Niggardly distinctions

Blogging on musical matters will be light in the next couple of weeks as year end lists are compiled and final thoughts assembled. I'll concentrate on film and books.

Christopher Hitchens is uneven these days; although subjects for his sclerotic eloquence would seem to crowd his vision, he confines it to critics of the Bush administration's Iraq policy. When he aims his photon torpedoes at smaller fry seemingly unworthy of his princely (self-) regard, the results are often quite satisfying on a formalist level, and frustrating on the world-historic one. This column on Michael Richards and popular culture's kneejerk condemnation of the word "nigger" would seem to answer an irritating ILE thread begun a few months ago (too bad I can't cite it) and college deans. It's worth reading though for this:

Now, the word niggardly can pass out of the language and leave us not much poorer. But the meaning of the verb to discriminate is of some importance and seems to me to be worth fighting over. It is odd, when you think about it, that we accuse racists of "discrimination." This is the very thing of which they are by definition incapable: They think all members of certain groups are the same.

As the recipient of several doleful glares when I used "niggardly" in a newspaper critique not too long ago, I sympathize with Hitchens' pat Orwellian reversal.