Bad Words

Today's teapot tempest comes to us courtesy of National Review editor-in-chief Rich Lowry, who during a recent episode of The Megyn Kelly Show, apparently referred to Haitans living in Springfield, Ohio as "niggers" before catching himself and calling them "migrants."

A prominent White Conservative referring to Black people as "niggers" should surprise precisely no one. It's about as newsworthy as water making things wet. The National Review is one of the big names in Conservative print media here in the United States, and I suspect that a portion of their readership refers to people as 'niggers" when they're out of earshot on a recurring basis. Even if Mr. Lowry personally finds such language abhorrent, I suspect that hearing it, and not just occasionally, was a regular part of his media career. So I'm not sure that the problem is that he said it.

In her X posting, Media Matters' Madeline Peltz notes: "Having a hard time coming to any conclusion besides the obvious one about what Lowry catches himself blurting out here." And I think that this is the real problem that Megyn Kelly, Mr. Lowry and Andy McCarthy are attempting to spin their way out of; the suspicion that the Conservative movement as a whole looks down on Black people, always has and doesn't have a problem with it.

Mr. McCarthy's explanation, that Mr. Lowry has used a short i sound when he meant to use the long version of the vowel, seems patently bogus. Because "ˈmīʹgərənt," with a clear "e" coming between the "g" and the "r," isn't how the word is pronounced, whether one says it ˈmī-grənt or ˈmī-grant. The idea that the otherwise articulate Mr. Lowry made such a bizarre error that just happened to make it sound like he said "nigger" strains credulity.

Racism is one of the few general-purpose charges that really sticks and is viewed a broadly disqualifying in the United States. For Mr. Lowry to have started out saying "nigger," and then catching himself, risks embarrassing the whole of the mainstream Conservative movement. Mainly because while the movement might not wish to be associated with White Nationalists, Antisemites, neo-Confederates et cetera, there's a belief that as long as such things aren't openly spoken of, those belief systems are tolerated, and thus Mr. Lowry was "saying the quiet part out loud."

Everyone understands that most political movements can't really afford to antagonize or jettison their radical elements and still remain politically viable unless the other side(s) also do so. The Left and Right of American politics are no different. But those radical elements threaten to tar the entire enterprise; which is part of the reason why so much political rhetoric is about making accusations that the radicals are really calling the shots. And the fact of the matter is that most partisans would be okay with the radical viewpoint on things. It may go father than they would themselves, but they tend to be more concerned with falling short of the mark than overshooting it. Non-partisans, however, have much less tolerance for radicals who take viewpoints to extremes. And this creates an incentive to appear less tolerant of radicals, and their language, than one might actually be.