It's More Than A Word

New York Daily News:

Stand-up comic Eddie Griffin gets hook for spewing N-word

If comedian Eddie Griffin didn't know the N-word was banned and buried, he found out when the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine pulled the plug on his raunchy standup routine.

Griffin, who headlined a soldout show at Black Enterprise's 14th annual Golf and Tennis Challenge in Miami on Friday, was about 10 minutes into his N-word-laced act when publisher Earl Graves turned off the mike.

Minutes later, Graves appeared onstage with a cord and plug in one hand and a working microphone in the other. He told the audience at the posh Doral Golf Resort that Griffin's microphone had been turned off because he repeatedly used the N-word.

Graves, a prominent businessman whose Labor Day weekend event attracts corporate sponsors like Aetna, Pepsi and FedEx, got a standing ovation. He said Griffin, 39, would be paid.

Attendees said Griffin - who has appeared in "Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo," "Undercover Brother" and "Scary Movie 3" - sauntered onto the stage smoking a cigarette. He yelled "F--- y'all!" before walking off, they said.

"We at Black Enterprise will not allow our culture to go backward," Graves said. "Black Enterprise stands for decency, black culture and dignity."

The NAACP held a public "burial" for the racial slur during its annual convention in Detroit in July.

Griffin's publicist, Jeff Abraham, declined comment.

Eddie Griffin is a neutered house negro who would give the Klansman trying to burn a cross a match.

I remember an old joke where two men met in the street late one night. One was black, the other man was white. They got into a fight after the white man called the black man a "nigger". One violent struggle later, the white man was on the ground and the black man was standing over him with a huge rock in his hands.

"Apologize, goddamnit!" the black man screamed. "If you don't, I'll kill you!"

"O.K.! O.K.!" the white man begged. "I'm sorry, Mister Nigger!"

That joke always comes to mind whenever I hear African-American comedians or rappers babbling about using "nigger" as a word of empowerment. I don't think so. It's putting lipstick on a rabid pig.

Still, it just goes to show that despite that well-publicized funeral by the NAACP months ago, the N-word will never die. It's too useful.

Years ago, I was watching a documentary on one of those you're-gonna-learn-something TV stations like PBS, and I think it was about PETA, but I'm not sure. Anyway, I saw a bunch of doctors in a lab torturing animals. I saw kittens in cages defecating themselves, dogs submerged in water tanks, monkeys with exposed brains strapped in a chair like Malcolm McDowell in A Clockwork Orange. As I watched in horror, I learned something, although it probably wasn't what the guys making the film intended.

First, the doctors in the blood-stained white coats who worked with cold efficiency as they methodically killed these animals didn't call it torture. They called it "scientific research". Also, I noticed that they never called the animals by name, or even identified them by species. Instead, they gave Garfield, Benji, and Cheetah code names like "GL 6735", and I realized this was how the doctors were able to do the terrible things that they did. Before you kill, you have to turn your victim into an object.

That's exactly what bigots do.

Once you dehumanize the objects of your hatred, it becomes easy to lynch that nigger, rape that bitch, or kick that faggot's ass. Presto. Historically, we've seen this lunatic sorcery works on a larger scale, as well: Let's turn those Jews into ash, napalm those gooks, drop a nuke on those ragheads. Easy.

And it all starts with a word.