I don't suppose, dear transpontine readers, that you keep up-to-date with our pettier news stories ... so let me explain that a member of our Current Governing House, Andrew, styled (as our Eminent King Henry IX once was) Duke of York, has been having a spot of bother. Sex comes into it. He was a chum of some wealthy American, but we can keep him out of this. We Brits can only take a limited number of wealthy Americans, sex or no sex. (But we do do a good line in wealthy Russkies.)
As a subsidiary issue: an accusation has been made that this same prince once vocalised the actual phrase "Nigger in the Woodpile", instead of resorting to politically correct Woke English displacement evasions such as "N****r in the Woodpile". I hasten to add that this accusation has been definitively denied by the Royal Household. That is why we definitively need to have a Royal Household. I bet you definitively wish you'd got one. It's millions of times more fun than having a Pelosi (is she a Trollope fan? Pelosi is an anagram of "I Slope", or "Slope the First".)
In our media, the 'f-word' and the 'c-word' are increasingly uttered ... aloud ... in full ... on TV. But apparently, the same liberal approach is not allowed to the 'n-word'. Quite right too. Any limitations placed upon Virtue Signalling would inflict an intolerable Conceptual Famine upon our Chattering Classes.
Some procedural and contingent questions:
(1) Would our cuddly liberal Gauleiters permit us vocally to utter this: "The n-word in the Woodpile"?
(2) There is an English phrase with a similar meaning: "The fly in the ointment". Would it be reprehensible to use imitatio cum variatione and to allude to the Forbidden Formula by saying "The Fly in the Woodpile"?
(3) If one did so, would this in itself be 'speciesist', and thus in breach of the irreformable and rigidly irreversible dogmas of PF (Laudato si) and of papissa Greta?
Dear Father,You will recall that Agatha Christie's famous novel, "Ten Little N*****s" was rather cleverly retitled "And Then There Were None", long before the era of woke snowflakes, etc. Then of course, there were the N****r Minstrels. And in our young days n****r was a shade of brown used in clothing, and nobody seemed to mind. At the moment, I am agonising over writing the name of the great African river, the N***r, which is only one letter short of the N word. I have similar anxieties over N*****a.What should I do?
ReplyDeleteDear Scribe. Keep taking the tablets.
ReplyDeletePublish and (quite probably) be damned!
ReplyDeleteA few years ago a fellow professor in the English department of my university very briefly got into a bit of trouble with the ignoramuses that populate our campuses today (and that includes faculty, administration, and students) when she used in some written communication the word "niggardly." The dunces thought, in their unenlightened malice, she was being racist; but this formidable woman---who is afraid of nothing and no one---nipped the blockheads in the bud in her inimitable and devastating way by telling them to get a proper education and use both the thesaurus and a reputable dictionary. When will we all learn to do what my colleague does by nature: stand up to bullies to their faces, particularly when they are ridiculous. But, wait, I already hear the appeasing apostles of false, sentimentalized "charity" loudly objecting and, consequently, aiding and abetting our relentless enemies.
ReplyDelete