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Two different topics I am not qualified to talk about but am interested in hearing your opinions on:
NB This was a few days ago and the cops have since dropped the charges after public backlash. This time.
I'm not from the south, but I and most of the rest of non-southern righties decided a long time ago we would just appropriate it. Confederate flags in rural Michigan, etc. To me it has a kind of universality to it. Don't miss the line 'if you're 5 foot 3 and 300 pounds, tax dollars shouldn't pay for your bags of fudge rounds." Interested to hear your thoughts
In the UK, a 19 y/o was found guilty of a hate crime for quoting a rap lyric containing the n-word on her instagram page. A while ago, a man was jailed for 20 weeks for posting 10 "grossly offensive" George Floyd memes in a private Whatsapp group. Another man was found guilty of sending an offensive tweet, celebrating the death of Sir Tom Moore, and the tweet was only live for 20 minutes. Recently a man was found guilty of wearing an offensive football shirt (a reference to the Hillsborough disaster over 30 years ago). There are many more examples in kind, these are just from the top of my head.
I think these are all absurd. Anything that offends normie public sensibilities is illegal. I would much prefer the American free speech norms.
I thought the absurd US incoherency around "the N Word" (where a teenager's life can be ruined because we have to pretend she learned the word from her racist grandpappy rather than the radio) was the worst it could get.
US ridiculousness + European free speech norms though...
Interestingly, the sentence was in part because in the UK, the -a variant and 'hard r' variant are (in most accents) pronounced exactly the same, so "trigger" and "trigga" have the same pronounciation unlike in most US accents. The judge therefore ruled (iirc) that her excuse that they were two different things didn't count.
I had idly wondered this to myself for a time. Just goes to show how intellectually bankrupt it is to fluff up a particular inflection of a word as a grievous sin.
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