Does "Nigger" Offend You?

[stilltrucking]

My friend from Togo used to get a lot shit from some americans of african descent, they would say things like your great grandfather sold my great grand father into slavery. He was scared that night worried, i was honored that he picked me to trust that night. I don't know exactly what trick those young quakers pulled on him, some kind of practical joke, toke him way out into the country, something about a Klan meeting, nice kids, quaker kids, they probably regret the hell out of it. But he trusted me because I was a Jew, that is what it came down too. And you know what they say about Jews. My friend lived with me for a long time. I will never forget his skin color, I lived in a sub basement, pitch dark with the lights off, he was so black he stood out in the darkness.

He was a little confused or maybe just beacuse he was a green horn
He kept mixing americans up with the us government, he wanted to write the government and tell them what a good citizen I was, get me a medal.

We hitch hiked across the south one summer. From Nashville to Washington DC, he had to go to the Embassay of Togo. People treated us well, no racial inscidents, my hair down to my waist and a rabbinical beard.

Good times, good friend,

Yeah some of my best friends are Jews, I am not prejudiced

when someone hates me for the color of my skin it ceases to be your problem, it ceases to be a black problem, it is my problem too thank you very much.

[stilltrucking]

I lost a friend that day I made that stupid comment/joke, my african friend forgave me, he called me an idiot for saying something like that. But my union brother used to like me, we never talked much after that. Four years after I made that dumb remark about ordinary nigger I got hit upside the head for doing a good deed by a man who called me a nigger... Karma I suppose.

Somebody calls you a nigger and hits you upside the head with a two by four it is somebodies problem. It seemed like mine at the time.

[Doreen Peri]

The word "nigger" is very offensive. I hate it.

No matter whether it refers to race or something else (the meaning seems to vary), it's a disgusting word which should be eliminated from the English language.

[izeveryboyin]

St, sometimes I wonder whether you're an Archie Bunker, seethingly racist yet blissfully unaware of it. B/c I think at heart you just don't seem to understand what the problem is w/some of the things you say. I think you're brilliant. Just not very sensitive.

D, I can't knock you for hating that word, but the reason why I brought this topic up to begin w/is b/c I just can't seem to understand why white people who are offended by the word seem to be more so than the black people who are offended by it. For awhile I just figured most of them say they're offended b/c they think that's what they're supposed to say in order to seem culturally sensitive, or b/c they think it's what I want to hear. From the people here at Studio Eight, the same might not be true b/c you are all such brilliant, independent thinkers. So w/that in mind, tell me, what IS the angle? If I were a white person, I would definitely say I think certain people's use of the word is offensive, and that the word itself is kind of stupid but I myself wouldn't be offended by it. What for? It's not used against me. I would be offended by the idea certain usages of the word presents, or the people themselves who abuse the word, but not the word itself. It just seems like a waste of energy.

--k
p.s D, you said the word should be wiped from the English language, but haven't you noticed that there has always been a bigger interest in something once it is banned? I honestly think we need a word like this to help us start discussions like the one we're all having in this thread. We need to talk about these things in order to move forward, and people don't ever seem to pay attention to issues like this until they get angry. Well lets make them angry. Lets make them talk. What else are we aiming to do as writers and artists if not make people talk?

[whimsicaldeb]

So tell me, after all that, does “nigger” offend you?

No nigger can’t “offend” me because I’m white, however it can and does offend others and that's enough for me to not use the word.

Offending aside, I just don’t like the word and so I don’t use it. I’ll use bitch or bastard or fuck you instead, and that’s only if I really feel a need to swear at someone; which is rare. Most of the time I can show my anger with someone directly and quit clearly without any need to swear at them. I tend to use swearing expressions most when I’m shocked or surprised. Then I say things like "Shit!" "Crap!" “Holy God!” or “What the Hell!” … things like that. I also have used swearing when I'm talking about someone to another person (bitch/bastard/asshole - but not nigger) that I'm really angry with - but I don't do that very often because I don't like swearing about people behind their backs.

Actually, I don't like to swear at people at all, because I don't like being sweared at myself so it's a 'do unto others...' type of thing for me. However, swearing about people, or places, or things, that doesn't seem to bother me much.

...

Also - I just came across this and thought you might be interested in reading it as well; it sounds like yours - but I like your writing style better; more personal.

Why I'm Good with the "N" Word
It does the job of marking the ascendancy of black Americans
By JOHN RIDLEY
Posted Sunday, Dec. 3, 2006
From the Dec. 11, 2006 issue of TIME magazine
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/artic ... -1,00.html

Nigger.

Take a real good gander at it. Two syllables. Six letters. And give it a goodbye. 'Cause right now nigger's on a linguistic hit list. If the verbal totalitarians have their way, they will take a blowtorch to the word, light it up and not stop burning until even the embers and ash aren't fit to be returned to the earth.

But what would we really be destroying? There is no other word in our culture that incites, infuriates, confounds and informs as does the word nigger. Who uses it, how it's used, which washed-up actor turned comic (think Michael Richards) shoulda stayed the hell clear of the word--they all help mark the ascension of black America through the cultural landscape. In art and letters and theater and comedy, this one word, this mangle of Latin and French and Spanish, has been description and slur and salutation, and in each incarnation a curio of our society.

No matter the classic book The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is set in an antebellum age; the plight of runaway slave Nigger Jim is given equal consideration as that of his young white friend. Through Nigger Jim, the concept of racial parity, the examination of the system of slavery were forced upon Southern segregationists.

Should we also toss on the fire Dick Gregory's autobiography, written for cross-consumption as a harsh accounting of the racial indignities heaped upon a young black as he travels from boy to man? The book's ultimate satirical trick was to flip the slur into a sales tool. Its title: Nigger! "Whenever you hear the word 'nigger,'" Gregory wrote in the introduction, "you'll know they're advertising my book." Call a man a nigger, earn a brother a dollar.

Jump to Hollywood's blaxploitation era in the 1960s, when blacks suddenly were allowed to make movies told from our point of view. Melvin Van Peebles' 1971 Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song--an ode to a wronged black man on the run from the cops--introduced the lead character as a "baadasssss nigger coming back to collect some dues!" And that "nigger" in the film, as Van Peebles tells it, snapped the streak of "liberal, sort of nice movies where we always ended up dead at the end."

In 1984's A Soldier's Story, a black military officer is investigating the murder of an unpopular black soldier near an Army base in Louisiana. Sergeant Waters, the victim, brutally compels a young black private to give up his country ways and "quit thinking like a nigger." It was a rarely seen public representation of our private interactions: the impatience some blacks have with a victim mentality. Shocking. Powerful. A message to a white populace that we are not lemmings. And that even among ourselves, we're not a single tribe.

Richard Pryor and Eddie Murphy and Chris Rock have all traded on demystifying nigger. And in doing so, they have advanced the racial debate further than a thousand roundtable discussions populated with the best Ivy League minds. Pryor and Chevy Chase's Saturday Night Live "word association" sketch was a prime example of comedy's power to explore racial interplay in the workplace, the constant questioning of blacks as to when a comment is harmless and when is it racist. Chase is the white human-resources executive. Pryor, the black job applicant. What begins with Chase: "White," Pryor: "Black," devolves through Chase: "Negro," Pryor: "Whitey," Chase: "Colored," Pryor: "Redneck," Chase: "Jungle bunny," Pryor: "Honky!" Chase: "Nigger," Pryor: "Dead honky!"

1976. Silver Streak, Pryor and Gene Wilder's comedic take on The Defiant Ones. In the penultimate moment, Pryor's character, camouflaged as a lowly train porter, flips a gat on the uppity white villain, demanding to know, in a brilliant combination of anger and comic timing, "Who you callin' nigger?" Yeah. That was all of us. That was all of black America wanting to know from any race baiter as we moved through the Establishment: Excuse me, who exactly are you calling nigger?

And a couple of mollycoddles out there want to put the kibosh on that? Line 'em up, man. Line up pop culture from The Nigger of the Narcissus to The Birth of a Nation to To Kill a Mockingbird, right on through N.W.A. and "Niggas vs. Black People," and on to comedian Dave Chappelle playing a blind Ku Klux Klan member who ends up yelling "nigger" at himself.

In an era of enlightenment and free communication, do we really want to wipe out the work of the satirists who shove and cajole, who take language and thought by the throat and force us to confront with wit and guile what most refuse to face? We need this word. Relax. Take a deep breath. It's gonna be cool. Two syllables. Six letters. It's not the word, only the fear that needs to be put aside.

John Ridley is a commentator and author of The American Way, a graphic-novel series to be published in February

[whimsicaldeb]

Opps! Forgot to add this:

PS to Mousey1

When I was a little girl my family and I referred to Brazil nuts as nigger toes. I don't recall ever even questioning why, it was just what they were called. To be honest, as a child I don't even think I knew what the word meant, I was that naive. Well, a few years back, while at a friend's home for Christmas, who happened to be black, I spotted a lovely bowl of Brazil nuts on the table and I, awash with joyous childhood memories exclaimed, "Oh, nigger toes!" Oh my good Christ! What an absolutely stupid thing to blurt; but in my defense it was really only an innocent childhood recollection popped to the fore. Well now, whether this good woman actually ever heard me I'll never know, she never let on either way; but that innocent stupidity could have resulted in a scene of angry words and hurt feelings...and rightly so! I'd've been back pedalling into next week let me tell ya.

Oh my gawd, Mousey - that's my parents also! And while I did question why, the answer I got was 'because they look like a nigger's toe!'

So, I did the same thing as you ... excitedly called them "nigger toes" in front of someone who knew better. Only when I did it the lady didn't pretend she didn't hear it - she corrected me right then and there AND in front of my parents! That was much more embarrassing for them then for myself ... because as a kid, I was always getting 'corrected' for things I was doing wrong. So I thought it was great – seeing my parents get corrected like that. (I loved it! My parents were assholes, so hard to live with.)

And it worked too! While they both bitched like crazy about it on the way home and they never went back and saw that lady again, we also from that point forward didn’t call Brazil nuts anything other than Brazil nuts.

[stilltrucking]

I suppose I stopped being a racist the day I saw young people as young people. Not black kids or white kids.

Just as the thing in itself

Yes I am insensitive. But I think you are too.

Imagine this was the year 1906 and there were still people living in your family, uncles aunts grandparents who had been slaves. Thay you had experience the worse in your life time. Before you judge me consider my age.

I mention the broken alliance between jews and blacks and you blow me off as another liberal trying to pander to your experience. I thought my friends skin color was beautiful, I edited a post about it and I felt like a hypocrit, squirmy feeling to not be able to talk about color.

But I am not sure which part of my post was insensitve.

I have met so many black americans who were better men than me, smarter stronger, more compassionate I don't think I am a racist. What I want to know is you?

[stilltrucking]

I am not sure which part of what I wrote was insensitive.

I will never forget that day, as he shouted and berated me I looked into his eyes and there was something bad there. His irsis's was flashing changing like a kaledoscope, (the As I turned my back on him I heard the people that had gathered on the corner go ohhhhhhhhhhh. ANd then I felt the two by four against my head. I staggered but did not go down. I looked around at all the people watching and the fear crossed my mind that I was going to be lynched. But they were calmly looking on, just interested. I picked up a piece of four by four from a pile of rubble, fortunately there was plenty of rubble laying around in the black neighborhood around North avenue. We faced each other for a couple of beats, me holding my piece of lumber and he his. Then I backed away from him and got in my car.

My point was that you can become too racially color blind, the last thing on my mind was race. I knew what that neighborhood was like, and I had no fear for my safety.

if it is about OJ, if that was insensitive I am sorry. I was very sad about that.

If I learned anything at this late date it is not to stereotype people according to race religion, blah blah, only way to take people is one at a time.


Pisses me off after all these years (five?) posting to each other I can't remember your first name, not Kayla you hate that, Kyla?

just geezer memory, I remember your last name.

sorry if I hurt your feelings, not my intent to be unkind.

in pen pal friendship
jacky

you know anything about aspergers syndrom. a form of mild autism that mostly boys ge makes them socialy incompetent, I may have it, or maybe I am just a hypochondriac

please forgive me if I have hurt your feelings

[stilltrucking]

I think there is a holocaust going on in the inner city
I don't know who can stop it but the people who are its victims
How many kids in Malik's class have knowledge of some one who was shot.

Rarely white folks the victims of black violence I bet
It is black against black

about twenty years ago
I make a college kid, about your age and race. He was going to a Catholic College. One of those people so kind and funny, smart, he could always take the conversation one step ahead one thought above me it seemed. Just a cool dude to meet.

Years later I would have a dream about a guy I called the black Jesus. Or maybe it was Osiris. Nice dream, I woke refreshed and rested. Like I do after a dream about my mother. or father too these days.

just coming at you from my heart
I will shut up now.

[abstroint]

A child’s mind has developing to do, yet, I can not claim to have been totally naive. I knew what the word meant at an early age and that it was a weapon used to intimidate others. So, I too had my experience with Brazil nuts.
My father was sitting on the couch cracking nuts. It was the first time I remember ever seeing anyone cracking nuts. I still don’t like cracking nuts or nuts cracking anywhere that I can see or hear them cracking. I was sitting on the floor at his feet my back resting against the couch my legs stretched out under the coffee table. My four brothers, my father alone on the couch, because no one else was allowed to sit there when he was home, and I were all watching a Rudolf Christmas special on TV, back before there was any such thing as a clear picture no matter how much tin foil you put on the rabbit ears. My mother was still cleaning up the dinner mess in the kitchen. A commercial came on and my Dad smiled down at me and offered me my first toe. “Here kiddo, have yourself a nigger toe.” I had already grabbed the damn thing and was just a little panicked to be holding someone’s toe. “Eat it!” “No.” Slap to the back of the head so hard I felt my brain bounce off the front of my skull. My older brothers started chanting, “Eat it, eat it, eat it.” “Don’t tell me one of my kids is a nigger lover. Eat the damn thing. It won’t kill you.” Another bounce of my brain. “Are you a nigger lover?” My older bothers chanting. “Nigger lover.” I know the taunting won’t stop until I try a toe. I look up to my father as I take the smallest bite that I can get away with then say, “I don’t know but I love their toes”. He smiles, laughs, and rubs the top of my head with his heavy hand looks away and says to my younger brother, “Come er boy, get yaself a toe.” The Christmas special comes back on and I want to watch it bad because this TV thing was all I had to make me feel good but I knew now while he was distracted was my only chance to get rid of the toe. So, I got up to go to the bathroom. I spent hours in the bathroom talking to myself in the mirror until someone would pound on the door or just come in and ask me if I was talking to myself again. Somehow I remained cocky always telling them they might want to try it and you could learn something if you thought out loud or at all. It always got me hit but pain was insignificant to the pleasure of insinuating they were all idiots. So, I’m in the bathroom and I pull stuff out of the trash to put over the toe because if anyone found it I would have to eat it out of the trash. Always hide the evidence! Cause cute doesn’t always work as an escape. Then I pull myself up onto the sink so I can look in the mirror and ask, “Why do people eat toes? Why?” forehead pressed to the mirror and still no answer. Head still press to the mirror I turned my head so I could see the tiny window I had always planned to escape from as soon as I was big enough to reach it. I could pull myself up there now and get out and be far away before anyone noticed and brought me back but I’ve grown too big to fit through the escape hatch. Christmas special, no answers, and now the pounding, time to go back to their reality. “Want another one?” “No, thank you. I’m full but they were very good Daddy, thank you.” Cute as hell can deliver. Sometimes I still cringe when I’m told that I’m cute. Cute offends me…

What words offend depend a great deal on our experiences. Everyone’s experiences surrounding words is at the least a little different.

Fast forward to Junior High
“Nigger please!”
“What did you just call me?”
“I didn’t call you anything. I said ‘nigger please’. You say it to me all the time. What now I’m a mother fucker because I want to relate to you on your own terms.”
All up in my face she growls, “ERRRR” turns away laughing, “Niggah paaaa leeees.”
“What? Don’t make me get all stupid white girl on ya ass.”
“You already have. What? You gonna call me something worse than nigger.”
“I didn’t call you that word. You made me promise if anything was wrong we would talk about it and not get all mad and fight about it. So, what’s up?”
She doesn’t speak
“Alright, I’m about to get real stupid. Nigger please tell me what the fuck is wrong with you?”
She does more than speak. Now she’s got her forehead against mine and her hands and fingers are everywhere pointing and pushing and I’m having trouble hearing anything else she might be saying because my focus is on my ass and how she is about to kick it and I really don’t get it. We promised to be as tight as sisters and she says what I just said to her to her blood sisters all the time. She lied and I believed we could be that tight. “I am going to kill your stupid ass. Call me nigger after all we’ve been through. Bitch! You about ta die.”
“Ok. But after you’ve pounded my head against the pavement and before I’ve completely bleed out will you please tell me what is going on. You know like Marvin. Please. I don’t want to die a dumb bitch. Clue me in? I’ll love you eternally if you do.” Cute, I’m innocent, I know I done you wrong smile. “Come on. Why?”
Her eyes roll as she steps back, “How do you do that?”
I smile some more, “How do I do what?” Smirk. “I’ll tell you. But first, why were you about to kill me?”
“Cause. You don’t even say it right. You say it like your part of the clan or something. It’s all that errrrrrrrrrrrr at the end. Don’t you listen to how it’s said?”
“No. I just talk the way I talk.”
“That’s the problem. The way you say it is the problem. It’s sounds so white and angry.”
I interrupt, “I…”
“Can’t you listen? Damn! It’s niggah. Say it.”
“No.”
“Niggah without the errrrrrrrrrrr angry soundin ‘Gonna kill me a nigger’ shit at the end.”
“Niggar.”
“What?”
“Niggahahah.”
“Close. Now without the scared, I’m still nothin but a confused white girl thing goin on. Say it like you mean it. Like we’re sisters. Come on, girl I know you got some sistah deep down.”
Oh God. I am stupid. Sistah, niggah, ah, sheeeeet, I got this, “Niggah please. You know I’m so white I’m a ghost. Boo!”
She puts here arm around me…says nothing.
“I got it right?”
“Niggah please. You know you did. Now don’t ever let me hear that angry white mess come out ya mouth again.”
“Nope.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
“Good. I don’t wanna have to hurt you.”

Fast forward again and through all the racism and experiences that still infect us all in some way and I’ll answer the question. Does the word nigger offend me? Yes, every time I hear it not just because it’s original intent was used as weapon to beat people into submission but also because at least twice it could have gotten me killed. I’m ok with hearing niggah but I’m not ok hearing the angry white mess with all that growling at the end of it. I feel similarly to the whole pink triangle thing. I’m torn, yes, reclaim it but don’t expect me to wear a symbol of suffering and death on my chest. Dyke? Sure call me a dyke but only if you are using the word as an endearment and it’s not meant to force me to hide myself because you think I’m disgusting and you don’t want to look because you might have to think about what you think I must be doing with other women and how I might be more powerful than you and….yeah, I don’t want to hear about it. You will have to talk with me if you choose to shout it out. What the hell. Let’s talk. Go ahead, get real comfortable and call me ‘dyke’. We could all learn something by shouting it out. Doesn’t mean it won’t be offensive, if its not then there’s nothing to talk about, there are still angry messes that need to be talked out. Bigotry doesn't just affect the people it's directed toward. It affects everyone in its processes.

[Traveller13]

I've always been confused as to how the word is used in the US. I read through the topic, thinking I'd finally have an explanation.
Now I'm even more confused!

I've never had any racial problems yet. However, having parents from 2 countries that don't like each other very much, I was subject to discrimination in either one. I never got into physical trouble because of it yet (except before I turned 16, but nothing too harsh and you know how cruel kids can be at that age). But I know I could.
It got me in awkward situations though - you start telling someone how you travelled to the UK and get a hateful "ah, theezah rostah beefah are such naughtypeepleah" speech, and suddenly you're happy not to have the chance to tell her it was to visit your family because she's the one who's going to make you pass your driving licence.

Sometimes my friends deliberately make xenophobic comments when I'm around. It's only to tease me and they're completely blown out of proportion but they don't seem to realize how degrading it feels, and I have the bad reflex of bottling everything up until the levee breaks.
I don't see how I can make them stop either, because they don't understand how it makes me angry, and tell me I'm over-reacting.

=========




On a more in-topic note I think materialism isn't helping, because it compels us to sort things into boxes, and to assume that people are things. And of course to attach "right" and "wrong" labels to the boxes. There's so much of it around, and racism is just one of the arms of the octopus, so to speak.

So I have the reflex not to use those kinds of words, even if it's in a context where I "know" it won't offend anyone, because deep down I assume it would have the same effect on others as it does on me. Even if I wanted to verbally hurt someone; there are alternatives, the human mind is quite good at that.









As for the word offending me, the answer is no.

But I'm offended by bigotry in general; it's slightly annoying. Even the positively nonsensical Franco/American bashing over going to Irak made me climb up the walls.

It's the whole situation of x judging y judging z, of people unable to accept each other's differences, and that just tears a hole in my gut. Not because I fully understand how they feel, nor because I've been discriminated against too, but because all those people are reflecting right back at me my unability to accept myself, and self-acceptance is something I really, really want to attain. Once I manage to do that, I trust I'll no longer be offended.

But that's another story I guess.

[Totenkopf]

The n-word offends me, whether used by cracker-hicks, dykes & phags, spics, gooks, or, er, n-ahs.

[izeveryboyin]

ST, I have and probably always will value your opinion. Whether offensive or insensitive. Voltaire was a good man. I usually have no problem siding w/his "I may not agree w/what you have to say" line. As someone who isn't black it is perhaps hard for you to see things black people might find offensive, as such. I can't beat you up for that. I can't even really talk you down. I once told a Jewish friend from school that I don't get why Jews think the holocaust compares to slavery, when slavery was 200+plus years and the holocaust was what? ten? She told me I was being insensitive. I told her I was being logical. Cultural differences. What can you do? I don't need you to tell me about all the great, intelligent balck people you met. I'm black and I think I'm brilliant. Proof enough. But seriously, the amount of intelligent black people out there is impressive. I don't need you to tell me that to get you out of hot water. You were never really in it to begin with. How many kids in Malik's class know someone who was shot? Honestly? All the black ones. Him included. And probably some of the Mexicans too. Now everyone is offended. Do black people kill other black people the most? Of course they do. They devil you know and all that. What's your point? A Jew is not a nigger. We don't share the same plight. We don't really have that much in common. In fact, from what my family, uncles, aunts, and grandparents told me, Jews have a word for us too. "Shvartses", right? What does your age have to do with your sensitivity or lack thereof? What will imagining my family still being slaves do other than piss me off and force to me to revert to the militant black phase I worked so hard to come out of? I blew you off b/c to me it DID seem like you were another liberal trying to pander my experience, and that, dear friend will offend me more than any word you've got in that handsome vocabulary of yours. I didn't post this thread b/c I wanted you to be squirmy and unable to talk about color. I posted this thread to get people to open up on the topic, but in your posts you had this whole "I'm just another one of the niggas" attitude as if to say being Jewish has afforded you the same struggles as being black. You don't know anything about being black. That's what the black people are for. Am I a racist? no. Have I been? Sure. Is there the possiblity that I could become a racist again? I suppose, but I think for the sake of my unborn here who's daddy is very white, I'd better not. No matter how many books like "Blood In My Eye" and "Before the Mayflower" I read. But you know I can't even be that outraged. The first black people in America were settlers. Some of whom were even afforded land, with indentured servants for short periods of time. This was in the early 1500 and 1600s. Go figure. I'm offended that no one but Lerone Bennett Jr. has bothered to put that in the history books. I am offended that when I hold my boyfriend's hand on the streets of Chicago we are given funny looks. I am offended that he and I are sometimes afraid to talk about race with one another. I am offended that b/c OJ got off it was such a big deal, a legend, in fact b/c here is this nigger who so obviously did this woman in, going free thanks to Johnny Cochran's amazing turn of phrase. I am offended by my frequent use of relaxer and false hair. I am offended by you sometimes ST, but I would never, NEVER want to lose you as a friend. I'm not sure how long we've been communicating. At least 4 years, or so, I'm sure. And I would be offended if all that time and conversation was wasted b/c we had a misunderstanding over race.

--k

p.s see boys and girls? words are REALLY powerful.

[stilltrucking]

Why do you think I am in hot water?

Yes slavery went on for two hundred years and it ended 141 years ago. So many in my family were murdered during my lifetime. It is a bit fresher in my mind.

Nevermind.

[izeveryboyin]

indeed slavery ended more than a century ago, but we are reminded of it constantly. When slavery was over we got Jim Crow. When the holocaust was over your people were apologized to from people who had nothing to do with it. We went from 200 plus years of slavery to almost 100 years of open segragation, and the KKK still has more fun yelling "nigger" than "jew". We lost almost as many lives during that period just trying to be treated as human beings while your people were eating in whatever dinner they wanted, drinking from whatever fountain, enjoy front row seats on the bus. And all these years down the line we still haven't had as much of an apology a you guys have. I think I win.

--k

p.s I made the hot water comment b/c you were making it seem like you felt you were in hot water w/me. that's all.