Friday, May 13, 2005

Get Back, Honkie Cat

In my home state of Oklahoma, the so-called Culture Wars don't necessarily involve anything quite so lofty as questions surrounding abortion rights, Darwinian theory or persistent vegetative states (incumbent U.S. senators excluded). Nope, our cultural touchstones -- at least according to some of the recent letters to the editor of The Daily Oklahoman -- chiefly revolve around issues perhaps best left for old Sly & the Family Stone songs.

Recently resigned University of Oklahoma baseball coach Larry Cochell quipped in a private meeting with two ESPN announcers late last month that an African-American freshman outfielder for OU, Joe Dunigan, didn't have "any nigger in him," and then went on to explain that "there are honkies and white people and there are niggers and black people. Dunigan is a good black kid."

So, here's a smattering of the reaction from Sooners in the May 11 Oklahoman:

J.D. Kinard of Washington writes:

"I've been haunted all week by something called the 'N-word.' Whatever this is, it must be really ghastly. No one on the radio will say what it means. No one in the press will print it. A good coach lost his job for having the audacity to utter it out loud. It is described as a racial stereotype word. In the same sentence with the 'N-word,' I read the 'H-word,' but it was spelled out -- 'honkie.' But of course that isn't a racial stereotype word. Is it?"

Sixteen-year-old Cole Walker of Oklahoma City chimes in:

"I was watching the news the other day and there was something on about the OU head baseball coach. He was reported saying the 'N-word.' On the news this word was bleeped out, but the word 'honkie' wasn't bleeped out. Why? The word is just as racist."

And Gilbert J. Thompson of Broken Bow elucidates us that, no, you only thought that the N-word was racist, when in reality ...

"I have worked with blacks. I have supervised blacks. I have been supervised by blacks. I was made to understand that the 'N-word' has nothing to do with skin color. It only refers to a bad person. Cochell's statement verifies that interpretation and shows no prejudice toward a race or toward any person. He is owed an apology and should be offered a position with the university, if not his previous position."

OK, aside from the aforementioned letters being a sad and pathetic testament to not-so-lingering racism in my home state, let me say this ... It is beyond asinine and completely disingenuous for any yahoo to make the claim that he or she finds "honkie" offensive. If anything, Cochell's use of the word only indicated that he must've stopped watching television shortly after the 1977 cancellation of "Sanford & Son."

Isn't "honkie" antiquated, anyway? Geez, what a ... what a ... cracker this guy is.

We can argue the logic of media outlets bleeping the N-word throughout when scores of rap and hiphop performers use the word on commercial radio every day. We can argue the double-standard of bleeping the N-word when other pejorative terms, ranging from "fag" to "kike," don't receive the same delicately P.C. treatment.

Moreover, if Cochell's legion of defenders are intent on arguing that the coach got a raw deal, they can challenge the propriety of a guy forced into resignation for a presumably off-the-record remark -- although there, too, one could certainly counter that only a seriously unstable jackass would make that comment to two ESPN announcers he barely knew.

But pretending that "honkie" has your white-assed dander up? Give me a break. Just treat yourself to a meal at Applebee's and suck it up, honkies.

5 Comments:

At 8:47 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Here's the REAL issue: Cochell had to go because we've sucked ass for too long.

I gave him the option: he could coach-out the season and then I'd can him, or he could go out in a Chris Rock blaze of glory. He chose the latter.

 
At 11:16 AM, Blogger Dr. Pants said...

Hey, I'm whiter than a piece of bread and I neither have soul, nor am I "super-bad," but if I've ever been called a Honkie, it never much offended me.

Why? Probably because, as a white male American, my ancestors were only mildly discriminated against and not, say, enslaved.

When another race, human or alien, decides to put Whitey in chains and calls me a Honkie as a deragatory term, then maybe I'll get offended.

Until then, I'm just going to have to assume that people who think honkie and nigger are on the same level were raised by some really passive-aggressive fucking racists.

Fucking honkies.

 
At 3:11 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I thought Norman Lear invented the word "Honky" as something for George Jefferson to call Archie Bunker, but apparently it derives from a derogatory term for "Hungarian" used to describe Slavic factory workers in Chicago in the early 20th century.

Having said that, I haven't heard anybody use that "Nick At Nite" term for at least 25 years, and these backward-ass crackas need to drag their peckerwood, whitey, caucasoid, "Hee-Haw" asses into the double-aughts lest anybody hear them talking without their sheets on.

 
At 3:31 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Speaking of mothers... let me give that oatmeal some brown sugar!

 
At 9:06 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

You can always spot the niggers...they are the ones with the head phones on, bobbin their carpet heads, chattering constantly. Had one of them assholes sit by me on the St Louis metro today telling me..."honkies are everywhere, everywhere and what comes around goes around...or some stupid shit like that..." Fuckin dumb coon! Then they wonder why we call them niggers! Thank GOD them stupid fuckers have decent people like us honkies to support their worthless asses with the tax dollars we pay in everyday because they are too fuckin lazy and worthless to get a job.

 

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