On Ohio's Plunderbund: The N-Word Gets Used, NAACP Gets Ripped

CINCINNATI (TDB) -- Why would anybody want to use the N-word, to write it or say it? An Ohio blog, Plunderbund, has taken issue with the NAACP's burying the N-Word protest in Detroit. Plunderbund called it "cheesy," which is one way of describing an event designed, scripted and intended to have a cultural impact.

Under the Plunderbund standard, one supposes, Gandhi's and MLK's actions that argued for the dignity of mankind were just another slice of Roquefort.

[UPDATE: 7:57 PM EDT: There's another apparition of the N-word on the always provocative Cincinnati Black Blog, where it manifests itself as a five-letter variant. This time it appears under a caption referring to Ohio State Sen. Eric Kearney, D-9, a lawmaker who is described as wondering about the sanity of Christoper Smitherman, the Cincinnati NAACP chapter president. Yes, it is down to five letters, hopefully a portent it has shriveled and may leave all of us refreshingly free of old stereotypes.]

But was Plunderbund guilty of cheese-manufacturing itself? Did it have to use the hateful six-letter slur to try and make its point -- that it is probably futile to try to drive a fetid racist expression out of the English language for all time. Did it use the malodorous N-word merely to attract attention?

The N-word is supposed to denigrate the person at which it is aimed. But its force for evil is such that it also lowers to the gutter the utterer. Plunderbund is a great blog -- and the opinions expressed therein have a record of being progressive and powerful. But Plunderbund, please stay away from the N-word. Don't use it. Don't write it. Please don't allow it ever again to creep into your mind and intrude upon your mental processes.

Remember always: The N-word is dead and gone. This time the NAACP got it right and you got it wrong.