Siriusly Censored

As I drove back down the hill from teaching my Wed class, I listened to TMZ on Sirius radio. Harvey Levin drives me nuts with his endless clarifications of and pontifications about each and every issue and comment, but it's better than the pet psychic, or Weight Wednesday, or Dr. Laura screaming at listeners to "shut up" and listen to her. On Sirius Radio almost anything goes, so I hear a lot of profanity, as well as suggestive topics that leave nothing to the imagination, depending on who's doing the talking and what they are talking about. However, today I believe Harvey Levin was censored -- and Harvey never says anything worthy of censorship.

The conversation centered on the recent Oklahoma shootings that apparently are blatantly racially motivated. In the course of reporting on that event, a newscaster said the word "nigger" as he read aloud a quote from the suspects about why they committed the crimes. All hell broke loose all over the media because everyone knows to say "the n word," not actually read or say the word "nigger" on air. The TMZ staff engaged in one of the first true conversations I've heard from them, and even non-white TMZ correspondents differentiated between using the word personally, especially in a racial slur, as being not okay, and using the word professionally as part of a quote from another source as being okay.

NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO SAY THAT WORD UNLESS THEIR SKIN IS BLACK, clarified Whoopie on the last episode I watched of The View (because I refuse ever to watch another episode). And, I never thought I'd say this, but it seems that Whoopie and I actually agree on a point, according to the TMZ staff discussion today about the danger of avoiding using the word "nigger" in some contexts.

Whenever I taught To Kill a Mockingbird, I did not permit students to substitute the phrase "the n word" for the word "nigger" as it was used by the author, Harper Lee. The use of the word "nigger" is not just authentic to the historical time and place for Harper's story (1930s South), but it is essential in a story that examines the black/white societal divide. In Mockingbird, even those who are not racist themselves (such as protagonist Atticus Finch) become racist by association when the all-male, all-white jury finds guilty, and then sentences, an innocent man to prison only because he is black and his accuser is white.

[Note to all those who jumped on the recent TV showing of the Gregory Peck movie based on Harper Lee's book: Mockingbird is not set in the 1960s; the book was published in the very early days of the 1960s. The actual setting for the book is the 1930s, so it was a bit funny to listen to recent media interviewees compare the racism of the 1960s in Lee's book to the present.)

My rationale for students reading aloud what's written by an author is similar to Whoopie's explanation (per the TMZ staff) that "cutesing up" the racial epithet when it's used to create a specific mood in literature, or, in this case, a news story, somehow diminishes the offense of the user of the word as a racial slur. When students came to realize themselves how demeaning that word is when it's the only word used to refer to another human being, the lesson went deeper than me simply saying, "Don't use that word: it's not nice."

The offense is in the word, so substituting the get-around phrase almost makes it okay to say the offensive word!

Abruptly the discussion ended and an announcer's voice began telling listeners that the program regularly scheduled for this time slot was temporarily lost, but techs were working to solve the problem and it would be back on the air soon. And TMZ was back on the air soon. As soon as the clip of the actual news report wherein the on-camera reporter spoke the word "nigger" finished playing, Harvey was back on the other side of the clip talking about that reporter actually using "the n word" to report news!!

Wow. Sirius Radio doesn't censor anyone for anything, but I guess someone decided that there is NO WAY anyone, even innocuous Harvey Levin of TMZ fame, is going to get away with airing another person in another setting reading "nigger," instead of substituting the all-too-cutsey "the n word."