Wait, "I didn't know it was a word" is believable?
Sure. Remember 'macaca'? We all believed that one, right?
I don't believe it but I believed "macaca".
My wife's family (NY Irish and Italian working class, think Geraldine Ferraro demographic) quite believably uses "I didn't know what that word meant"- they heard the words from their racist (but not outside the norm racist for their time!) parents but with no obvious meaning attached. My MIL used jigaboo at one point to describe an area with ugly houses, with no knowledge of the race of the people who lived there. AIMHMHB, her cousin used the phrase "chew me down" to describe someone who was trying to drive a hard bargain with her. Her grandmother used the word "inhibidated" to describe a Caribbean island we were planning to visit on vacation and we still have no idea what it was supposed to mean- inhabited (by minorities?)
I can easily believe that it's a catchy word she heard someone use in a similar situation years ago without any explanation of what it means.
Oh, how you suck, ESPN, truly.
AIMHMHB, her cousin used the phrase "chew me down" to describe someone who was trying to drive a hard bargain with her.
I've told the story, but Buck had that happen to him -- learned the phrase without connecting it with Jews, and had an awkward moment with a Jewish boss explaining it to him.
So, eh, I guess I could believe a similar explanation for 'jigaboo' -- that she picked up from an old relative who used it to describe 'that music the kids listen to'. I've certainly seen citations of 'n-r music' used to describe rock and roll in the fifties and sixties, and I can imagine hearing 'jigaboo music' and not getting it.
The last time I heard "jigaboo" used was in an NPR story about racism in Boston-area cheerleading. The Irish schools didn't like the "jigaboo dancing with jigaboo music" the black schools did. The word is so commonly associated with "music" that there's no way the news person accidentally used it in that context never having heard it before.
No, if she's not lying, the explanation has to be that she heard it with music, but didn't get that it was a racial slur.
I didn't know it was a word or what it meant.
4, 7: Of course, the funny thing about that kind of excuse is that, while it might actually mean that the usage was ignorantly innocent, it's the kind of thing that's a lot likelier to happen to you if you grew up around a lot of people who use arcane racial slurs. Which means that you're going to get a very blurry line between people who have plausible grounds for using slurs innocent/ignorantly, and people who are just using slurs because they do.
This may make me a bad person, but I never liked that PSU fundraiser because it really screws with the streets when people, even if they're basically sympathetic people like hobos, ask for money from people in cars.
But what did she mean to convey by it? Quoting: "it's hard to hear her voice under all that jigaboo music. Jigaboo. That's what I call it."
What does that even mean? She's clearly distinguishing this jigaboo music from other forms of music (like, what, opera or classical or string quartet or acoustic folk, say): it's an utterly confusing thing to say, given that it was the freaking Sound of Music.
Maybe I need to hear the Lady Gaga performance in order grasp what she may have been distinguishing from other things.
I haven't heard either Lady Gaga at the Oscars, or the Fox newscaster talking about it, just read descriptions of both, but I thought the meaning was: (1) Lady Gaga generally sings jigaboo music (meaning, if we credit her with not meaning the slur, something like 'that stupid loud music the kids listen to these days'), which makes it hard to assess the musicality of her performance. (2) At the Oscars, LG sang a medley from the Sound of Music, which isn't jigaboo music. (3) Now that I've heard her sing something that isn't jigaboo music, I recognize that she's a highly talented and skilled singer.
Right, the fact that it's the Sound of Music is what makes her explanation plausible--even likely--because using the term as a racial slur in that context makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. Like parsimon, I'm confused about what exactly she was trying to communicate, but it couldn't have been racial animus.
Ah, 14 makes more sense. I was misunderstanding what had happened.
Sure it could have been. Imagine Lady Gaga were, e.g., a rapper, and the quote was 'that n-r music', not 'that jigaboo music'. It would have made perfect, racist, sense to say that "I never realized she was a good singer until I heard her singing something other than that n-r music."
17: Right, I understand now--I had thought the music that she was calling 'that jigaboo music' was The Sound of Music.
The Sound of Music sucks for non-racial reasons.
It's hard to know if she's a good singer when it's just that Aryan music.
This may be on topic, but even if not, it made me laugh a great deal.
Once again Olbermann has the right target but fails the execution. "Middle of nowhere," "freezing," "idiots," "bad history department," and "primarily known for vomit and child rape" are acceptable PSU put-downs.
Okay, yeah, I hadn't thought of explanation 14.3. On this reading, she was saying that it's usually hard to hear her voice.
I feel I should listen to the Lady Gaga performance now.
Why on earth would she end her career by saying it on air if she had any idea what it meant?
I'm not sure I'm following the Olbermann story. This charity thing apparently raises more than $10 million every year to fund stuff for children and the families of children being treated at the PSU hospital (which is in Hershey). It's sort of an amazing thing, and Olbermann, who really is only a tiny bit better than the average NFL owner -- which is to say, the actual worst people in the world -- was a dick about it? I guess it makes me a homer, but I don't see why he deserves defending.
It's Fox, why would she think it would end her career even if she knew what it meant?
Although I guess some local Fox affiliates might be held to higher standards than the mothership. Maybe she was just looking for a promotion to the major leagues.
Slip of the tongue? "Jigaboo music" is something that she'd say among friends, knowing it's a slur, but mainly thinking of it as a musical description, and it slipped out? I don't think it's all that unlikely that she was ignorant of the meaning, but I wouldn't call it all that implausible a mistake even if she did know what it meant.
Huh, Olbermann got suspended for those tweets? That seems weirdly excessive. But my guess is that when he returned to ESPN, they wrote something into his contract about consequences for acting like a boor, and so they decided to shorten his leash a bit before he actually bites someone rather than just barking incessantly.
This charity thingfreezing ass backward-state university apparently raises more than $10 million every year to fund stuffs for children and the families of children. BOOYAH. Olbermann is a dick for sure but I'm like an even stupider, much poorer Olbermann.
Not just on air, but next to a black coworker, and said in the tone that suggests she thinks it's innocuous? The LB explanation, god help me, makes sense: hear it used, associate it with the wrong features (that loud club music, or something, not race), say it in public.
Oh, sorry, I meant Lady Gaga's performance.
The Fox commenter: I think they're encouraged to pander to some sort of perceived base, you know?
I encourage any and all comers to try to troll me about Penn State. I think you'll find that I care so little about the place that I'm unlikely to rise to the bait. Now, if you want to see me weep, just mention spring in NorCal.
Like Unfoggetarian I'd never heard or seen the word before. But it seems pretty obviously something bad.
Spring, in Northern California.
Who else has cues? I've made several people cry this week already. My cue is "The Lakers."
Also "Jeb Bush on the paleo diet."
I remember being in NorCal in the spring once, and it smelled of lilacs and goodness. That's a fond memory. If only I'd had a chance to live there!
My trigger this week is Film Forum.
His gallery suggests that Christian Marclay's amazeballs The Clock is screening at LACMA today, but there's no sign of that that I could find on LACMA's site itself. It doesn't really make sense to screen a 24-hour-long movie on a weekday anyway.
Also Lady Gaga's performance was so fabulous my heart grew three shades gayer. Seriously it was like la dee da, hour seven million of the Oscars, and then she comes out and sings 2/3 of the music in the entire musical. No stupid awards show embellishments, just her being all "I can SING, motherfuckers!"
Spring! That word sounds so pleasant! I wonder what it could mean.
That is so 2013, Flownoz, or whenever the fancy donut craze was at its height, because they were selling those outside. Anyhow LACMA already screened that and I went and it was indeed fucking bad ass.
42: Are you going to watch all 24 hours? I enjoyed the 1/2 hour or so of it that I saw.
Well, I don't live anywhere near LACMA (closer than Von Wafer though!) and as I said it doesn't seem to actually be happening and obviously if it is happening today I'm not currently watching it.
However, when it was at sfmoma I watched about eight hours of it (with a single hour-long break) and it was glorious.
I remember seeing the word once, in a review of Spike Lee's "School Daze". In that movie it's the pejorative name for the black folks who don't "act white". So, now I can be sure Spike Lee definitely didn't make it up.
Well, and with several breaks of a few minutes to urinate or discreetly eat the small foods I'd smuggled into the museum.
I really dug his Guitar Drag.
I think I mentioned here before that I got through my head and neck MRI by pretending I was in a Marclay piece.
I definitely remember you mentioning that!
The Clock would be a great thing to put on in the background of a party, except for the danger that everyone would become entranced by its superlative awesomeness.
I remember being in NorCal in the spring once, and it smelled of lilacs and goodness.
Hmmm, a remark of dubious credibility. The one solace of living away from there (climatewise) is that lilacs grow here and mainly don't grow there. Instead you get the erzatz California "lilac," which is no lilac at all.
Wait, "I didn't know it was a word" is believable?
Fucking words, how do they work?
54: You could match it with that kiss supercut that somebody made a couple of years ago.
I didn't know it was a word. I'm also certain that my idiolect's mapping of word to meaning doesn't perfectly line up with the accepted practice. I just hope that where it's different, it isn't embarrassingly so. So, I'm fully behind LB's theory that she's innocently ignorant but raised in a racist environment.
She obviously knew it was a word. She misunderstood what the word meant. It's happened to everyone, right?
Do you mean Ceanothus, also called deer lilac? It doesn't smell like lilacs but it does smell like warm honey. Which is probably why the bees are all over the newly opened flowers this week.
Usually in happens with "penultimate".
"She obviously knew it was a word. She misunderstood what the word meant."
I am amused by the thought of people whose job it is to appear on TV and speak to large audiences occasionally blurting out random sounds, which every now and then might be a word known to some subset of the viewers. She didn't know it was a word! It was a bunch of vocalizations that sounded reasonable when strung together!
LB's theory that she's innocently ignorant
I'm not committed to it, I just think it's not implausible. The alternative, that she knew perfectly well what the word meant but it just slipped out, doesn't seem all that unlikely either.
61: penultimate: the last word in writing devices.
63: But then why would she repeat it? "Double down and hope no one calls you on it" is a bad strategy when there are more than a handful of observers.
I am amused by the thought of people whose job it is to appear on TV and speak to large audiences occasionally blurting out random sounds, which every now and then might be a word known to some subset of the viewers.
I think this is what we call "banter". For people who host shows like "Good Morning America" it's their main skill. It's supposed to consist of words but convey no information -- so from that it's just a short step to sounds with no defined meaning.
It's not like she was wildly off-base about the meaning of the word. She basically used it correctly. (Which is why people thought she was using it deliberately, as a racial slur. If she'd used it completely incorrectly, they'd have just thought she didn't know what the word meant.) She had inferred the word's meaning from context, never looking it up, and she not realized that the context in which she had heard it used was likely one that contained elements of racial animus.
I haven't actually looked up the word and don't actually know what it means. Like the reporter, I'm also just inferring the word's meaning from context, and the only reason I'm inferring that it's a racial slur is because of the context of this thread. I bet if she had first encountered the word in this thread, she wouldn't have made the same mistake.
I'm searching Twitter and trying to go back before this thing happened, which is taking a while, but one tweet I noticed on the way observed that the word was used in the first Police Academy movie, 1984.
Actually now that I've looked up the word, I guess she didn't actually use it correctly. But it was a reasonable mistake.
"jigaboo" sounds so close to "jitterbug" with an addition of racism that I imagine without checking is that this is the derivation. I am not sure if the average Fox anchor would know what jitterbug is about anymore:has it had a revival? Did she intend "jitterbug?"
In addition "jigaboo" has not one but two syllables I would be very careful about using. The word feels ugly and racist as fuck, and at the very least was intended as openly contemptuous of LG's main product. But she's FNC, and they will love and support her.
Olbermann feels like a victim of a small injustice, but I don't care about him either.
Read/reading somewhere this week someone...else...utterly fed up with the liberal meme of "stupid Republicans" Literally self-defeating narcissism.
at the very least was intended as openly contemptuous of LG's main product
This is inarguable but completely beside the point.
Now that I've found Twitter's advanced search includes a date limiter, the results of who was using the word before this event are rather puzzling, but it does seem to be in use. I have to filter out the incomprehensible spam taking the form of sentences, often including other rare words ("Jigaboo parlor car as regards the decennary awarded in passage to railroad tunnel figo".) Some definitely racist uses, alongside "gorilla". Some black people using it. And a link about this news story.
And before one innocently accepts the Cab Calloway Wiki explanation of "jitterbug" one could do some deep googling into turn of the century black uses of the word "jigaboo" which included darker skin, and especially a kind of subservient black minstrelsy. I just skimmed the net.
72: When the comparison is to the Whitest Fucking Music Ever, the contempt is racist.
I have certainly seen jigaboo quite a bit in the mouths of white characters in older US fiction - also even "jig" as an abbreviation the reader would be expected to understand. The characters would usually be a bit racist but meant to be averagely so for their time (or at least the author's time - some of these stories might have been old sci-fi, that most weirdly dated of sub-categories).
When the comparison is to the Whitest Fucking Music Ever,
I am offended on behalf of the polka community.
I think this is what we call "banter".
New Mouseover text.
From the sidebar of the article in 73: The DIY court system returns.
55: Central Northern California has pretty decent lilacs, actually. One of the pleasant bits that makes up for its many detractions.
Another point as to the hopeless petite bourgeois whiteness of the Fox anchor.
It takes a true trained expert to appreciate Golden Age showtune performance, because the commercial nature of the medium lent itself to music that was superficially impressive and technically undemanding. Back when sheet music still sold in truckloads, composers were writing exactly so parents could sit in the highschool auditorium and say:"Didn't Little Bobby sing 'They Call the Wind Maria' so very beautifully?"
Listening to Lady Gaga sing Rodgers & Hammerstein, I definitely would not trust my own ears. Those fuckers were good, they were pros at making hack actors sound like opera stars.
I thought her explanation was believable because local news anchors are not really known for the erudition and keen intellects. The moment where he laughs in an "I can't fucking believe you just said that" way and she says "that's what I call it, 'jigaboo,'" seals that case that it's a word she heard, didn't really understand, and reappropriated from her memory to apply in a distant cousin kind of way to something she doesn't really like.
So, late to the thread. Anybody mention racism yet?
(TOTES JKS.)
But yeah, "I didn't know jigaboo was a word" is total bullshit, I'm pretty sure.
Fuck Penn State to death.
Racism is bad.
Castock! And 46 is awesome. And 50 aligns well with how I've IRL heard the word, but that's just because I overhear more black-on-black slurs than the average white person, and never from Lee.
I'd heard the word, not in real time usage but in stories from my dad about all the crazy racist words my grandfather would use.
And I had the same takeaway as 81. The way she repeats it really does seem like she has no idea she's basically chucking the n word around on live television.
It takes a true trained expert to appreciate Golden Age showtune performance
Wait, what? No.
Jigaboos are what pickaninnies grow up to be.
For bonus ignorant racism, the Fox interviewer really should have asked the black guy whether he was out of his cotton-pickin' mind.
66 is right. "I didn't know it was a comically old-fashioned racist slur, but I somehow managed to use it as such!" what are the chances?
She pretty clearly did not know that the term was racist. She probably heard the term "Jigaboo music" from her grandmother or something and did not know she was being racist.