You're playing fast-and-loose between whether you're talking about "censorship" (which you define two different ways) or "freedom of speech" (which you define by reference to censorship).

THIS. Why are people treating this as though Maher has to pass some acid test of racism before we condemn what he said? We're talking about what he did, not judging him at the gates of Heaven.

Oh good, we've started manufacturing facile strawmen for each other already.

I believe "First Amendment absolutist" is a euphemism for "someone who thinks freedom of speech means protection from criticism." (If that's not right, then I'm confused too.)

Where did I say that I think people saying n***a is a good thing? You're the one getting hot and bothered because someone who said it is being criticized! What is with the utterly shitty dubious summarizing going on here? Have you no ethics? Try to be honest rather than trying to do anything, no matter how unethical,…

I'm sorry, I was trying to project some kind of nuance onto your statement. I just didn't imagine that you literally thought it was OK for white people to say the N word because you gave them permission, and that it's "embarrassing" for anyone else to have a problem with that. I now stand corrected, not only about…

"Since there's one sentence fragment that looks as though it agrees with me, I'm going to take that out of context."

So although his behaviour is indefensible, we should defend it anyway because he's ostensibly part of our tribe? If my principles were worth that little, I'd be a Republican.

You said it was racist. Which it is only in the most technical semantic sense. Do you mean that it's technically racist but also not unfair? Because I won't disagree with that.

Those would make good policies in a fantasy dreamworld where we could just "retire" words and concepts we found problematic. In this utopian idyll it would be entirely appropriate to think that it's unfair to white people that they're not allowed to say the N word.

I suppose I could google it?

: scans article for buzzwords :
: buzzword count; 0 :

TRIBORG WINS

Thank you for not jumping on this or making a big deal of it, Lady Who Currently Takes Up Like Half Of This Comment Board.

But it was slightly self-deprecating about him being a smug elitist, so that makes it OK!

Also Herbert Love from season 4.

Such as? You've made like a dozen posts and not one single point. "You're all racist because I decided so" isn't a point.

Jesus. Of course we all know that human rights are shitty for women in some majority-Muslim countries. That's not what's up for debate. What many liberals don't agree with is when the likes of Maher then extrapolate from this that Islam is inherently evil and that it's therefore appropriate to withdraw certain rights…

Indeed. When will the pathetic leftists understand that racial slurs are OK, but criticising people for using racial slurs is a fascist violation of people's rights?

Wait, are we still doing that thing where we pretend "n***er" and "n***a" are two different words? And then using that to say "well it's not okay to say it, but I guess the -a on the end just pushes it over the line of acceptability"? There's no mileage in this, and even if there were, it wouldn't lead anywhere good.…