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TexasHooch

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Posts posted by TexasHooch

  1.  

    21 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Here's one that I still use periodically (mostly when talking to myself, so that's helpful), which was even the subject of a well-publicized incident at Southwest Airlines: "eenie meanie miney moe."

    Now, I grew up in a much less enlightened time and place, and certainly heard people use the N-word in public.  But as for that phrase when picking from several choices, I had ONLY ever known "eenie meanie miney moe, catch a tiger by his toe..."  From the Southwest Airlines story, I found out that the ORIGINAL version was "catch a n-word by his toe."  Which, of course, is shittastically racist.

    But here's where I get brainlock: to me, it's just an innocent little rhyme device to make a choice, with zero racism in the words used.  And I'd been using it for decades, it's a habit, and one that, again, had ZERO racism in its wording.  Now that I know the original version and thus the origin of the rhyme....am I behaving insensitively when I spot three cupcakes on the counter and pick with an out loud "eenie meanie miney moe?"  I don't think I am.  But, that said...I do my best to avoid using the rhyme when around others, at least others outside my immediate family.

    I don't know....I kind of wish "intent" would play more of a role in how we think of things that people do, both positively and negatively.

    Eenie meanie miney moe is a particularly interesting one to me because many scholars argue that its actual origins are relatively benign (rooted in Celtic or Welch language). These scholars argue that the english slur usage came waaaay later.  It then morphed into the nursery rhyme that we all know. Ultimately whether something is rooted in racism or polluted by it is largely a distinction without a difference.

    I don't know. 956 offers a perfectly reasoned approach that I can totally get behind in principle, but I admit that the thought of having to question or revisit the etymology of every slang phrase I use is exhausting.

     

  2. I had an interesting discussion today. Yesterday, I was in a meeting where I mentioned the possibility of grandfathering in certain employees to a new way of doing something.  Today, a coworker reached out to me to give me the heads-up that the term has a dubious origin.  As much as I am a history and language nut, I had no idea.

    Quote

    The 15th Amendment, which prohibited racial discrimination in voting, was ratified by the states in 1870. If you know your history, you'll realize that African-Americans were nevertheless kept from voting in large numbers in Southern states for nearly a century more.

    Various states created requirements — literacy tests and poll taxes and constitutional quizzes — that were designed to keep blacks from registering to vote. But many poor Southern whites were at risk of also losing their rights because they could not have met such expectations.

    "If all these white people are going to be noncitizens along with blacks, the idea is going to lose a lot of support," says James Smethurst, who teaches African-American studies at the University of Massachusetts.

    The solution? A half-dozen states passed laws that made men eligible to vote if they had been able to vote before African-Americans were given the franchise (generally, 1867), or if they were the lineal descendants of voters back then.

    This was called the grandfather clause.

    The person who brought it up wasn't offended by my use of the term, nor were they trying to shame me for using it- it was just a heads up, which I actually appreciated. 

    It did, however, bring up a question that's been bouncing around in my head since.  At what point, if any, does the use of a phrase or term transcend and/or replace its origin? I think of other things like "rule of thumb", "sold down the river" or "cake walk".  In our current lexicon, I doubt many even consider what they meant 200 years ago, because they don't mean that now.  But, as we are brought to understand, does it become our responsibility to avoid them, or is there a point in which we should all accept that the original uses have been successfully co opted for much broader and current usage?

     

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  3. On 12/5/2023 at 7:55 AM, GenXer said:

    image.jpeg.a1b152652242fc2f325006a043db25ec.jpeg

    Book now on Cameo. lulz.

    https://www.semafor.com/article/12/06/2023/george-santos-is-earning-six-figures-from-cameo-videos

    George Santos is earning six figures from Cameo videos

     

    "...Santos said — and screenshots and the CEO of Cameo confirmed — that he has lined up more than that sum in his first 48 hours on the platform. People pay between $200 and $300 to Santos for various flavors of communication. The videos can take less than a minute to film, and the platform has brought millions of dollars to the occasional campy, game, minor celebrity like the late comedian Gilbert Gottfried.

    Santos “is going to be an absolute whale,” Cameo’s founder and CEO, Steven Galanis, told Semafor. His launch, Galanis said, is among the platform’s best ever: “Sarah Jessica Parker, Bon Jovi — he’s putting numbers up like that,” he said."

  4. Had a conversation with my father in-law (who watches FOX all day every day) over thanksgiving and decided to ask about the "border attack".

    Me (feigning ignorance): Hey, I heard something about something happening on the canadian border near Niagara Falls.  You know anything about that?

    Him: Yeah, I guess there was a car full of explosives. Some kind of terrorist attack or something.

    Me: (pretending to look it up on my phone):  Hmm.  There's a thing here saying they're officially ruling out it being a terrorist attack.

    Him: Hmm.  Yeah, I don't know.  They talked about it a lot when it happened but I haven't heard any updates.  I just know there was car with explosives in it.  I don't know how much or why they had it.

    Me: (still pretending to look it up):  Oh, actually, this here is saying no explosives at all.  And apparently it was a rich American guy in a Bentley and his wife who were pissed off that the Kiss concert they had tickets to in Canada was canceled.

    Him:  Hmm. a Bentley huh. Was it a Continental?  Those are nice.

     

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