What you call "tweaking" in your locked-cog mentation I would refer to as evaluation of occurance and circumstance, and how politicians would suffer (and reasonably so, given the potential tangentials of the transgression) far stronger consequences than might a comic.
Also, I would suggest that your kneejerk absolutism, your granite demanding is other than just lack of tweak.
No, he fucked up big time. I agree.
He had an Archie Bunker moment. (Do you think Archie Bunken helped or hurt the cause?)
He was on stage, the word was not part of his act, but was a failed attempt to counter heckling.
He would not have responded the same way to the same heckling on the street, however.
Your total, wall-ringing condemnation, though, surprises me, in that that is the usual recourse of those who are insecure enough to feel that, the louder and more absolute you towncry your blanket condemnation, the more you think you you redeem yourself with Blacks. It could be called, all things considered, a cheap trick pony, or at least easy opportunism in a difficult issue.
Had you had been there, I know you would have gasped the loudest.
Do you turn in your coupons with your friends forever, if and when the terrible bi-syllable slips beyond their lips?
And the last time you used the word in anger (please be real here, and spare the denial none would believe, anyhow), did you resign yourself to the terrible truth that, according to your OWN logic, it forever labelled you, stained you irreversibly, a predjudiced, bigotted racist?
While he fucked up, I still grant a pass, since it did happen in his work. On the street, I would not. As you know, you cannot tweat shit like this on the street.
The most dangerous outcome, imho, is that comedians everywhere would suffer via an intangible but nonetheless very real sense of censorship.
We need more risks taken from comedians, not less.
Course, bred-to-the-bone nannies, having far simplertools to work with, would see that otherwise.
