Thanks, Larry!

Sure sounds like he said most of it before correcting himself.

People's differing opinion on using this word is wider than the Grand Canyon.

My son in law is black and my best friend and told me 15 years ago, when discussing this topic, that he just considers racists to be ignorant because they have backward type thinking based on how they were raised and he feels sorry for them instead of getting upset when he's subjected to this sort of thing.

It's easy for ME to have that mentality because I'm white. It's one of the many things that cause me to respect him so much.

Our grandson told my wife a couple of years ago that somebody called him a "monkey" at school and that it hurt his feelings.

This really upset her. 

Me?  

Ignorant white adults use the term, often as an attempt to feel superior to black people.

More often than not because of how THEY were raised. I grew up in the Detroit area and I sometimes heard the word used by white kids that I hung around with.  Were they racists? I'm thinking not in most cases because growing up I heard 100 other derogatory words that kids use on each other and this one was used the same way by kids in the neighborhood.

I can say one thing with absolute certainty. I NEVER heard the word in my house growing up and would have been scolded for using it, even though things were different in the 1960s. 

Did I use it as a kid?

I don't remember it and certainty NOT to a black person but considering my foul mouth in those days, I probably  used it jokingly a few times. And I have never had a racist cell in my body. Just the opposite as somebody from a family that spoke out for Civil Rights. Dad grew up in the inner city of Detroit, never meeting his dad. 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD........99 YEARS OLD TODAY!!!

After he became a successful Industrial Engineer, he never forgot his roots and his idol was always Walter Reuther.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Reuther

++++++++++

So the point is that a person's impression, when hearing a white person use that word depends on them.

What race they are.

How they were raised.

Where they were raised.

What party they align with. 

How sensitive they are.

Should there be a uniform reaction of outrage by everybody to this one word when they hear it? 

Do we know what's in the heart of the person using it? 

I totally recognize the HURT that this word causes to some people. How offensive it is when used as a racial slur.

It's sad that people using it have so much power to create that hurt by using this magical, powerful word.

There are 100+ other ethnic slurs but this one, above all the others gets the most attention:

List of ethnic slurs and epithets by ethnicity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_slurs_and_epithets_by_ethnicity

Thanks, Mike, and happy 99th birthday to your dad!

 Regarding the video, thanks for your reply. 

 Did you in addition to listening to it watch it very carefully?

Use of nigger in the arts

21st century

Since the 2010s the word nigger has been used with increasing frequency^[36] by African Americans amongst themselves or in self-expression, the most common swear word in hip hop music lyrics.^[37] As a result, it is a word that is heard daily by millions of all races worldwide who listen to uncensored hip hop and other music genres, while being socially unacceptable for anyone but African Americans to utter. Ta-Nehisi Coates has suggested that it continues to be unacceptable for people who are not of African ancestry to utter the word nigger while singing or rapping along to hip-hop, and that by being so restrained it gives White Americans (specifically) a taste of what it is like to not be entitled to "do anything they please, anywhere". Counterpoint to this standpoint is the open question of whether daily, frequent exposure by non-Black Americans to African Americans using the word will inevitably lead to a dilution of the extremely negative perception of the word among the majority of non-Black Americans that currently consider its use unacceptable and shocking

+++++++++++

Was anybody reading this post offended because I copied that word in bold several times on this page?

How about now?

nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger!

If so, then they are the ones being too sensitive because my use of it is NOT as a racial slur but meant purely to analyze the way its used and how we perceive it, including recognizing it as capable  of tremendous hurt as a racial slur.

Back to Rich Lowry.

1. We can only guess this but if he uses that word off camera, amongst friends/family he would be much more likely to let it slip in a casual conversation.

2. I've had lots of conversations about the word itself or somebody else using the word but 99% of the time refer to it as the N word, so as to not offend anybody else in the room.  That in itself is interesting. For instance, even a non racist talking to another non racist, where both of them know each other, if one of them would say the actual word, NIGGER, instead of "the N word" its shocking.

3. Hopefully, you'll understand that my actual using of the entire word in bold on this page is meant to stimulate provocative thought, NOT be offensive. 

Is this offensive?

I actually don't care for the instrumentals at all and picked it because of its message..........which is actually the opposite of what you might think:

      Clawfinger - Nigger [Official Video]    

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ng1ovEr46c

                                     @esmooth919                            

                                              1 year ago                                    

    As a young black American man who has parents that grew up in the Jim Crow era, when I saw the title of this song and the band that was singing this song, I thought I was going to be incredibly offended, but I'm not. Though the word in question is the title of the song, this song wholeheartedly denounces that word. And if you didn't pick up on that, then you clearly did not take time to listen to the lyrics.

Hey Mike,

 I don’t know if you saw my post. Did you in addition to listening to it watch the video very carefully?

Larry,

I must be missing what you want me to see. What is it?

+++++++++

I found the many comments below it interesting.

This is one of them. 

Wade@mreasycredit1

·

2h

Wow, what a profound waste of time. I've worked in broadcasting and done talk radio. Sometimes people stumble over words. Sometimes it comes out awkward. Do you think Mike Greenberg of all people is racist?

youtube.comMike Greenberg Says Martin Luther "Coon" instead of "King" Mike and...Mike Greenberg Says Martin Luther "Coon" instead of "King" Mike and Mike ShowMike Greenberg Says Martin Luther "Coon" ins

Mike said: 

Larry,

I must be missing what you want me to see. What is it?

—————————-

Hey Mike,

 I firmly believe that the word, which was gibberish due to a mistake, started with “mig”, not “nig”. I’m going to reveal why I say that shortly. Watch the video VERY carefully, especially in slow motion.

I think I see what you're seeing, which is that he closes his lips which a person does when forming an M and not a N.

I actually looked for that several times earlier and just couldn't be sure.

I guess, if thats the case, that he started saying migrants, then restarted and said it again?

Or did they insert something in with AI?

Regardless of whether some sort of trick is being used here or not, no question that our future is going to feature constantly being bombarded with AI products that look more real than the things they are imitating/faking.

There's already far too much fake news, disinformation and propaganda now. 

I'm anxiously waiting for your final response, Larry.

You can wait to see if others chime in, which would be nice.

Mike said:

“I think I see what you're seeing, which is that he closes his lips which is done when forming an M and not a N.”

————————

Hey Mike,

 I’m not going to wait any longer because you said EXACTLY what I was hoping you’d say and it could take days for the next reply. I was waiting for someone else to finally see the same thing I saw to give me more confidence that I’m not imagining things.

So, here’s what I said at another board starting 7 hours ago

 “I listened over and over. But what really convinced me is that his lips come together when he said the gibberish word. Look real closely as you can see that clearly. As we know an M requires the lips to come together. An N requires lips to be open while the tongue touches the roof of the mouth as we know. His momentarily closed his lips then.”

And then I added this:

“You can also go back a few seconds and compare to when he said ‘months’. One can see his lips momentarily close similarly to make the M sound. It isn’t possible to make an N sound unless lips are open.”

I looked and looked via Google and had yet to see ANYONE else mention this. Until you did. I’m now even more confident and I was already confident before. It is not physically possible to make an N sound without the lips open. Try it yourself and look in the mirror. Case closed. Lowry did NOT say the N word. Instead he said a gibberish M word! Migrant starts with M. He jumbled up the word “migrant”.

to much hype on BS

Cutworm said:

“to much hype on BS”

—————-

Hey cutworm,

1. Did you notice the same thing Mike and I noticed with his lips?

2. I do think that for the most part the folks criticizing Lowry sincerely think he actually used the N word. It is easy to think he did. If you don’t look very closely at his lips, it is hard to tell. If he really had slipped up and said the N word, I wouldn’t be defending him either.

Larry,

You’re probably right.

i don’t even know if we can 100% trust  the video too??

it wouldn’t take much to make it look like his lips closed when they didn’t…….although that would be trying to cover for him , the opposite of the  original source  whom appears to be trying to frame him.

cutworm has a solid point.

if Lowry is being framed, its pathetic that somebody is trying to destroy his career this way.

but what if he did accidentally let, almost the entire N word out, then quickly corrected it with the word he really wanted to use from the get go.

he clearly was NOT using it as a racial slur because  with a racial slur, the  person saying it INTENTIONALLY  states it with no corrections.

In the last year, this guy might have said 1,000 important things but it appears as if him saying or somebody making it sound like he said “nigge“. counts the most.

 I think he corrected before finishing the R IF he really did slip .

very intriguing topic/incident to analyze, Larry.

my wife tells me all the time that I analyze everything to death.

ya think??

your mind works the same way on  this and countless other posts.

i love it!

Linguist say otherwise and confirm Lowery phonetically said [ˡnɪgɚ].

They have sonograms too.

So McCarthy's and Gaetz’s explanations are incorrect, and Lowry did not mispronounce 'migrants' with a short ‘i’.

https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=66030

Great to read you, trainor!

Fascinating analysis too!  Other comments very welcomed!