, who had the time and resources to research and revise their stories about Russian Collusion, but chose instead to write methodically about a lie. Think of Harris’s calling Trump a Nazi and the echoing of that term in the sycophantic punditry. Is the appellation Nazi not as offensive or even more offensive than spaz? Yet, Nazi met mostly silence in a mainstream media ready to attack Brady for a hastened expression used with no maliciousness toward people with neurological disorders.
Imagine yourself in the press box commenting on games these days. “What word am I allowed to use?” “Is what I’m about to say offensive to someone somewhere among millions of viewers?”
Am I arguing for crude expressions and insensitivity? No. Definitely, no. We can adopt language that doesn’t insult, defame, or belittle--when we have time to think and when we recognize an obviously offensive term.
But in an age when some claim that there are hundreds of genders and when criminal perpetrators can’t be described by their dominant features, then we might as well relegate ourselves to sign language (Oh! No, here come the comments about deaf people—sorry, hearing-challenged people like me) “Officer, the mugger was a human being whose skin was not as light as mine. How old? Well, he—Sorry, the perpetrator was not my age, was a different age, and was not my height, was a different height. Hair? I’d say yes. Color. Well, not mine. I hope this helps you capture the perpetrator.”
We’ve all be subjected to the whining of the easily offended. They have already changed how we speak. The people I played with as a child and worked with as a teen and young adult all grew up with the expression “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.” As the Eagles sing, “Get over it.” Brady meant no harm.
Spend all their time feelin' sorry for themselves
Victim of this victim of that
Your mama's too thin and your daddy's too fat
Get over it
Get over it
All this whinin' and cryin' and pitchin' a fit…
You wallow in the guilt
You wallow in the pain
You wave it like a flag you wear it like a crown
Got your mind in the gutter bringin' everybody down
Bitch about the present blame it on the past
I'd like to find your inner child and kick it's little ass
Get over it
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