[Ads-l] "baby mama" (and the OED) back in the Times

[Jonathan Lighter]

Yeah, the salt's definitely lost its savor.

A friend tells me that she recently took her seven-year-old to
school-sponsored roller-skating event in the small Tennessee town they
recently moved to.  She was shocked (in the earlier sense of the word) to
hear the sound system blasting out "hard-core gangsta rap with all the
worst words in it."

My friend approached the DJ to suggest that the lyrics weren't suitable for
the target audience. Couldn't they play something else?

The reply was, "No, I'm sorry. This is the music the parents requested."

Mother and son went home.

JL


On Thu, Sep 21, 2017 at 6:31 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> > I still maintain that Michelle Obama is indeed technically Barack’s baby
> mama, pace the
> > OED.
>
> You are correct, sir. The mother of a man’s child is his baby mama - and he
> her baby daddy - irrespective of whether they be a married couple, he
> merely “split it, hit it, and quit it,” or there be any degree of
> relationship in between. The OED needs to keep up. By watching The Maury
> Show, for example.
>
> The quoted phrase is yet another gross, guy-talk obscenity of my lost youth
> that I’ve heard casually tossed into a sit-com conversation by a white
> woman as though she, too, had just naturally used it all her life, hanging’
> wit da homeys. And I’ve heard “I’d like to tap that ass!”
> used on South Park. Of course, that has long since had its grossierete
> destroyed by being used by the cast of Bones, years ago.
>
> Yet another example of cultural misappropriation. <sigh!> Can’t we keep
> *anything* nasty?!
>
> On Sun, Jun 15, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu>
> wrote:
>
> > ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> > -----------------------
> > Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> > Poster:       Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU>
> > Subject:      "baby mama" (and the OED) back in the Times
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > -------------------
> >
> > Resuming our thread from a few weeks ago on the literal meaning and
> > implicatures associated with "baby mama" and "baby daddy", here's a
> > new item of relevance, which also links up with our more recent
> > discussions of chyrons and fist bumps.  I still maintain that
> > Michelle Obama is indeed technically Barack's baby mama, pace the
> > OED, just as I'm proud to say (on this Father's Day) that my wife is
> > mine, but that doesn't mean I endorse Fox's chyron.
> >
> > LH
> > ====================
> >
> > http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/fox-
> > apologizes-for-michelle-obama-headline/
> >
> > Fox Forced to Address Michelle Obama Headline
> >
> > By Jim Rutenberg
> >
> > For the third time in less than three weeks, Fox News Channel has had
> > to acknowledge using poor judgment through inappropriate references
> > to Senator Barack Obama.
> >
> > The network has released a statement saying it should not have
> > referred to Mr. Obama's wife, Michelle, as "Obama's Baby Mama,'' as
> > it did on Wednesday in an on-screen headline commonly called a
> > "chyron."
> >
> > "A producer on the program exercised poor judgment in using this chyron
> > during the segment," Bill Shine, a Fox News senior vice president,
> > said in a statement.
> >
> > The chyron appeared during a discussion between the conservative
> > columnist Michelle Malkin and the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly about
> > political attacks against Mrs. Obama. It read in full, "Outraged
> > Liberals: Stop picking on Obama's baby mama!" It was first publicized
> > on Wednesday by Alex Koppelman of Salon.
> >
> > The Oxford English Dictionary defines the term as one "chiefly in
> > African-American usage" that refers to, "The mother of a man's child,
> > who is not his wife nor (in most cases) his current or exclusive
> > partner."
> >
> > Earlier this week, the Fox News anchor E.D. Hill had apologized for
> > raising the possibility that the Obamas affectionate fist bump during
> > the senator's victory rally in St. Paul on June 3 was "a terrorist
> > fist jab.'' Two weeks prior, the Fox News analyst Liz Trotta said she
> > regretted making a joke about a possible assassination of Mr. Obama.
> >
> > Her mea culpa followed that of former Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas
> > a week earlier after he made a similar crack at a gathering of the
> > National Rifle Association.
> >
> > In other news, Fox News Channel announced today that it was hiring
> > Mr. Huckabee as a contributor.
> >
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
> >
>
>
>
> --
> -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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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