The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Bring In Jeff Goldstein?

Posted on | March 8, 2012 | 44 Comments

by Smitty

Bill Quick and some people are arguing past each other on an important linguistic/cultural point:

Are you guys really this dense, or is it just that you can’t see past your own blinders – lefties don’t like racist terminology and usage, so you think you have to approve it, or pretend that it isn’t racist?
You have a right to say any dumbass thing you wish to – but you don’t have any right to a free pass on it based on some of the screwiest reasoning I’ve ever run across in supposedly intelligent people.
“Jig is up” is a usage of “jig” that is related to dancing, so naturally there is no possible occasion when the context of its usage could also have racist overtones even though it also has a vile and racist meaning.” Are you even listening to yourselves?

I have not been arguing that other people are incapable of re-purposing the symbol ‘jig’ to have racist connotations. And, certainly, with an imaginable suffix, it’s a racial epithet.

The point I’ve been getting at, and one of the major themes of Protein Wisdom for probably longer than I’ve read it, is that we are in an ideological war, and that this is precisely the sort of tool employed against us: taking a symbol, re-working the meaning, and then using that re-worked meaning as a weapon to beat us down.

Such is evil, demonic, and a ploy of Satan himself. We should (a) refrain from doing it ourselves, and (b) confront anyone using the tactic and say ‘No’.

Let jigs be jigs. And let crackers be something put on soup. And let me cheerfully laugh, and de-escalate the situation, if somebody uses ‘cracker’ on me to mean otherwise. For hyper-sensitivity, too, like turning up the gain on a control circuit amplifier, is still another de-stabilization technique of the Left.

Peace, out.

UPDATE (RSM): Minor editing has been committed. Our blog is sometimes improvised or, as some would say, jerry-rigged. (No offense to Germans intended.)

Category: Bill Quick, Protein Wisdom

Comments

44 Responses to “Bring In Jeff Goldstein?”

  1. paul_mitchell
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:31 am

    The first thing they attack is language, then all other things fall easily.

  2. Bob Agard
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:34 am

    I like this post. Be of good cheer, and keep writing like this!

  3. ThomasD
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:36 am

    Good luck with Quick, he’s one of those people so convinced of his utter brilliance that he becomes immune to reason.

    It is common to that particular breed of atheist that shuns any notions of humility.

    The only surprising part of his argument is that he so willingly awards the left the best of motives for their zealous attack on language that just might be open to multiple interpretations.

    Apparently in Quick’s world some angels do exist.

  4. robertstacymccain
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:57 am

    @Smitty_One_Each I’ve made a minor edit, which I hope you’ll appreciate.

  5. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:01 am

    I do not use the term “niggardly” even though it has NOTHING to do with the Spanish word for black (which is the basis of the racial slur).  But niggardly is a Scandinavian word is not understood by most people, is often misunderstood as a racial slur, and their are better words to use to describe miserly or cheap (like miserly and cheap).  So I do not use it when I am trying to say miserly or cheap.  It is not a fight worth fighting.  

    The jig is up is a reference to either paying a band after a dance or (and this is the likely source of it) being caught playing a practical joke on someone (a jig used to mean a joke).  Arguably writing or speaking with cliches is often lazy writing.  But someone trying to argue “the jig is up” is racist, is someone just looking for racism where it does not exist (and usually someone trying to make racism up).  It is a bad faith argument and you should respond back and call them out on it.  

  6. richard mcenroe
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:15 am

    I was going to some woodwork today, but I couldn’t secure the person of color to the lathe properly, so I had to give it up…

  7. richard mcenroe
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:17 am

    For that matter, wasn’t Bill Quick being intolerant when he named it the blogoSPHERE?  Myself and Roly-O Willis aside, not ALL bloggers are fat….

  8. richard mcenroe
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:18 am

     So if he’s cheap AND lazy, you’d never call him a niggardly laggard?

  9. Bob Belvedere
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:21 am

    But as Jeff Goldstein argues [as do I] it is a fight worth fighting because, if not, we let the Left hijack the language and control it.

    Any sane English speaking person knows damn well what the phrase ‘the jig is up’ means, just as they know that ‘niggardly’ has nothing whatsoever to do with blacks.

    Anyone who says the use of ‘the jig is up’ is raaaaacist is employing Orwellian tactics.  It is the Left saying that we will decree that words mean what we say they mean on a whim.  By us agreeing to play along with them, we are ceding control of our language and, ultimately, our freedom.  Because, if they control meanings, then they can condemn us at will, make us criminals.

  10. AnonymousDrivel
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:36 am

    With all the Minitrue from those perpetually seeking to be outrageously outraged by words enough to redefine them, I’m thinking it’s Emmanuel Goldstein you seek first.

  11. Steve
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:55 am

    >”lefties don’t like racist terminology and usage”

    If Bill Quick really believes this then he is an even bigger fool than I previously thought.

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:56 am

    I sometimes think that about myself.  

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 11:59 am

    I am going to choose my battles.  But I agree, if someone suggests that you are being racist for using the term “the jig is up”–well then the jig really is up–But the joke they are playing is not in good faith and might as well be a punch in the face.  So the appropriate response should be to attack right back.  

  14. ThomasD
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:04 pm

    By way of example, suppose it is November 7th, 2012 and Obama has lost his bid for re-election.  Here are two possible statements from that date.

    “Obama’s jig is up.”

    “The jig is up.”

    Either could be racist, either could be non-racist. 

    In my own case, were I to utter the former, there would be no racial intent, merely an observation that Obama’s merry dance as POTUS is coming to an end.  However, if I said the latter, I would be alluding to the double entendre. 

    So yes, I would be making a race based joke.  Someone get Spike Lee on the Batphone…

    Quick wants us to surrender a portion of our  FREEDOM to speak, lest the left over their deep and abiding concern for racism(natch) accuse us of such.

    So, in Quick’s world, we surrender something greater to avoid the (potential) sin of the lesser.

    And we’re the ones who are dense.

  15. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:07 pm

    http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=jigs&x=0&y=0#/ref=sr_kk_2?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Afishing+jigs&keywords=fishing+jigs&ie=UTF8&qid=1331226514

    You are missing a fund raising opportunity here…

  16. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:12 pm

    According to CNN we are all a bunch of raaaaacists…let’s face fact that this is war and the other side is going to lie all the time.

  17. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:13 pm

    Well said.  

  18. Bob Belvedere
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:18 pm

    If they called you or one of your friends a racist for using such a non-racist term, perhaps that situation calls for: Just Saying ‘SO? ‘

  19. PaulLemmen
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:27 pm

    Read this: http://www.therightplanet.com/featured-post/week-of-28aug2011/ it lays out the efforts of the cultural Marxists to redefine language to their own ends. I have also written about this same subject in my blog as well.
    Mayhap you should have used the term “jury-rigged” instead of “jerry-rigged”  which seems to be a mix of “jury-rigged” and “Gerrymandered”. Just a thought.

  20. Finrod Felagund
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:28 pm

    Yeah, because they’ve never used racist terminology against Michelle Malkin, or Condoleeza Rice, or …………

    Maybe we should all start emailing Bill Quick with examples of leftist racism until his mailbox explodes.

  21. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:32 pm

    Not on point but check out who is POTUS…

  22. Multimedia Group
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:40 pm

    Bill Quick calling people he doesn’t agree with dense is pretty much the pot calling the kettle… um, some color that is really, really dark.

    But hey, when it comes to the Lefties calling names, I can live being called a racist given that they are the true racists (and, by all accounts a bunch of fascist sluts as well).  

    I know in my heart of hearts that I’m not a racist while I also know that most on the Left are both fascists and sluts, so there you go.

  23. Steve
    March 8th, 2012 @ 12:58 pm

    >”  because they’ve never used racist terminology against Michelle Malkin, or Condoleeza Rice, or…”

    white people in general. The entire leftist project is based on anti-white racism. Bill Quick thinks that the defining issue of our times is the size of government. The left see themselves as locked in a racial struggle.

  24. Chas C-Q
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:28 pm

    I, for one, do not intend to be niggardly with my vocabulary.  The ignorant and the dishonest don’t govern me.

    Furthermore, in this modern Kulturkampf EVERY fight is worth fighting.  The evil only ratchets forward.

  25. Pathfinder's wife
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:40 pm

    My husband prefers the term: Teutonically engineered 😉

  26. Adjoran
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:42 pm

    Bill Quick is just an idiot.  The “jig is up” is a very old expression which has nothing to do with race or dancing.  The kids today might say, “Busted!” instead, but the meaning is the same.

    I wouldn’t call Goldstein on him – unless you want 5000 words on the subject.   Better to leave him alone in his white-bread, vanilla-flavored PC world.  And rue the day the archaeologists discovered where he’d been all this time.

  27. rcocean
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:43 pm

    In order to think “The jig is up” you have to know some really, really, old and obscure racist epitaphs.  How many people know “jig” is slang for Negroes as in “Jig-a-boos”? Ten?   This sounds like something out of the 1920s.

    Its crazy that anyone is even talking about it.  As for “Niggardly” its a perfectly good word, I deliberately use it on ignorant liberals, its humorous to see their reaction.

  28. Adjoran
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:44 pm

    Also, it is “JURY-rigged” – which is often confused with “jerry-built,” meaning shoddily put together.  “Jury-rigged,” OTOH, means a temporary fix.  Jury-rigging may be jerry-built, but not necessarily.

  29. Bob Belvedere
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:44 pm

    No…in this Leftist Paradise of ours, it’s okay to insult The Hun.

  30. Garym
    March 8th, 2012 @ 1:57 pm

    People who constantly look for raaaaacism, will find it anywhere.

  31. Adjoran
    March 8th, 2012 @ 2:05 pm

    Oh, and “jerry” was British slang for a chamber pot (someone explain that to Quick) before it was used against Germans, presumably being short for “Jeroboam,” a double magnum or three-liter bottle which was approximately the same capacity.  Later, in World War I, the German helmets were thought to resemble chamber pots, hence the nickname “jerry” – although some lazy researchers still assume it was just short for “German.”

    The Brits are generally more clever than that, though – quicker than Quick, if you will.

  32. spot_the_dog
    March 8th, 2012 @ 2:24 pm

    Riverdance is raaaaacist?

  33. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:02 pm

    Totally.  

  34. richard mcenroe
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:04 pm

     Yeah, now that I think about it, I could have person of color-rigged the person of color to the lathe while humming some person of color shanties…

  35. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:05 pm

    I love the “So” response.  It is brilliant in that it reveals the bias of the questioner and forces them on the defense.  

  36. richard mcenroe
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:06 pm

     Well, as every middle aged Irish American lady on the East Coast said when Riverdance hit Broadway, “A Mick is as good as a mile….”

  37. PaulLemmen
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:15 pm

     You are correct of course. The Hun is white European after all, the race to be hated.

  38. spot_the_dog
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:36 pm

    Mr Quick would be one of those Seppos who’d be horrified at the thought of Coon Cheese or the ‘Nigger’ Brown Stand at a footy stadium in Qld, huh?

  39. spot_the_dog
    March 8th, 2012 @ 3:37 pm

    *The ES Nigger Brown Stand at the stadium in Toowoomba, near Brisbane, was named after the town’s first international rugby league player, Edward Stanley Brown, who toured Britain in the 1920s. He was nicknamed Nigger Brown not because he was Aboriginal – in fact, he had fair skin and blond hair – but because he used a brand of shoe polish, Nigger Brown, that was popular in that era.

    And Coon Cheese is named after the man who developed it, Edward William Coon.

    But still, since original meanings mean nothing anymore…

  40. ThePaganTemple
    March 8th, 2012 @ 4:09 pm

     He’d just say “but we’re supposed to be beeeeeetterrrrrr than thaaaat.”

  41. Multimedia Group
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:12 pm

    What amazes me about this redefining of words like “jig” to mean something its not is when a word is used correctly and in the technical sense (as in calling Fluke a “slut” for example). The accurate usage gets the Left’s panties all in a wad.  

    But then, they have no problem calling us “tea baggers”.  Quite honestly, “slut’ is kind compared to “tea-bagger”, which I think is one of the most vile things you can call someone (except for ACTUAL tea-baggers of course).

  42. McGehee
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:43 pm

     I started out preferring “blogdom” in April 2002, and still prefer it. It’s nice and value-neutral and doesn’t discriminate on the basis of personal surface area.

  43. richard mcenroe
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:46 pm

    Courtesy of Tim McGraw via Deborah Leigh:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPGvKwggtl0

    Back When

    Don’t you remember
    The fizz in a pepper
    Peanuts in a bottle
    At ten, two and four
    A fried bologna sandwich
    With mayo and tomato
    Sittin’ round the table
    Don’t happen much anymore

    We got too complicated
    It’s all way over-rated
    I like the old and out-dated
    Way of life

    Back when a hoe was a hoe
    Coke was a coke
    And crack’s what you were doing
    When you were cracking jokes
    Back when a screw was a screw
    The wind was all that blew
    And when you said I’m down with that
    Well it meant you had the flu
    I miss back when
    I miss back when
    I miss back when

    I love my records
    Black, shiny vinyl
    Clicks and pops
    And white noise
    Man they sounded fine
    I had my favorite stations
    The ones that played them all
    Country, soul and rock-and-roll
    What happened to those times?

    I’m readin’ Street Slang For Dummies
    Cause they put pop in my country
    I want more for my money
    The way it was back then

    Back when a hoe was a hoe
    Coke was a coke
    And crack’s what you were doing
    When you were cracking jokes
    Back when a screw was a screw
    The wind was all that blew
    And when you said I’m down with that
    Well it meant you had the flu
    I miss back when
    I miss back when
    I miss back when

    Give me a flat top for strumming
    I want an ol’ wurly hummin’
    Just keep it coming
    The way it was back then

    Back when a hoe was a hoe
    Coke was a coke
    And crack’s what you were doing
    When you were cracking jokes
    Back when a screw was a screw
    The wind was all that blew
    And when you said I’m down with that
    Well it meant you had the flu
    I miss back when
    I miss back when
    I miss back when
     

  44. McGehee
    March 8th, 2012 @ 10:46 pm

     I dunno. If I had to choose between being a teabagger and a nadsucker, I know which I’d choose.