In their Orwellian drive to further strangle language and discourse, liberals are seizing on "thug" as another example of hate speech that must be purged.
Leading the charge is radio talker Bill Press venting this morning about the controversy surrounding Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman's bellicose rant in a televised interview Sunday after his team beat the San Francisco 49ers to win a trip to the Super Bowl. (Audio after the jump)
PRESS: Why are they so critical of him? Why are they dumping on him? Why are so many people saying, you know, this was terrible for him to say that? That was a phenomenal play! (Psst, Bill, no one's criticizing that).
OGBURN: Of course it was! No, it was the play of his life!
PRESS: Yeah.
OGBURN: Certainly of his career!
PRESS: Right, right.OGBURN: But, you know, these sportswriters want to make this out to be, like, this is some unprofessional, unsportsmanlike thing that he would go out and ...
PRESS: Crazy. And they're calling him, the worst is, they're calling him a thug. And you know, yesterday, I admire him for, he just came out and said, you know what they really mean, here's his interview on ESPN yesterday -
SHERMAN: The only reason it bothers me is because it seems like it's the accepted way of calling someone the n-word nowadays. You know, it's like everybody else said the n-word and then they say thug and oh, that's fine, and that's where it's kinda, you know, it kinda takes me aback and it's kinda disappointing because they know, what's, what's the definition of a thug, really?PRESS: Uh, yeah. I have to say, if it had been a white player they would not be calling him a thug.
OGBURN: Nope, nope.PRESS: That word thug does have some extra meaning when it comes to an African-American and he, I think he called it out yesterday.
As when conservatives refer to goonish union organizers as thugs, ever notice how they apply that label only to union members of color?
To cite another obvious example, neo-Nazis are often described as thuggish, the inevitable result of their ranks being full of black people.
Just a couple of months ago, Washington Post sports columnist Sally Jenkins committed the unpardonable offense of demeaning a white NFL player as a thug. Didn't she get the email blast that this sort of color-blindness can't be tolerated?
Back in 2011, after Japan was ravaged by an earthquake and tsunami, Press described Americans as "ruffians and thugs" in the wake of natural disasters compared to the decidedly non-thuggish Japanese. I can't help but wonder if Richard Sherman would question if Press was alluding to Katrina.
