Rock & Roll and Language (was: 70s crap)

[Vaska]

Robert King you wrote:
>
>Uh, I don't know where the original writer was posting from, but here in
>Florida the word Cracker is generally considered a term of pride among the
>longtime white residents, not an insult. [SNIP]
>
>Of course, that didn't stop the cops in a couple jurisdictions from
>charging black suspects under the state's hate crime statute for using
>that word. 

I won't say a thing about this "Cracker" business because I don't have the
background to get any reliable feel for what's really going on when
different people start using it for their [it seems to me] very different
purposes.  

But, oooooh, now I see why many of our American cousins get so upset at the
very mention of hate-speech laws: if that's how they are applied in the
States [and luckily, those charges Robert mentioned went nowhere], then it's
scary business all right.  I love the American temperament, its vigour and
its sheer aliveness, a quality that comes through so powerfully even in
Pynchon's most melancholic passages, but the underside of that vitality is
this quickness to draw the gun, to reach for the extreme, to trample over
the differences.  

At its best, the conversations we have on this list teach me so much about
so much else beside Thomas Pynchon.  At such times, it's a great pleasure to
be here.

Vaska <and go ahead, call me sentimental, all you tough rugged types out there>





(Generally, these were the same counties that also banned that
>2 Live Crew album back in '89). But the charges never went very far.
>
>
>
>On Thu, 17 Jul 1997, Ted Samsel wrote:
>
>> I detect a bit of bigotry towards accent, pal. "Cracker accent"...
>> seems like my folks (some of them "white trash" with Cherokee/
>> Choctaw admixture) are the only ethnic group one can slam. How
>> nice of you to point this out and share it with the group.
>> 
>> (;-)
>> 
>> tejas at infi.net
>>           "I only use my gun whenever kindness fails"
>>                                  Robert Earl Keen
>> 
>
>