On slanguage

This conversation is the best result that's coming out of the Imus affair ...

Don Imus' firing Thursday was the result of a collision between mainstream popular culture and hip-hop culture. This generational and cultural debate has been fueled by the concept of "you people," whoever they — or we — are.

Imus testily used those words during his appearance on the Rev. Al Sharpton's radio show Monday. "You people" seemed directed at Sharpton and other activists more than African-Americans as a whole, unlike Ross Perot's use of that phrase during his 1992 presidential run.

Hip-hop has enjoyed tremendous crossover success. For better or worse, depending on one's tastes, it's unavoidable. And rap has, for years, been built on its street credibility, reflected in no small part in its slanguage. There are regional shorthands for cars, neighborhoods and other, more unsavory things. Hip-hop's impact explains how the phrase "nappy-headed hos" ever found its way to Imus' microphone.

"How can we ignore the problem that every 12-year-old in the country knows this phrase?" asks comedian-turned-gubernatorial candidate Kinky Friedman, who also has been accused of being a racist and sexist. "And we're giving Grammys to guys for using the same phrase that gets Imus fired."

Are some words simply the sole property for use only by certain (race-specific) people?

Can words or symbols be "owned" and repurposed? The theory that the rampant use of the n-word in hip-hop has removed its poison is faulty. Ask comedian Michael Richards. Or better yet, ask the black audience members at his comedy show that turned into an epithet-filled meltdown, complete with threats.

Salikoko S. Mufwene, a professor of linguistics at the University of Chicago, says, "It's a matter of who has authority in language. There are certain terms used in the African-American community that are not licensed to other people."

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. If you want the conservative talking point go read these comments.

Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

The author speaking at a rally against the Persian Gulf war in 1991.

The first book of his that I read was Breakfast of Champions, in 1974. I was a high school sophomore and thought I had just found some key to the universe. Here's what the NYT Book Review wrote when it was published the previous year:

You have to hand it to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. In his eighth novel, "Breakfast of Champions, or Goodbye Blue Monday," he performs considerable complex magic. He makes pornography seem like any old plumbing, violence like lovemaking, innocence like evil, and guilt like child's play. He wheels out all the latest fashionable complaints about America--her racism, her gift for destroying language, her technological greed and selfishness--and makes them seem fresh, funny, outrageous, hateful, and lovable, all at the same time. He draws pictures, for God's sake--simple, rough, yet surprisingly seductive sketches of everything from Volkswagens to electric chairs. He weaves into his plot a dozen or so glorious synopses of Vonnegut stories one almost wishes were fleshed out into whole books. He very nearly levitates.

Vonnegut was the greatest American novelist of our generation. That's only my humble o, but also certainly that of many others. Few writers have really grasped my mind around its figurative throat and shaken it like a dog with a rag as he did.

He was pretty much everything a free-thinking person could aspire to. His essays from In These Times were compiled into a short book called A Man Without a Country in 2005 and they chronicled his path from conservative to liberal, a trail I have similarly walked.

There's a photo of Vonnegut -- probably at an anti-war rally -- holding up a Bartcop sticker. Perhaps we'll see that and some other remembrances of the author today posted by others. I'll collect some and update here later. I'm a bit too distraught at the moment to collect and post all of my own feelings about the passing of this literary titan.

Updates (4/13):

Racy Mind quotes a random passage from Champions.

Tom Kirkendall is uncharacteristically snide.

Norbizness provides the scene from Rodney Dangerfield's epic Back to School.

Katrinacrat feels the loss and has the classic quote from God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater.

My Left Nutmeg has some YouTube of the man.