The Popularity of the N-Word

I just wrote this morning how freely lefties like to drop the "n-bomb," so the timing's pretty good for the reports suggesting Jesse Jackson used the epithet in his recent controversial "hot mic" attack on Barack Obama.

Allahpundit has the story:

Normally I’d wait for video proof but Inside Cable News claimed with unusual insistence last night that it’s true and now TV Newser is corroborating it, so obviously someone who’s in a position to know is leaking. The alleged offending quote:

Barack…he’s talking down to black people…telling n—s how to behave.

Eh. Yeah, as the boss notes, he’s a total hypocrite, but the left loves to punish conservatives for preaching virtue while occasionally failing to live up to their own standards and I’m reluctant to do the same to Jackson. He slipped, but his intent wasn’t bad — just as the New Yorker’s wasn’t, I hasten to add — and his attempt to get entertainers to rein in their N-bomb usage is salutary. Where he does go too far is in flirting with criminalizing the word. He told the Today Show two years ago that public utterances should qualify as hate speech and he’s asserted before, quite matter-of-factly, that the word is unprotected by the First Amendment, presumably per the “fighting words” exception. Somebody, quick — arrest that man.

O'Reilly's going to be all over this the rest of the night, although it remains to be seen how the civil rights mandarins spin this.

Related: Dan Collins' disclaimer on the n-word: "I don’t put quotation marks around it, and ... if you have a problem with this you might go get a look at this."

Hat Tip: Memeorandum