You probably heard about this, the U of Hawaii football coach dissing Notre Dame, yet another flap wherein somebody says something, and the world spends days deciding how offended it should be by it.
Carroll makes one very good point:
(I get so impatient with all those non-apology apologies about racial slurs and gay slurs - “it just slipped out” or whatever. Dude, if you never use the word in your day-to-day conversations, you’re not suddenly going to start using it when the cameras are on. You think your crime was not being careless in a public situation; I think your crime was incorporating slurs into your daily discourse. It’s not like it’s a tough discipline; it has nothing to do with “political correctness.” It has to do with simple courtesy, simple respect.)
Exactly- if people say it when the cameras or tape recorders are on, they certainly say it, and certainly think it, routinely in private. But that applies to Sotomayor as much as it does to homophobes and whatever else-phobes, which is a point JC probably would not make.
