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Recently, in an interview with the editors of Vice Magazine in the New York Press, the Vice editors made several remarks that in print come off as obviously racist. This has led to an organized effort to pressure similar lifestyle magazines to ban all of Vice's advertisers in their own publications.
Defending themselves in a statement made shortly after the email boycott campaign began, they had this to say:
"Being gays, blacks, and East Indians ourselves, we tend to use the vernacular with reckless abandon. We've always felt that PC attitudes always hurt the people they're trying to help. We believe words like 'African American' and 'East Indian' are just excuses for white, middle class, academic liberals to patronize the working classes (of all races) and tell them how to speak," (source: Village Voice)
On another message board, musician/scenester/Vice fan Momus echoes this sentiment:
Words change their meaning in time, according to who speaks them, to whom, with what degree of irony, and with what general context of affection or opprobrium.
Vice magazine is run by people who have set their watches to the correct time, in terms of what words have what meanings to what people. This is why people who make money from trends are buying into them, and have been for a while. They are not affectionately calling, say, Larry Clark, 'pedo' in their articles. But they are calling people, affectionately, 'faggot'. This should tell you something about the word 'faggot' in the year 2002.
Resistance to the 'decriminalisation' of words like 'faggot' can be conservatism disguised as 'sensitivity'. Vice magazine is not conservative. Some people on this thread are.
So. Are they full of shit, coming up with self-serving excuses to market dubious attitudes about racial sensitivity? Do they have a point? The Vice guys mention 'liberals' in a negative sense. Momus accuses those who are opposed to hatespeach as being 'conservatives'. Which is it? How does politics play into this, if at all? |
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