Nader's N-bomb
All right, Ralph Nader used a certain n-word that you're not really supposed to use. (By the way, thank you Judge Lance Ito, for giving us the term "n-word," making us all feel like we're back in kindergarten. "Teacher! Teacher! Billy said the n-word!" Thank you so much.) Anyway, Al Sharpton and others aren't happy about it.
But so what? Ralph Nader said something stupid. Stop the presses.
What I found most interesting was a Sharpton quote midway through the article.
"If Ed Koch had said what Ralph Nader said, we'd be marching," Sharpton noted. "This [scolding] doesn't rise to the level of a march. It rises to the level of a wrist slap."
Fascinating, right? I guess we've long known there were two completely different sets of rules on racial sensitivity issues: one for liberals and another for everyone else (Think of Robert Byrd's nationally televised "white niggers" remark and try to imagine the fallout had it been uttered by Trent Lott, for example.) But it's not often that you see someone like Sharpton so glibly acknowledge it.
Oh, and I also thought this bit was funny:
Yesterday, Nader told me he was using the word in the same spirit as the Black Panthers of the 1960s - "as a word of defiance."But Sharpton retorted: "He's not a Black Panther."
Heh.