Lynn Crosbie on Tracy Morgan: “Of what use is a forced apology?”
I have since read the jokes, which are more than distasteful, and accounts of other, arguably worse, parts of the show that no one seems to have taken umbrage to: jokes aimed at mothers in the work force and the mothers of “retards.” I guess the women don’t have GLAAD’s clout.(…)
By shutting down the discourse around hate and violence by demanding apologies and shouting the perpetrators into submission, we merely obfuscate and ignore the larger problem.
Worse, by being tight-lipped, ignorant, censorious prigs, we are also at fault. I would rather fight than switch to the paranoid land of surveillance and retribution that is language, under arrest.
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PS: nice weasel punctuation in the headline, Globe & Mail. Crosbie’s column doesn’t demand a question mark — quite the opposite. How pathetic.
