Just a few short days ago I posted a snarky piece about someone getting into trouble for something done online. Lo and behold, starting yesterday (Monday) and running all through today there has been increasing coverage of a fraternity at an Oklahoma university getting into trouble when a few seconds of video from their “party bus” hit the internet. Since then, the fraternity in question has been shut down and banned from the campus; the frat boys have all been kicked out of the frat house and two – so far – have been expelled. More relevant to my point, CNN and other news outlets have been obsessing about this pretty much non-stop. So, what horrible deed was caught on video? The frat boys were caught singing a racist song.
Is that bad? Sure, yeah, I suppose. But they were singing it among themselves; they were not standing outside some Ethnic Minority Fraternity and singing threats at them. They used Bad Words. And as a result… the university leadership is freaking out. The media is freaking out. And of course the Aggrieved Activist Community is freaking out.
As for the activists… well, they’re always on a hair-trigger, ready to go off at a moments notice. And the university leadership is probably paranoid about any sort of negative press. But the media… really, *this* is your new obsession? Since the time some frat boys got likkered up and sang a bad song, I bet there was a murder on some campus somewhere. Probably more rapes than one might like to think about. Theft. Drug use. Hell, just a week or two ago news broke that another fraternity had had a party and caused nearly half a *million* dollars in damage to a resort. That got a little press, but not nearly the amount this story is getting, and not nearly as hysterical. And the resort story featured actual criminal behavior.
But you , some random nobody of a schmoe, say a Bad Word, and suddenly you’re the biggest news in the land. Bigger even than a Secretary of State using a private email server to conduct official communications and deleting 30,000 or more of those emails.
Yeah, yeah, it’s a Really Bad Word. So bad that I’m not stupid enough to type it. And yet it’s not so bad that it doesn’t appear a bagrillion times a day in popular music. To listen to some of the talking heads on CNN tonight, hearing these frat boys say the Bad Word caused them untold misery and emotional distress. But turning on their radios and hearing it in rap music? That’s just fine. Essentially, this is magical thinking. These people are imbuing this Bad Word with magical superpowers, but only when spoken by certain people. And… no. There are no magical words. Abracadabra; alakazam; anál nathrach, orth’ bháis’s bethad, do chél dénmha; presto chango; shazam; amen. Say them as much as you like, you won’t sprout superpowers. The Higher Forces or Lower Ranks won’t show up to do thy bidding. And the same with any politically useful Bad Word. Words have precisely the power we give them, no more, no less.
And the news media seems bound and determined to make some words into magical H-bombs.