Why is it that some men seem to think that doing a linguistic analysis will somehow make deeply offensive statements not offensive? Really ? Two particularly disturbing examples of this fallacy have gotten my attention in the last couple weeks.
It began with presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee’s comments at the Republican National Committee meeting, “If the Democrats want to insult women by making them believe that they are helpless without ‘Uncle Sugar’ coming in and providing for them a prescription each month for birth control because they cannot control their libido or their reproductive system without the help of the government, then so be it…”
Needless to say this comment stirred up quite a brouhaha. It was not surprising to me that a prominent republican politician would make such an offensive statement about women, nor that it would be controversial. What shocked me was when a local KYRS radio personality DEFENDED Huckabee with a linguistic analysis of his statement and its context.
A few days after the Huckabee comment Michael Reid, KYRS radio show host, endeavored to defend Huckabee on his Tuesday morning show “Does That Answer Your Question.” Reid spent most of his 30-minute show explaining that the brouhaha was unjustified, and one should not accuse Huckabee of being offensive, because he did not say he, himself, thought this about women. On the contrary, he was saying this was the position of the democrats with whom he disagreed. Thus, no harm, no foul.
The problem with Reid’s ‘linguistic analysis’ is that Huckabee was not quoting anything that someone else said. HE CHOSE the offensive language with which he characterized (or mischaracterized) the democrat’s position on women. And he should be held accountable for choosing language that was demeaning toward women. It is absolutely irrelevant that he was using that offensive language to censure his political opponents. Huckabee came up with the specific language, he used it personally, and he was offensive and demeaning to women.
I thought Reid’s defense of Huckabee might be an isolated instance. Then the newly opening Downtown Daiquiri Factory (DF) chose to name one of its drinks “Date Grape Kool-Aid.” When this created the (unsurprising) outpouring of outrage, DF and its owner, Jamie Pendleton, reacted defensively. Then they went on the offense and accused those who objected to that name of having creative imaginations, reading into the name something that wasn’t there. DF cited the online Urban Dictionary to claim that date-grape does not have anything to do with date rape. At that time, the urban dictionary defined date-grape as “When you and your loved one get drunk off of wine and end up hooking up.” It is curious that this link, posted by DF, which I checked at the time and where I found the definition above, now results in a page that says “date-grape isn’t defined.”
Even if the urban dictionary is no longer willing to own its definition, DF claimed it. And it is totally disingenuous to claim that this definition excuses DF’s callous indifference to the community’s concerns. The Urban Dictionary makes it clear that date-grape is, in fact, a play on the phrase date rape — just as the protestors claimed.
And to add the word Kool-Aid makes it even more blatant. ‘Drinking the Kool-Aid’ has long been a reference to the Jonestown massacre in which a charismatic leader, Jim Jones, convinced nearly a thousand people to commit mass suicide by drinking a fruit-flavored drink laced with poison. [Although the drink was likely not actually Kool-aid, the name stuck.] ‘Drinking the kool-aid’ is generally a reference to doing/believing something that may not be rationally justified. It can mean “knowingly going along with a doomed or dangerous idea because of peer pressure.” So Date-Grape Kool-Aid is clearly an attempt to be edgy by suggesting that this drink is at least a bit dangerous. The image that comes to my mind, is someone who drinks the Kool-Aid (tainted drink) carelessly and ends up having sex that is less than totally consensual, or even based on physical violence (date rape). I certainly would not feel safe patronizing a place that flagrantly embraces this name, or this culture. DF’s defense of the name is a fatally flawed attempt to use a linguistic analysis to excuse a deeply offensive name.
These two events so close together raise important questions for me. Is Spokane/America some sort of deeply misogynist culture? How can so many people not grasp how deeply offensive these two events have been to the rest of us? What kind of culture are we creating? What kind of sexual values are we teaching our youth?
