Heard on TV

[Wilson Gray]

On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 3:14 PM, Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at ix.netcom.com> wrote:
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> Sender: Â  Â  Â  American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Â  Â  Â  Benjamin Barrett <gogaku at IX.NETCOM.COM>
> Subject: Â  Â  Â Re: Heard on TV
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>
> On Sep 5, 2011, at 9:05 AM, Wilson Gray wrote:
>
>> On Sun, Sep 4, 2011 at 10:56 PM, victor steinbok <aardvark66 at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> There are some people who think--for whatever reason--that "Jew" is an
>>> insult.
>>
>> Unfortunately, there are reasons for thinking that.
>
> A Jewish friend of mine had to tell me about four or five years ago that it was acceptable. (So I also asked him about Heeb.)
>
> And I had to be told that deaf, deafie and blind are all fine as well, though my  concern about deaf and blind were not as strong as for Jew and deafie.
>
> If you're not a part of a community or don't have close access to it, you simply do not have a way of knowing. Dictionaries are more helpful these days and we now have Wikipedia, but it is not possible to be aware of what each community considers to be acceptable.
>
> For goodness sake, I learned in school about the Lapps in Finland in the 1970s. It took a coincidental meeting with a Sami in a bar in San Jose in the 1990s to set me straight on that score, and there just aren't enough Sami in English-speaking countries to inform everyone!
>
> Aloha from Maui
> Benjamin Barrett
>
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>

A friend of mine, ca.1973, allowed as how she felt that _Jew_ had
become an epithet, so that she preferred "Jewish." I wasn't being
taken to task or anything. She just happened to mention it to me out
of the blue, as people often do, when something's been galling them
for a while. IME and O, she's right to feel that way.

A lot of goyim are under the impression that black Americans are just
naturally as anti-Semitic as they are. Hence, they don't bother to
pull any punches when talking to one of us about the "God-damned
Jews.". And this has been the case since  long before anyone had ever
heard of Minister Farrakhan.

Once, a Japanese-American colleague said to me that the Chinese were
"the Jews of the Orient" - this was back in '57, when _Orient(al)_ was
still cool.  But it was unclear to me as to how he intended that
remark, whether as compliment - good at business, etc. - or as insult
- tight with money, etc. And, of course, there are the jocular
references sometimes heard on TV:

He's my Jew.
I've got to call New York and get my Jews on this!
I have to get my affairs in order. Hence, I must hie me to a Jew. (Get
it? A real thigh-slapper!)

Of course, youneverknow. F'rinstance, IMO, the recent brouhaha over
the use of _tar-baby_ was nothing but a bullshit smokescreen to
obscure real racism, such as claiming that the poor - overwhelming
black - are only "poor". As far as I know, no one has felt any
pressure to apologize for that.

However, the mileage of other colored on this point may vary, the more
is the pity.

--
-Wilson
-----
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die!"---a strange complaint
to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-Mark Twain

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