Or is Dustin Hoffman playing Lenny Bruce offensive in the movie Lenny?
“I’d like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet”
Poll- Is Lenny Bruce Offensive?
My View of Life on the Dock
My View of Life on the Dock
Or is Dustin Hoffman playing Lenny Bruce offensive in the movie Lenny?
“I’d like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet”
Good Morning Gloucester 
Great point, Joey. Here’s another clip where he claims it’s “the dirtiest show I’ve ever done in my life”, but he does it without saying one word that could get him arrested.
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Anybody going to see the Lenny Bruce film knew what it was about and what his social commentary was about. This blog probably has many folks who dont know who he was or what a film about his life and art and work meant ,so is out of context for them.
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Okay, I’ll bite… Excellent point and no this isn’t offensive. Look at how the words “nerd” and “geek” have changed over time. However, words have baggage, even if we don’t want them to. I doubt that you call a black person you just met, “nigger.” Is it appropriate to call a little person you just met, “midget?” It’s not about the PC word police taking things away from you, it’s about context.
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So by that line of thinking is the context of calling a midget pickle a midget offensive in some sort of context that should make vlasic stop calling their midget pickles midget pickles?
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I really have no idea about pickles. It seems like the term is now generally considered a derisive way to describe a person but commonly used to describe objects, sports leagues, etc. The news story about Cains dropping the term makes it sound like one lady started a campaign. There were no lawsuits, Cains is a private corporation and can do as a they please. Maybe they were planning this change for a while or maybe this wasn’t the first round of complaints they received? Who knows? No one forced them to change the name, that was their call.
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First off let me say that calling a black person a nigger if you don’t know them and know that they would take offense to it is of course wrong. I’ve greeted one of my closest friends, a black man that was an usher in my wedding and I in his and had traveled around with extensively in my younger days “My Nigger” as a greeting and we would laugh but you would have to be stupid to say it to someone you don’t know would take offense to it. When I great my black friend “My nigger” it is honestly meant as a term of endearment.
That being said, I think the reason that the PC police is running amok is because so many small businesses have been squashed out of existence and so many more people work for “the man” whether it be the huge government, or a large corporation, or a school system, or the military, or a super large company with human resource departments and all. So when something like a woman creating a huge ruckus over the term midget gets brought up, the only people you hear from are the politically correct crowd because the people who might know it’s silly don’t want to lift up their heads and speak out because they are afraid that it might cost them their job.
So these PC police, just like the feminazis or the eco terrorists are really the bullies in my opinion because they are the ones suppressing people through fear and intimidation.
Midget in the dictionary –
midg·et
[mij-it] Show IPA
noun
1.
(not in technical use) an extremely small person having normal physical proportions.
2.
any animal or thing that is very small for its kind.
adjective
3.
very small or of a class below the usual size.
4.
being a miniature replica or model.
Origin:
1850–55; midge + -et
Related forms
midg·et·ism, noun
Synonyms
1. See dwarf.
No where in the dictionary do they mantion it as a negative connotation. When we grew up there was never a negative connotation associated with it. A small person that was under 4 feet tall when they got older was a midget.
But now you have the PC police striking fear into classic pickle companies because the PC police goes on a power trip and a classic staple in every household, the midgit pickle gets renamed only because it is easier to just change the name that face the PC backlash.
Because in the board room at vlasic you have a bunch of people sitting around and the subject comes up-
Corporate guy leading the meeting at Vlassic-
We got this lady who is upset because suddenly what we’ve been calling all these years, the Midget Pickle she finds offensive to her midget child.
Then he says-
How do you all feel about this?
And it’s at that very point where all the decision makers in the room’s assholes pucker up in fear. Because they know as silly as it sounds to change the name of the classic midget pickle after decades of pumping out gazillions of jars of midget pickles, that not one of them is gonna go on record as to saying that they should just keep on with the classic midget pickle brand that they’ve always had and never intended to be a slight because they don’t want it on record when the PC police make an even bigger stink about it as being their idea, voiced in that room, to keep the name the same.
and so Vlasic issues a statement saying they will change the name, lose the brand that they’ve built up for years, burn all the packaging that they’ve already contracted out which was printed with the name midget pickles because some broad had a hair across her ass and some more of her PC buddies had a hair across their ass and they picked up momentum and what media outlet doesn’t like to report on the absurdities of these PC police and the conflicts that they create, and there you have it. No more classic midget pickles for vlassic.
Censorship. Welcome to America baby. Watch your tongue.
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… Would you call any black person that?
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Why would I call a black person a midget?
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and will Tootsie Roll have to stop calling their snack size candy, Midgees?
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I wonder how the results of the poll would change if Lenny said “If only President Bush or Nixon” instead of Kennedy.
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Fantastic clips Joey and P and V. Am embarrassed to say I have never seen the film, but will tonight. Thanks for posting.
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Remember the skit on SNL of Chevy Chase & Richard Pryor in a job interview where they called each other bad names? Honky & Cracker & Spearchucker. It was 1975.
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I’m not particularly offended by Lenny’s gag, but I do think he is full of shit in this instance. Nigger is not offensive because the word is suppressed, what a crock! People used to call African Americans nigger all the time just a few decades ago. I suppose since the term was so prevalent back then, it wasn’t offensive? Bullshit. Nigger is offensive because it is a hateful word that is synonymous with the torture, slavery, rape, murder, and political and economic suppression of slaves from Africa and their descendants in the USA.
If this bit was about fuck, shit, ass, cock, etc., etc. then he’d be onto something. Carlin did that though.
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