After being summoned to national radio to adjudicate on the recent Twitter scrap over Ricky Gervais’ use of the word ‘mong’, Jonathon Green considers the nature of ‘offensive’ language…
Were this a more convenient world radio’s breakfast shows would be all-day affairs, as are the breakfasts offered in many caffs. But it is not and if they summon, even if that summons posits a time when even dawn is still in bed, I must attend. Not that they summon that often: publishers demand that you do your own publicity these days and as a friend high in Radio 2 explained to me when I was trying to tout the slang book, ‘The problem is, we only want people who the listeners have heard of already.’ Get back in your argotery, Mr G.: fine, fine, but heaven help young beginners.
So for what reason, you may wonder, are they calling? Let me explain. One of those people the listeners have heard of has made a boo-boo. Often that involves a politician’s utterance of something with four letters, or even a BBC man’s malapropism. And they need an expert. I lack ubiquity but I can be useful. ‘Hello, Jonathon, I think you’re the man who’s good at dirty words.’
This week, well last in fact, Ricky Gervais used what, as I discovered on one show, is now bowdlerized as ‘the M-word’. (Am I alone, by the way, in finding this particular form of self-censorship gratingly infantile? F-word, N-word, S-word… Grow up.) He said mong. It means a fool. Green’s Dictionary of Slang states ‘a general term of opprobrium. The overriding implication is that of stupidity.’ The OED online has ‘an idiot, a fool; a mentally slow or backward person.’ I qualify it no further; the OED says ‘offensive’. We both agree on its roots: mongol, which from the late 19th century till the last 20 years or so was the accepted term for what we now term a person with Down’s syndrome.
Mr Gervais defended himself. Yes, he knew its origins. No, this was not what one of his accusers termed ‘disabilist’ language. The word had changed its meaning. He meant no harm. Twitter tweeted mightily and as Mao’s Red Guards would have put it, ‘bitterness was spoken’. On both sides. And so the phone rings and I take a new role: Solomon.
I do not do heroes. Flannelled fools, muddied oafs, the soon-to-be canonized, if nerds have such a ceremony, Steve Jobs. None appeal. Maybe McNulty from The Wire but he, fittingly, could only be a one-night stand. But there is one. The late and indubitably great Lenny Bruce. Bruce, who flourished in the late Fifties and early Sixties and was triumphantly hounded to his death by a malign American establishment, was, like Mr Gervais, a comedian. He was good on words. Often what are termed bad ones. He found no need to pronounce them with a hyphen. He just pronounced them as written. And more important as spoken by the millions.
This was for two reasons: one was demystification, the idea of repetition working to defuse, to take the sting out of offense by its simple familiarity. The words of contempt used until they excited it in their turn and were discarded through the boredom of surfeit and over-familiarity, or if not discarded, then at least rendered anodyne. Bruce was optimistic – satirists, however bitter, often are. I am not and I think he was deluding himself. The second reason, with which I agree, and which is borne out on every page of my work, was to make it clear that whatever we may be supposed to feel, these offensive terms are not going to go away.
The radio producers put up someone from a Down’s Syndrome organisation alongside me. They want a bit of argy-bargy: evil Mr Slang vs the differently abled. No can do. Why should I? These are good people. What they say is right. Mr Gervais has wriggled; he has claimed that language has changed. He has cited gay’s migration from happy to homosexual, but side-stepped the new iteration: from homosexual to schoolyard abusive: ‘that’s so gay’. Of course the kid doesn’t mean ‘homosexual’, but that’s the back-story. The same goes for mong: it has an immutable etymology; it has negative weight.
That’s why the OED terms mong, among much else, as ‘offensive’. As it happens I don’t. I say that it’s a term of abuse, like 500 or so others in the book. And that’s just the non-specific stuff. You want slang’s words for women, for gays and lesbians, for the fat, the plain, the psychologically damaged … The book runs to three volumes already: there isn’t the room for all those labels. But this is slang, boys and girls, I’m sorry, but there it is. These words are not meant to be kind, they are not intended to proselytize for political correctness, they are not cuddly or cute or kind. They are simply what people say. All people. Every day and in every class and in every place. And they are meant to be mean.
I know, it’s easy for me: the voyeur, the neutral, working over my specimens and freezing them in the formaldehyde of my dictionary. Others’ pain, my gain. But the dictionary wouldn’t exist were the words not so multitudinously available. I love slang because of its innate human-ness. But that shouldn’t be confused with charm. ‘Everyone wants what “should be”,’ said Lenny Bruce. ‘But there is no “should be”, only what is.’ Eats first remains the rule, morals remain consigned to after.
another wonderful post!
I was thinking about this last week and did wonder where the word ‘ponce’ stands on the sliding scale, as used in the phrase ‘can I ponce a fag off you’.
The abuse that both Gervais and his accuser Richard Herring received on Twitter was extraordinary (and another reason not to use Twitter – except to follow The Dabbler of course.)
‘Mong’ isn’t really part of my vocab, offensive or otherwise, so I may not be qualified to comment, but it seems to be that it isn’t unambiguously a very offensive hate word for Downs’ syndrome people in the same category as racial slurs, but doubtless it will be soon (perhaps following this very teacup-storm). And therefore Gervais was merely behind the ‘mong curve’ and Herring perhaps a little ahead of it, and thus neither man deserved the abuse tweeted at them by people who could be doing more useful things like camping outside St Paul’s.
I agree – perspective, people, please!
I think mong was the word that replaced spaz
Spaz, spacker and Deacon (after Blue Peter’s Joey) were the insults of choice at my school.
Kids really are horrible.
whether kids or words, its the primal thing isn’t it, we aspire to civilisation but behind the veneer the antediluvian animal lurks
erm, Lord of the Flies
Toby and I, having observed our respective nephews and sons, concluded that kids don’t seem to find disability as funny as we did. I’m sure this is because disabled kids go to the same nurseries and schools as able kids, making it easier to see them as individuals rather than types.
Great post. I fear this was all another symptom of Gervais’s growing megalomania. He now truly believes himself to be a comic genius, and the results are terrible to behold – not least his latest series, coming soon, which is desperately unfunny (and unfunnily desperate). It’s called Life’s Too Short – which it is, certainly too short to spend seven half hours of it watching Life’s Too Short.
The end was plain for all to see long ago, when Gervais did his series of fawning interviews with famous comedians. Garry Shandling was weird and unpleasant, but he did us all a favour by killing off that vanity project early.
I noted what I think must be the most preposterous use of the Hyphen Word here..
http://hootingyard.org/archives/5810
According to Amazon, “WordBridge Publishing has performed a public service in putting Joseph Conrad’s neglected classic into a form accessible to modern readers. This new version addresses the reason for its neglect: the profusion of the so-called n-word throughout its pages. Hence, the introduction of “n-word” throughout the text, to remove this offence to modern sensibilities. The N-word of the Narcissus tells the tale of a fateful voyage of a British sailing ship…”
I’ve looked at the link, but stupidly I don’t quite understand what you’re saying. Could you clarify please? (or am I being dense?).
Oh! The Nigger and the Narcissus. I get it now.
This is a plaintive request to the OED…please do not consign the word ‘Tosser’ to the naughty corner, depriving us, as it would, of the correct description of AA Gill.
OH! where to begin? where to end?
Great post from Jonathon – I can see what’s going to be on my Christmas list.
Brit is right that it was the tweeters who really hit fever pitch on this one, but Gervais’ response (essentially, “It’s PC gone mad, go and goad them!”) was the thing that got to me. Pretty desperate stuff from one of the (formerly?) funniest people alive.
Thank you all.
Worm: Although the first example of mong I have, for 1980, is paired with a reference to spaz, it seems to go like this:
Spastic and its abbreviation spaz(z) and in turn spaz’s extensions spazmo and spazmoid start off with an adjectival use:
1960 G. Swarthout Where the Boys Are: The most spastic thing about East Swander is that you have to maturate simultaneously with a thousand other girls.
The noun follows:
1968 J. Barlow Burden of Proof: That was the whole point […] Crying was for spastics.
Though I am pretty sure I heard it at prep school prior to 1961 and certainly very soon afterwards.
Then we get spaz:
1967 The Elastik Band ‘Spazz’ [lyrics] I said, get offa the floor, get offa the floor, boy, people gonna think, yes they’re gonna think, people gonna think you’re a spazz.
And Australia has spazzo / spaso which either describes the disabled person or is used figuratively as a derogative:
1983 S. May No Exceptions in Best Radio Plays (1984): Right. Today we’re going to run. Not like yesterday. Not like a bunch of spasos and grandmas.
Frank: Magnificent. All I can do in return is offer my own small discovery on Salon.com: gender reassignment surgery. All queries should be dispelled by the headline: ‘When My Dad became a Woman’.
I thought The Office and Extras were brilliant. A strong component of their brilliance was Ricky the M***’s unctuous personality. (I don’t know if unctuous is the right word for his particular type of repellence – managing to appear smug and uncertain at the same time.) He can’t seem to get beyond that personality, and so I find seeing his teeth together, pleased with myself smile in any other context pretty unfunny.
I agree, The Office and Extras were hilarious. (I still LOL to myself when I think of the Christmas special where Brent has blown his redundancy money on making a music video doing Simply Red’s ‘If you don’t know me by now’).
But Gervais himself, when he’s being himself, is very weird. Watch the DVD extras and hear with mounting horror his constant, disturbing, unfunny high-pitched laughter at weak practical jokes.
This is the funny one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHJUEaAHHSM
Yes, that was funny! RG at his best – only slightly removed from reality (at the risk of sounding bitter and twisted, there are quite a few ‘chaps’ out there with, if not the laundry skills, certainly the attitude. I laughed!
Yes a pity Ricky can be so sour as at his best he is hilarious. Here’s an amusing how gay are you interview he did that includes a reference to the origin of “bender”, a word I can’t help smiling at.
how coincidental. I was having a chat in my local bar and someone used the word ‘bender’ – we were having a fuel-soaked discussion, won’t bore you with it. It was the 26.year old barman who came out (so to speak) with ‘bender’. All us 40-50 somethings laughed heartily as we hadn’t heard that expression for a long long time (but then, we are all as old and older, than RG).
At Fulham Broadway Station for years (and I use the District Line) was MONG spray painted in large letters on a cupboard type thing (probably hiding electrical equipment). By a strange quirk of fate I came across the girl and her brothers who perpetrated that act of vandalism. Amazing it stayed up so long. They did it ‘unthinkingly’ (they were ‘well-brought up’ children with a streak of rebellion in the late 70’s who did it to shock).
But I also remember, in 1986 a heartfelt plea from one of my journalism lecturers who had a Downs Syndrome child to eradicate ‘Mongol’ and its other shorthands from journalistic language. It was always pretty crass when used as an insult (as in its shortened version). Discussions about Ricky Gervaise are pretty irrelevant really. It’s just not nice, wasn’t in the past, not in the present and not in the future. End of.
Newsflash: Ricky Gervais has been a bit of an ar.e. Ach, what next – bears/woods thingy?
The euphemism for Down’s syndrome I remember was “intellectually handicapped”. When I was a kiddie, Philippa, my companion in naughtiness, would say, “Let’s pretend to be handicapped” and we’d put on the appropriate faces. However, we were 10 years old – quite a lot younger than R Gervais.
Am I alone in finding The Office & Extras mildly amusing rather than titanic masterpieces of comedy? For me they both exhibited the fatal flaw of Gervais (and Merchant) as writers – the mawkish sentimentality of their endings..
No frank, you are not alone.