Sarah Silverman is brilliant
techcrunch.com
I so wish I could have seen this talk @ TED.
techcrunch.com
Furthermore, was Silverman really making a statement about political correctness and free speech–or was she just going after Palin?
On the actual issue, I have mixed feelings. On one hand, it bothers me when kids use "retarded" or "gay" or "fag" as an insult. On the other hand, everyone is way too sensitive about language and being a victim any time someone else says something careless.
I'm still thinking in my own mind about the other points you raised, but +1 for exactly this.
Kids (and sometimes adults) should be taught or reminded that it's careless and insulting to use words like "retarded" and "gay" and "fag" in a careless or insulting way. It's a matter of good manners, not a March on Washington.
I can call my friend a 'retard' (I don't, as a result of habit/upbringing) but I had a professor once who had a daughter with CP. I would never DARE say that word in his classroom (or any other, really) not just because of the offense it would cause, but because it has no place in a scholarly discussion.
Know your audience - trying to make a splash by saying something crass or unnerving just to watch people squirm is a fun game and it has it's place - but that's not really what the TED stage is for. Granted, I'm not qualified to make that distinction, but I think Chris Anderson (if anyone) probably is. The tone at TED is generally challenging, but tempered with a good dose of respect, which Sarah notoriously lacks.
I never like this kind of talk regarding what's acceptable and what's not, no matter what words you wrap it up in, because when it happens in the US it denies us the greatest freedom of all, not freedom of speech or expression, but freedom to be responsible for what you say and do. Silverman should be able to comment in her own words on anything she damn well pleases, and under any context. It's her responsibility to deal with the consequences of that action. More power to her, btw, even if her schtick is for just a bunch of shock value.
moron - having a mental age between 8 and 12
dumb - slow to learn or understand; lacking intellectual acuity; lacking the power of human speech;
idiot - a person of subnormal intelligence
imbecile - retardation more severe than a moron but not as severe as an idiot
maniac, lunatic - an insane person
We throw these words around (as a society) all the time without regard to their original intent. Is this simply a case of forgiving the past and trying not to repeat those mistakes going forward? Where do we draw the line with allowing words to be used outside of their initial purpose?
Words are subject to fashion, just like clothes. 100 years ago Hillary was a male name, now it's more commonly a female name (in the US anyway).
"Where do we draw the line with allowing words to be used outside of their initial purpose?"
You can't. People are going to do whatever they want.
It's a Freudian term, so to whatever extent it's still in clinical use, it's barely even in use. There are few Freudians left.
Both. So, here's the events in not-quite-chronological order:
1. Rahm Emanuel calls recalcitrant liberal democrats "retarded."
1.5. Palin is outraged.
2. Rush Limbaugh mentions the "retard conference."
2.5. Palin is not outraged, because "satire" is okay.
3. Sarah Silverman accepts this bet and makes a comedy routine that is incredibly outrageous, but obviously satirical.
Is it okay? Of course it's not okay, because Palin is a hypocrite and only cares about the issue as far as it is political leverage; she's been accused of using "the r-word" on multiple occasions from multiple sources.
So then Silverman's satire is a political joke of high caliber and razor wit. But, it's also highlighting a larger issue that people have with doing generous things for selfish and calculated reasons. The actual substance of her talk is basically that she wants a special needs kid because this makes her an awesome person.
Is it worth talking about at TED? I dunno. What really is? Some dude leaping around going "BAAAM" while the crowd figures out how to sing along? Leaders of influential companies talking about products? Why don't we discuss how very much against slavery we really are?
Sarah's commentary on politics and how people with unfortunate genetics people are unwitting pawns in a disingenuous political dialog that has the potential to deadlock our government? Seems fine to me.
I'd guess her thinking was "Palin says it's okay as satire so I'll trap her with the most outrageous, offensive satire possible." Then again, I'm not in her head.
Thanks for the rundown of events btw. It was helpful.
Same with gay, homosexual, etc. Doesn't mean anything bad.
I'm quite surprised with all the videoclips/songs, tv shows and videogames that avoid f-words or are edited (with noises).
People sometimes want to harm with words, words themselves mean nothing.
As far as censorship goes, look what we can do now thanks to years of bleeping and blurring: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D8Vh9_Hi1kY
If by saying the n-word casually, you mean removing the hatred and power behind a word which has divided our people for centuries by giving it a new and friendly connotation, then of course I am for it.
If by saying the n-word casually, you mean flippantly dismissing decades of institutionalized enslavement and murder, and a constant reminder that for all our progress we are still very much two nations, then I despise it.
Its clear to me though that the n-word still causes a great deal of pain to many of my brothers and sisters, and I want no part of that. So even though I hope that someday the n-word will lose this meaning, you're not going to hear it coming out of my mouth.
The list of outlawed words is growing by the day which is just ridiculous.
Nigger is used in rap music all the time.
You'd hear it come out of my mouth:
1. If singing along to R&B Rap etc
2. If quoting some comedy or trying to be funny
Yes, I am a rational person and words shouldn't affect me, but the fact of the matter is that there are deep seeded emotions behind the usage.
Whats so wrong with saying n-word when referring to it?
Because to matter how much lipstick you slap on a pig, it's still a pig.
(Apologies to my sus brethren.)((Oh, and just be clear, we're talking about the word and the word only.))
Funny would be Ali G talking about his homies niggaz pimpin' gangsta stuff.
But this is a tangent. We should really be discussing the lousy comedian this thread is supposed to be about.
Can anyone honestly think that lashout was funny?
Think of it this way. Membership in an oppressed group has its obvious detriments but it also has a few benefits...if you want to see it as a benefit. The benefit is that members can use the word but no one else can.
Gays can use the f word - noone else can Blacks can use the n word - noone else can women can use the b word - no one else can.
The real question is why are you fighting to be able to say it?
It's actually quite hard to work out what words you're talking about :/ Why not just write them.
>> "The real question is why are you fighting to be able to say it?"
Because I don't think it's healthy to attach such horror and outrage at simple words. It's like in Harry Potter where they dare not mention the V word, they just refer to him as 'he who should not be named'.
Here, I'll rewrite it, since I have no compunction against saying offensive words in a conversation about offensive words.
Gays can use the "faggot" - noone else can Blacks can use "nigger" - noone else can women can use "bitch" - no one else can.
This one's actually news to me. I'm glad I never bothered keeping up with trends in political correctness, it seems to be a battle fought over shifting sands that cannot be won.
Now, this older lady walks past and she is at least in her 70's. She hears this white kid yelling nigga in the middle of the mall, laughing about it. I see her eyes and its not anger but hurt and fear. Those words meant something powerful and deep to her because she lived during that time when if you heard the word, there was a good chance you wouldn't make it home that night. After that, I as a black person feel guilt every time I say it. It still slips out every now and then but I try my best.
Like what you said, the n-word means different things to the old lady and the kids. The kids are at ease using the word while the lady is not. Words which are very acceptable nowadays may turn out to be taboo in the future.
I don't think any of us say "afroamerican", but we do use "African American" even when the person in question is not American--it's kind of silly.
And yes, we say f*ck (censored because I don't remember the HN rules) constantly here too, but that's generally in a specific context: working on something with friends, out with other college students, etc. My friends and I, and most people I know, tend to not swear much around our elders or children; it's censored on TV because the audience is much wider than the couple friends you're hanging out with.
There's a spectrum of things the organizers might do to try to distance themselves. Most extreme would be to not put Silverman's video up at all, or bleep it. Milder options would be hiding her talk from indexes, demoting it in search results, or wrapping it in disclaimers.
(I hope they treat her talk exactly the same as every other TED talk, but they may not be able to resist the strong social pressure to show 'sensitivity' and thus shun Silverman at some level.)
I'd hope, at a minimum, they post a bleeped version!
People are going to be asking to see it after all the attention it's received.
Plus it sounds like a number of folks gave her a standing ovation - so it's not exactly like it was a complete disgrace. Kind of bad enough for Chris Anderson to slam an invited speaker so publicly - hopefully TED doesn't act petty about it.
TEDtalks are licensed under Creative Commons. Anyone know if speakers have the right to obtain a copy of their individual talks to share, even if they don't make the site?
Maybe I'm insensitive or too immature, but that makes me laugh like crazy. Just imaging the look on the adoption agency person's face is hilarious.
Here's a similar clip of Evil Dave Letterman from the Howard Stern show calling an adoption agency asking for a black kid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXrhI2q-EeI
I cringed when the article compared her use of the word 'retard' to Colbert's routine where he calls Palin a 'fucking retard'. Here's the difference: Colbert spent about 10 minutes building up to the slur. The political allusions, the searing sarcasm, and the final shockingly unsubtle slur was brilliant. And made me cry from laughing.
Silverman, OTOH, has reached the level of humor that I got bored with in 7th grade. If her routine actually had some intelligence to it, she probably could have gotten away with much worse.
"Saying the word 'retarded' can only have extreme negative power if you let it and Sarah Silverman is brave, because she got on stage in front of some global minds and dropped it over and over and over."
To call Sarah Silverman 'brave' for repeating this naughty word in front of a TED audience really is retarded. If this is what it means to be a subversive comedian in 2010, Richard Pryor must be turning in his grave.
There is a sense in which PC language suppresses the real struggle that comes with difficult social issues, sterilizes them for us, and makes them into abstract problems that everyone can claim to care about but do nothing about.
Silverman's insight was that by breaking out of the PC mold she was able to shine the spotlight on a difficult social issue.
Is it the highest level of subversive comedy? Probably not, but it's certainly a courageous form of activism.
From the descriptions, there is no question that Sarah used the word 'retard' in the technically correct context, and NOT as a derogatory term. Sarah's brand of humour is based on shock and blatant unabashed selfishness. It clearly shows the difference between using a 'politically incorrect' word a few times and being genuinely offensive.
Using the word 'retard' as an insult (the way you just did) doesn't just insult the person being referred to - it implies that people who are actually retarded have something to be ashamed of.
I understand why the audience may have been outraged by the jokes (i.e. adopting a vulnerable child for self-aggrandisement). YOU have also managed to be offensive.
I find Sarah Silverman to be hilarious.
"
Oh for pete’s sake it’s Sara Silverman! She’s a shock and insult comic! WTF did they expect!? Had they never seen a show of hers?
"Oh my god I bought this grenade pulled out the pin and it totally blew up my house! This grenade sucks!"
"
Not because of the word "retarded," but because she said she would adopt a terminally ill person. I struggle to see how she could make light of something like that...
Comics like this are meant to shock and disgust us with what they say if nothing else to throw our own thoughts into perspective.
If TED organizers didn't expect as much, their planning was performed in an intellectually-disabled manner. (Is that phrasing R-Word-campaign-approved?)
retarded, adj. Slow or backward in mental or emotional development
Those sound innocuous enough to me, but "challenged" is the vogue and should be safe for 20 years or so.
This is easily the most offensive sentence in the article. Black people are not mythical stabby monsters.
words have power, and that aint going anywhere.
Making fun of people like Sarah Palin, who believe that they are virtuous because they choose to bring mentally retarded people into this world, is funny. In this case, the comedian attacks a cruel ideology that puts pain and suffering on a pedestal.
Sarah Silverman should have made it more clear who she was making fun of. Her audience was uncomfortable because they thought that she was making fun of retarded people.
The shock comes from finding selfishness in something that isn't selfish at all. How many people would volunteer to take care of retarded children they don't know for even a day?
It can't really be parsed as mockery of "retarded people" unless you believe she was being earnest and sincere in her calculation and really believed what she was saying. She wasn't. She is a comedian.
In fact, we happen to find Sarah Palin a bit of a comedian herself... And don't take her seriously.
But you won't be laughing when/if someday she ends up President with the nuke codes on her desk.
And I'm not sure she wants to become President. She can continue to have a lucrative career on the lecture/pundit circuit, playing to that sliver of the population that does consider her to speak for Real True American Common-Sense Values. Why ruin such a good thing by seeking votes from more moderate voters or, heck, actually trying to run a country?
Palin is like Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, or Pat Robertson. She is famous and popular among a measurable slice of voters, so she speaks to/for those voters.
I strongly doubt she has a future as a presidential candidate. But as a political figure and news magnet? She's probably just getting started.
One of the interesting things about Palin is that the more she is trashed, the more she is loved by her supporters. So there's a feedback loop going on there. If you really don't like her the best thing to do is simply to stop talking about her.
The disturbing thing is that some 30% of the electorate think she's so great she should run the country, 45% think she's pretty swell and some similar number didn't think she wasn't an automatic disqualification for the McCain campaign. More amazing is that these numbers are the numbers after the election, when she was revealed to be a dimwitted, incurious, manipulative, unethical and generally dishonest person of the highest caliber.
She's had the traditional upward trajectory of a shooting-star politician: local council, mayor, governor, and VP candidate (notice mostly executive positions, not legislative). At each stage she could have backed out and gone to the simple life of fishing and hunting while her husband ran snowmobile races or whatever in between trying to get Alaska to succeed from the Union. But she didn't, she kept stepping up and up and up, demonstrating a near limitless ambition. This is not the kind of thing one can indefinitely keep at bay with a few speaking gigs and some TV time on Fox.
She's not an ideals person (she can't even get through an interview without reading notes off of her hand), or somebody of a unifying or consistent internal vision, what she has is limitless ambition.
Considering that most people had never even heard of her before the election, and she still has this kind of following afterwards (despite these obvious shortcomings) would make me want to get her out on speaking engagements and doing favorable TV spots as much as possible for the next couple of years.
Mark my words, she will be a candidate for President in the next election cycle starting in a year or two.
http://www.pollingreport.com/p.htm#Palin
Observe how her unfavorable ratings have been going almost monotonically upward since the election. The more people hear about Palin, the less they like her.
Making fun of people like Sarah Palin, who believe that they are virtuous because they choose to bring mentally retarded people into this world, is funny.
Sarah Palin is an idiot, but people who don't kill their own children merely because they have some issues are relatively virtuous.
Well you asked..
Shame on you. Without that sentence, your comment would have been cool - instead you patronize me.
I'm an atheist, liberal (mostly), and almost certainly not one of the typical "pro-lifers" you're looking down your nose at. My distaste of laissez-faire abortions does not make me "anti-abortionist."
I believe abortion should be very much a "last choice" that's heavily regulated. In the standard terminology that makes me more "pro life" than "pro choice" - yet if someone makes a long, hard decision to have an abortion, I'm in support of them being able to effect that. It just shouldn't be easy to do.
Fair enough. So, let's find out what issues qualify and how this all works.
Let's start with the obvious - are fetus' special and when? For example, if a pregnant woman doesn't find out about the issues until a week before birth, do you think that it's wrong for her to not abort? How about if she finds out a week after birth? Should the kid be killed?
Now let's talk about issues. How retarded is too retarded to live? Is retarded the only issue? How about blind, deaf, missing a limb or two? What about the mother's circumstances? Suppose she's a crack addict. Or, just incredibly poor. Or retarded? (There's progressive supreme court decision arguing that "three generations of imbiciles is enough" - the case involved forcible sterilization.)
Me - I'm pro-abortion. (Yes, I know that pro-choice folks say that folks like me don't exist. Unlike some of them, I'm just honest.) However, I'd never tell someone that they're obligated to have an abortion.