I trust "N-word" is ok. We all know what the word is, but depending on who is glowering at you, either NOBODY can use it, or only The Chosen People can.
Recently Bette Midler was Chicken-Shitted (or Twitter-Verse Squawked or Social Media Trolled) for reminding people that the most oppressed people on the planet were and still are WOMEN.
This goes back to one of the rare songs credited to both John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
The idea was to tell the truth in a gripping, if not shocking way. What's the most notorious word in the English language?
Would that song have been as powerful if it was "Woman is the SHIT of the world?"
How about "Woman is FUCKED in this world?"
How about "Woman is the CUNT of the world?"
There are people who want you to feel sorry for them and who want you to think they've got the market cornered on suffering. The Kardashians will tell you about Armenian genocide, right after dropping their panties and showing their gigantic asses.
Blacks will insist that for the past 250 years, no group has suffered more than they have. Gays will point to how at this very moment, homosexuals are thrown from rooftops in backward parts of the world, simply lynched or shot in civilized countries, and sucker-punched on the street.
Jews? Oh, you know THEM. They insist there was something called a "Holocaust." They've been thrown out of every country they've built up with their scientists, writers, lawyers, accountants, chemists, comedians, writers and simple hard-working farmers. The one place they call their spiritual home, Israel, is the ONLY country on Earth declared "apartheid" by Dizzy Desi the Toot (Desmond Tutu) as well as Patti Smith, Peter Gabriel and Noam Chomsky, among others. "Get thee OUT of ISRAEL, you JEWS!"
You name the people. They can qualify for being the N-Word of the World, or at least of their locality. That includes the Coptic Christians in Egypt. It includes women and children in Nigeria who can't escape Boko Haram. It includes those who suffer "ethnic cleansing" by Russia or North Korea or others.
And so, I trust, WRITER is the N-WORD of the WORLD can be submitted for your approval, or your denial.
We writers may have a new martyr in Jamal Khashoggi. Just how long his martyrdom will be news, I don't know. Just what "repercussions" the powerful country of Saudi Arabia may suffer, is considered "slim or none."
Writers who tell the truth, and who challenge safe perceptions with their humor, their cartoons or their fiction, can easily get a price on their head (hello, Salman Rushdie) and have that price CASHED IN.
Anyone ever heard of Sushmita Banerjee? Hell no.
People have heard the protests that not enough Blacks were nominated for a fucking Academy Award one year. Her death, not so much.
The Redskins still play in the NFL, and nobody seems to remember that the White Man did much worse to the Red man than the Blacks. With the Blacks, half the country protested and were willing to get killed to abolish slavery. Nobody was willing to give their land back to the Indians.
Blacks can travel all over the world and not necessarily encounter as much suspicion, hatred or abuse as gays, Jews or women. Blacks have an entire gigantic continent for themselves, where all they have to fear are other Blacks, such as Boko Haram.
NOBODY has a monopoly against suffering and persecution. White doctors donating their time and expertise, without borders, to people of color in obscure parts of the world never returned to their loved ones.
A writer can get on a plane, be identified by his credentials as a reporter, and viewed with such suspicion that the local police or Army is alerted when the plane lands, and he is hauled off for questioning. Perhaps lethal questioning.
And few really give a damn about writers, whether it's war correspondents or whistle blowers risking their lives, or people who want to share a point of view via a cartoon or a short story. Have we forgotten the explosion at the Charlie Hebdo office?
Did anyone who mentioned Jamal Khashoggi add up a few other names, including the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Pearl?
Today, the Pulitzer Prize can go to just about any asshole who plays the "Diversity card." At one time, it was reserved for people who really achieved something unique. One of those was Webb Miller, who wrote vividly about the execution of "Bluebeard" Henri Landru. Throughout his short life, he made history come alive with his talent for using words. He covered the Spanish Civil War, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, Mexico in the days of Pancho Villa, the raid on the Dharasana Salt Works in India when it was ruled by the British, and yes, he covered World War One and World War Two.
Webb Miller's memoir was titled "I FOUND NO PEACE."
He sure didn't. At the start of World War Two, he was in in London, documenting the destruction caused by Hitler's relentless bombing of Great Britain. Perhaps he angered a Nazi spy or two living in London, because one night, he mysteriously was thrown from a subway train and killed. With a war on, and a lot of other priorities, nobody bothered to try and investigate who was on that train that may have been involved.
Besides, he was just a writer. There are always more of them.
Yes, there are more of them, and to use a Phil Ochs phrase, "too many martyrs" among them. An irony is that Phil was a topical songwriter who often tweaked the noses of politicians with his protest songs and satires. One song noted the apathy of such activity: "I guess it wouldn't interest anybody, outside of a small circle of friends." Bob Dylan once sneered, "Phil, you're just a journalist." Bob would go on to write "Hurricane," a powerful protest song, so maybe Bob changed his mind. This was after Bob made sure Phil wasn't part of the "Rolling Thunder Revue." In fact, the song was released after Phil hanged himself.
Writers have often met death at their own hands. These days, others do it for them. Quite often.
The only thing that will stop WRITER being the N-WORD of the WORLD is when they can't make a living anymore, and news is reduced to Tweets that may or may not be "Fake News," and that get re-written from staffers at NEWSER and HUFFINGTON PUFFINGTON as they sit safely on their butts in mommy's basement.
Sushmita Banerjee? She was killed in Afghanistan by the Taliban. Her book "Escape from the Taliban" had a lethal coda.
Daphne Caruana Galizia? She was blown up in her car. The only way anyone might know it, is if they are fans of Meryl Streep. Google Meryl Streep and you might find the open letter she wrote about Galizia:
"....We need to protect, defend and thank the current crop of journalists around the world because they, their scruples and their principles are the front-line defences of free and informed people. We need the brave ones out front picking through the field ahead of us for landmines so we don’t step on one, or elect one....
“Journalists today, investigative journalists, and especially female journalists, are vulnerable and come under a special scrutiny online. They must vouch for their stories, put their names on them, and as a result they attract the cowardly, the bullies, the brotherhood of bots and their easily aroused armies of haters....
The last words written by Galizia were: "...“there are crooks everywhere you look now, the situation is desperate.”
Daniel Pearl was working for the Wall Street Journal in India, when he began investigating the "shoe bomber," Richard Reid, the Brit who converted to Islam. Pearl was kidnapped while in Pakistan, and the men who grabbed him announced "this cycle will continue and no American journalist could enter Pakistan."
A video of his last moments was circulated under the heading "The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl."
In the video, Daniel said "My name is Daniel Pearl. I'm a Jewish American...My father's Jewish, my mother's Jewish, I'm Jewish."
But he was beheaded because he was a writer.
