Try holding your palm up in front of your mouth and reciting "The terrible power of Words!!" a few times. Then take a look, see if you spilled any blood. Clinton is profoundly correct that it is never the sound, nor the phonemes, nor the morphemes. The construction of a vulnerability to certain meanings, and dramatizing that vulnerability to the point where you get all stirred up if anyone dares to remember that such meanings ever exist is an extreme form of Grundyism, a kind of mental censorship which tries to assert that freedom of thought should be curtailed because it leads to bad behaviour. This is an extremely risky and stupid notion.

No-one has ever been hurt by hearing the word pickaninny. It may be true that the kinds of decisions and actions that are associated witht he people who promulgated its use were harmful or efvil actions or decisions. But that is not the same thing as being harmed by the label. I have been called an ofay motherfucvker, asd well as a commie pinko faggot bastard in my time. The only part of it that hurt was when the fat cop backhanded me across the mouth.

In my personal opinion the obsessive concern about the "harm" of words as words is juvenile and neurotic, like a preteenager flinching and going "Eeeeeeew" when someone mentions conception, or a uterus, or a penis in their presence. They act as though the remindment of the reality was offensive, not to mention the reality itself. It's an immature attitude, and making a dramatic stance of it is below the dighnity and intelligence of most pickaninnies I have met. A