They're just words!

Rogan fans do not like when I criticize their dude. PLUS: Bonus Marxism!!!

Surprising nobody, I got a lot of pushback from yesterday’s piece about a bad Joe Rogan joke about why he says the “R word” but not the “N word,” the punchline of which is, “Don’t you know how jokes work, faggot?” Most of the objections were piddling – asserting that I am simply jealous of Rogan, that I’m a nobody, that the Rogan joke made my vagina itchy, etc. One person even called me “haughty,” which was, frankly, devastating. Normal - and delightful - online fare.

The one objection that sticks with me, though, is the perennial complaint that “they’re just words.” In fact, I incorrectly stated yesterday that Carlin didn’t use the N word (again, I hate calling it that but I am left with no choice), the comedian Lou Perez, with whom I had a friendly debate entitled “Is Wokeness Killing Comedy,” posted a Carlin clip in which George does use that word, making the same point as the commentators:

“I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language. Bullshit! It’s the context that makes them good or bad… For instance, you take the word ‘n-r’. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word ‘n-r’ in and of itself. It’s the racist asshole who uses it that you ought to be concerned about… We don’t have a problem when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy use it because we know they’re not racists. Why? They’re n-r’s!”

Please forgive my hubris, but I’m going to disagree with Carlin, in particular regarding that word. To say that there’s “nothing wrong” with that word “in and of itself” is reductive to the point of absurdity. Its entire history has been one of dehumanization. From the African-American registry:

“The word, nigger, carries much hatred and disgust directed toward Black Africans and African Americans. Historically, nigger defined, limited, made fun of and ridiculed all Blacks. It was a term of exclusion, a verbal reason for discrimination. Whether used as a noun, verb, or adjective, it strengthened the stereotype of the lazy, stupid, dirty, worthless nobody. No other American surname carries as much purposeful cruelty.”

There is no neutral usage of the word, which is why the Black community has made such a big deal out of exorcising it from the mouths of white people. And it’s specifically out of respect for that request that I – and I assume nearly all of you – refrain from using it. Carlin knew this, but chose to ignore it to make a larger point about language.

I think the point, though, is wrong. Words are never just words. They’re the entire edifice upon which our species civilized itself, but words are only half of the formula by which we communicate. The other, as Carlin noted, is context. They’re indivisible; one is meaningless without the other. Language, in other words, is never neutral, carrying with it a panoply of historical, social, cultural references. I took this from (please don’t give me shit about this just because of where it came from) the Socialist Voice website because it encapsulates my thoughts regarding language neutrality pretty well:

“As [the Marxist philosopher] Paulo Freire said, “language is never neutral.” Like that of a “pure thought,” the notion of a “pure word,” devoid of any influence by history or of the material world, is the play place of those without any foundation in material reality.

A concrete example of how language shapes how we think about the world is the study “Native Language Promotes Access to Visual Consciousness” (2018) by Martin Maier and Rasha Abdel Rahman, which confirmed that, while colours may be the same around the world, the language in which they are described has an impact on how they are perceived. For the Greeks of Homer’s classics, the colour blue didn’t exist as a word. Arguably, until Egyptian blue dye was imported “blue” didn’t exist as a concept, though the sky was little different from today.”

I know this is all pretty high-falutin’ for a piece about Joe Rogan, so let me put it into a more concrete example.

You may have seen a video posted yesterday in which a young-sounding Black man confronts an older white man outside of a saloon in Nevada after the white guy told the Black guy there was a “hanging tree down there to hang n-rs like [him]. All of the white man’s friends fail to stand up for the Black guy, and, instead chose to escalate the situation by smirking and laughing at him. By the end of the five-minute video, the young guy is on the verge of tears, not because of the word, but because nobody stood up for him.

How do we divorce the word from the context? Would it have been better if the white guy had said there’s a hanging tree down there for “African-Americans” like you? Or even if he hadn’t mentioned the guy’s race at all? No. But the addition of the N word carries with it an entire, ugly history. In fact, a woman in the video alludes to this history, at one point saying, “Do you know where you are? Do you know the history of the South?” Setting aside the mis-identification of Nevada as “the South,” she’s making a claim of context herself, essentially saying of course he should expect this treatment, further implying that the word itself is appropriate given the circumstances.

I think it’s important to say that I’m not claiming Rogan is a racist or a homophobe. Nor am I claiming any particular member of his audience harbors those prejudices. What I am saying is that casually using dehumanizing language without making some larger point decrying the words offers moral license to others to do the same. It’s not that anybody’s going to walk out of a Joe Rogan show and start verbally assaulting people, it’s that the ecosystem in which Rogan thrives is predicated on the celebration of lunkhead cruelty as a reaction against what they deem to be language police.

As many have pointed out, political correctness or whatever you want to call it, isn’t about restricting free expression. It’s about asking for respect. When Rogan and his ilk drop those words, what they’re essentially saying is, “I do not respect you.”

Worse, they’re doing it in the name of free speech.

I obviously have no way of knowing this, but I suspect Carlin would not tell that same joke today. Not because he was afraid of getting canceled or whatever not-a-real-thing-bullshit cooked up to make you think you’re not “allowed” to say certain things, but because I imagine he would have become more attuned to the pain the word causes the Black community. I could be wrong – I very well might be wrong – but I hope I’m right.