Sharpen the pitchforks, fan the flames: a politician has misspoken.
Yes, another day, another Twitch-hunt. Another live-tweeted expulsion from polite society. Another roll-up-roll-up real-time destruction of a person’s reputation for the crime of having said something stupid.
The victim this time is Anne Marie Morris, the Tory MP for Newton Abbot. She was recorded dumbly using the outdated phrase ‘nigger in the woodpile’ at a gathering of Eurosceptic Tories at the East India Club in London. Ms Morris said ‘the real nigger in the woodpile’ in the Brexit issue is what happens if we get two years down the line and there’s still no deal between Britain and the EU. So she was clearly using the phrase in its classic sense to mean an issue of great importance that isn’t being openly or sufficiently discussed. She wasn’t being racist, just old-fashioned. Phew. We can call off the Twitterhounds, put back the tomatoes.
Don’t be daft. The small matter of intention, of what someone means, counts for literally nothing in the Kafkaesque world of 21st-century speech-policing.
“Twitch-hunt”
Ooh, good one.
It’s not even the first time this “Twitch-hunt” has been conducted by the Tories against a member of the House of Lords for the same phrase.
July 9, 2008 – David Cameron urged to sack Tory peer after ‘nigger in the woodpile’ remark
How unoriginal.
There is the point to be made, however, that any politician dense enough to use the phrase “nigger in the woodpile” in a public speech really ought not be deciding important national issues.
Talk about own goals . . .
You are right- ‘woodpile’ is so evocative of tree-murdering, that no sensitive person would think of using it. Would ‘nigger on the electric heater’ be acceptable? Sorry! ‘Negress on the electric heater’?
Perhaps we should simply copy W.C. Fields?, although on second thought maybe not…
Anne Marie, honey, it’s “tinted person in the bio-mass resource”.
The elephant in the room is that the snowflakes have gone all dog in the manger about this, making a mountain out of a molehill over something that is no more than a storm in a teacup.
Good one, James, a really Strong effort!
In a world of grow-ups nothing would have been said or splashed about it. Sadly that’s not where we now live.
I say ‘elephant in the room’ instead of ‘nigger in the woodpile’. This reflects my being brought up not to say ‘nigger’. My mother taught me the rhyme ‘Eeny meany mini mo, catch a tigger by the toe’ to ensure that if I ever heard the original form I would correct the speaker, assuring them they had mispronounced it. (Full disclosure: her assessment of my tiny tot personality was spot on and I did once correct another child who was so stupid and ignorant they did not know the word was ‘tigger’. The original form was already well on its way out in my locale when I was growing up so I think it was only once I ever had the opportunity.)
I wonder if “sold down the river” will become unsayable. That is certainly a phrase I occasionally use.
Yes, I used to talk in cliches, now I avoid them like the plague.
A vast number of melanin enhanced entertainers use the word, to similar audiences. Clearly they are not offended.
And why would they be, they happily describe themselves as black, why would they be offended by a translation into Spanish?
So what is the offence?
Anglos offended by poor Spanish pronunciation?
Anglos hating the Spanish?
Or is it just academics loving word games and others being daft enough to take academics at their word?
Not just that, but the very term “woodpile” evokes the racist and woodist concept of the melting pot – that the “woodpile” of life is one homogeneous mass of undifferentiated “wood”, when in reality it must be composed of members of all of the wonderful and diverse species of wood found in the area, from the light-colored oaks and beeches and birches to the Woods Of Color such as the mahoganies, the teaks, the peltogynes, and the dusky ebonies.
Calling it a simple “woodpile” disrespects diversity. She should have known that.
It’s not “uttering evil banned words that cause hurt and harm.” That’s just what some will claim.
Her true offense was ignoring the completely predictable reality that using such a phrase that triggers so many snowflakes would become the central issue of her talk, eclipsing any other purpose that she sought to serve by speaking. She walked out onto the pitch wearing a Kick Me sign.
triggers so many snowflakes
Trigger in the woodpile?
Did you just assume its species???!
Surprising absolutely no-one Prime Minister May said: “We must use appropriate language at all times”
Chilling stuff. Boris was also alarmed.
That being said, bobby b is absolutely right to say that any politician who uses such a phrase in public, or for that matter in private, times being what they are, needs their head checked.
Dear Samizdata Illuminatus
” … the Tory MP for Newton Abbot.”
Is that anywhere near Diane Abbot?
Does she have her own woodpile?
DP
If that weren’t bad enough, just try getting away with the etymologically unrelated niggardly.
Kafka, Humpty Dumpty, Orwell…
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/feb/21/college-writing-center-proper-grammar-perpetuates-/
Proper (speech) perpetuates racism!
“No..no..it’s different I didn’t say nigger, I said niGAAAAHH…”
Mine, from elsewhere…
CaptDMO:
Exactly who ARE the black, yellow, brown folks that are expressing their micro aggressive racism by expecting quota fulfillment white students to (speak)/write at a Junior High level.
Quite frankly, I’m not familiar with the woodpile phrase,
Perhaps “Bitch in the Manger”? Feminist at the Frathouse? and of course, “Tampon in the turd pipe”?
At least Labour is being quiet on this matter.
They have no choice really as they have Naz Shah as an MP, a woman who has admitted making racist remarks.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-36802075
It seems that the only people able to use the N-word these days without censure are rap artists.
Anyway, don’t they start at Calais? 😛
Johnathan,
I think there may be a difference in usage between the rap usage and the use of nigger in the woodpile myself. For a start, I always spell the former nigga for some reason (probably because hip hop seems to have learnt spelling from purusing Slade’s back catalogue).
I tend to assume any word with racist overtones is best avoided to be fair – it’s not as if I need to use nigger at any point, since there are plenty of other words that do as well (person works for me, but then I tend to assume skin colour should not equal identity). And therein lies the key question – not whether it is right to persecute someone for stupid use of language, but whether we should not just regard anyone using words such as this as idiots who work in a mental state where you can divide people up along lines of physical appearance, or at least as people who come from that milleu and can’t get out of it, and therefore as worthy of contempt?
I believe ‘aborigine in the fuel supply’ is the accepted update.
Watchman, agreed. I think people who use the N-word and so on should be handled by social ostracism, rather than being punished in the courts. Such language has, mercifully, become rare because it is rightly considered vile.
This MP is a fool.
The fuel supply has been melanin-enhanced.
Nowadays I say “the worm in the woodpile.” Thus are the animal and vegetable kingdoms united in brotherhood as the Children of Gaia, or, as I prefer to think of it, the Servants of the Great Frog.
I am with the idea she showed deplorable judgement. Not just for the obvious reason though. NITWP just doesn’t work linguistically. It’s a big thing, not a FITO. More an EITR.
Sure it does.
Back when Abraham Lincoln was running for president, it served his campaign purposes to hide his strong antislavery positions in order to secure southern votes. NITWP became the way for people to describe how he had this core position hidden as far out of sight as possible. The phrase came about as a marketing tool to remind Southern voters that he was, at heart, anti-slavery.
Freedom of Speech has been in decline all my life – going back to the 1965 Act (the 1964 American Act “just” attacked Freedom of Association – the British Act not only attacked that, although there was no legacy of “Jim Crow” in Britain to make-up-for, the British Act also attacked Freedom of Speech). This was just stage one in a step-by-step attack on Freedom of Speech that has proceeded to this day.
Nor does avoiding any language might be considered “racist, sexist or homophobic” save a person in modern Britain – recently I replied to a person who said they “hated” Mrs May and British independence by saying O.K. I “hate” you (you personally), rather than reconsider their original attack the person just issued a complaint against me (the irony was totally lost on them).
No doubt unless I die soon, I will die in prison (for saying water is wet, or that 2+2=4 rather than 5 – or some other major crime), fair enough.
Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell are fanatically determined to exterminate freedom – but the irony is that if they come to power (which is quite likely) they may well there is little freedom left to exterminate.
Mind you what an unbelievably stupid thing to say. She deserves the sack for stupidity not her doubtless non-existent waycism.
Around here (and not just “around here,” either), people used the NITWP phrase quite often, up till sometime in the later ’60’s I believe. The other one we heard a lot was “the fly in the ointment.” The former to refer to what might have been a duplicity or a lurking problem; the second, just a lurking problem. (Sometimes, but not always, similar to “the devil is in the details.” Which itself is sometimes stated as “God is in the details.” Me, I don’ gots no opinion, beyond that my naturally suspicious, paranoid, and phobic disposition inclines me to put more faith in deviltry than in “whatever gods there be.”)
bobby b @July 11, 2017 at 5:09 pm:
I don’t know where you read this, but it makes no sense at all. In 1860, Lincoln was not seeking Southern votes; he was not even on the ballot in nine Southern states. He got a handful of votes in the five Border states, but his target area was the free states. His position on slavery was very well established and known to everyone; it was openly proclaimed in the Republican platform. The charge Lincoln was anxious to refute was that he was an Abolitionist, who would seek the immediate end of slavery. This was viewed by the South as a dire threat, and those posing it were blamed for provoking dangerous Southern reactions such as secessionism. If Lincoln was viewed as an Abolitionist, many Northern men might vote instead for ex-Whig John Bell (instead of ex-Whig Lincoln), or for Democrat Stephen Douglas.
In 1864, of course, Southerners did not vote at all. (Andrew Johnson remains the only Vice President who could not vote for himself.)
In any case, Google Ngrams reports the first very small usage of the phrase in 1860, a few uses in 1880-1900, and widespread use only after 1900, peaking in 1920-1945.
I’m confused. Was my comment wrong because I said he had anti-slavery positions instead of saying he wanted to abolish slavery? Or that I said he was hiding that position from “Southern states” in order to avoid a bad reaction? Or that Lincoln’s enemies used the phrase NITW to describe how he had hidden away a major belief that ought to have disqualified him in their eyes? Why does the paragraph make no sense at all? I got this straight out of my eighth grade American Studies class textbook.
It’s wrong because the Republican party was built around anti-slavery; any and every Republican candidate was anti-slavery. Really couldn’t hide that.
Also, not even on the ballot implies those states were complete write-offs; no point in pretending to not hold beliefs that were a huge positive in the rest of the country.
That there were Southern commentators and demagogues who conflated ‘anti-slavery’ (a spectrum that started from about ‘repeal the fugitive slave laws’ or ‘no new slave states’) with Abolitionists (whose spectrum started at immediate emancipation) is almost certainly true; some of these folks really couldn’t see a real difference and others pretended not to for effect.
Nor is it a surprise that an eighth-grade textbook simplifies and mutilates the actual history. Conflating anti-slavery (US 1860 edition) with Abolitionist (ditto) is like saying there’s no difference between the modern person who thinks cops kill too many inner-city youths and the person who thinks shooting random cops is justified because you must be evil if you wear a badge.
Richard Rostrom:
As a further digression this is not strictly correct. They voted in Tennessee* and Louisiana in the 1864 Presidential Election. They also voted in Kentucky, Maryland, Arkansas, West Virginia and Delaware – all “southern border” states albeit still part of the Union or otherwise, like Tennessee and Louisiana, substantially under its control that year. I think most of the inhabitants of those states would have considered themselves as Southerners in 1864 (without doubt in Tennessee).
As for the 1860 election, Lincoln in suppressing his abolitionist views was probably looking beyond the election to forestall if possible, in the event of his victory, the secession of the southern states and certainly the border states (such as Maryland and Virginia) without whom a southern breakaway was far less viable. Had Lincoln made a big-deal of his supposed abolitionist intentions during the election – I expect states such as Maryland and Kentucky (and Virginia – which only split after the fall of Fort Sumter) would have been far more favourably minded to join the Confederacy from the outset. Suppressing his abolitionist views proved vital, as we know, to retaining (just) Maryland and Kentucky in the union and I think given Lincoln’s political genius it is safe to say he had these prospects in mind even before the election. As it was, he made few concessions to abolitionists during the first 18 months or so of the war (indeed he fired one of his leading generals for being too accomodating with abolitionist views) primarily to keep the relevant border states on side and also because he judged that northern opinion would not on balance look kindly on fighting a war to free the slaves (as opposed to a war to secure the union). This political calculation changed during 1862 (crucially after the victory at the Battle of Antietam) but note that the emancipation proclamation issued at the end of that year explicitly exempted the loyal slave states, including Maryland and Kentucky.
* Johnson’s home state. Wikipedia does state that the electoral college votes of Tennessee were not subsequently counted. But it seems Johnson was able to vote for himself in November 1864?
bobby b @July 12, 2017 at 12:24 am:
No, that is correct. Bear in mind that “anti-slavery” covered a wide variety positions. The “mainstream” position, which Lincoln and the GOP professed, was that slavery should be banned from all the western territories, which would prevent establishment of any new slave states: “Free Soil”. Lincoln suggested further that this restriction would lead to the eventual end of slavery, though perhaps not for another hundred years. Southerners resented this, but many could live with it: it was basically the situation before the 1850s. And it should not be conflated with the proposition that the slaves should be freed at once and become citizens, which even many Republicans balked at.
(An 1860 Republican campaign paper mocked the Democrats for raising the specter of “nigger equality” to alarm voters. The Republican position was to reserve the territories for free white men, and there could be no “nigger equality” where there were no niggers.)
In 1860, Abolitionism carried the additional taint of being the creed of John Brown, who the year before had tried to incite a general insurrection by the slaves. That Southerners were terrified of such activities was understandable. Any association with such views would alienate them of course, and also Northern men who understood Southerners’ fears.
Lincoln’s anti-slavery position, and that of the Republican Party, had been made as public as could be. Trying to “hide” it would have been as silly as the scene in Jumbo when Pop Wonder (Jimmy Durante) says to the policeman “What elephant?”
Then your textbook was written by some clever-dick type who thought he knew something cute.
Probably the same textbook writer who came up with tales about George Washington, telling lies about George to encourage young people to always tell the truth.
There are two periods in Lincoln’s life when suggesting he ‘hid’ his anti-slavery views is not absurd.
1) Trivially, when Lincoln fought Douglas in Illinois, his opposition to slavery was never hidden in any sane sense of that word, but the emphasis he placed on it varied from loudly in speeches in Chicago to more mildly in the far south of the state. He tempered his fervour to his audience.
(It was in this election that he forced Douglas to say that a free state could nullify the Dred Scott decision by simply refusing to assist the maintenance of slavery in its territory. This cost Douglas the nomination at Charleston in 1860, leading to a Democrat party split, without which Lincoln would not have won in November.)
2) Between his election and his inauguration, Lincoln had one overriding aim in his public speeches – to say nothing that Democrats (both southern and northern) could quote to accuse him of provoking secession. This certainly led to a contrast between his public and private views: in public, he was bland to the point of being ridiculous, and mild in his anti-slavery remarks; in private he was determined not to let the threat or actuality of secession become a political manoeuvre forcing him into signing away his presidential power to act against slavery in exchange for reunification (some in the north at first saw secession as a temper-tantrum-cum-political-game, just as some in the south thought the north would not in fact wage a war to keep them in the union).
I can easily imagine Democrats conning Lincoln’s speeches at that time and saying there was a nigger of very hard anti-slavery determination lurking in the woodpile of their bland verbiage. But I do not recall ever actually reading that in any of the history I’ve studied. And I thought the phrase was older, though I cannot recall an older reference.
Okay, I’ll buy that. I was incorrect on that point.
Can’t argue. It would have been 1971, when our Am Studies teacher wore beads and put us into circles to rap about racism and Nixon and weed, and our books – esp this one – were full of little square blurbs scattered throughout with Fun Factz or some such thing. This one, i remember clearly, was explaining the origin of the “Negro in the woodpile” phrase (carefully telling us that some horrid people use a much more objectionable word.) Of course, the book also taught us what sexist bastards our Founding Fathers were.
Oops. Copy and paste error. My cite to “Jan Hards” at 4:03am above should have been:
Niall Kilmartin @ July 12, 2017 at 8:10 am:
The Dred Scott decision applied to the territories; it did not affect any state, though Lincoln and other Republicans insinuated that the same “logic” would soon be used to legalize slavery in all states. Douglas had asserted the doctrine of “popular sovereignty”, under which the settlers in each territory would decide whether to allow slavery, which the South had welcomed as a breach in the flat prohibition of the Missouri Compromise. Then after Dred Scott gave them everything, they denounced “popular sovereignty”. Douglas tried to equivocate, but Lincoln pressed him, and Douglas stood by his doctrine – admitting that regardless of Dred Scott, a territorial government could exclude slavery.
Whether the split in the Democrats was necessary to Lincoln’s election in 1860 is an interesting question. By the actual results, Lincoln would have won even if all the Democrat votes had been for one candidate. However, it was widely believed at the time that the split meant Republican victory. Editor Murat Halstead of the Cincinnati Commercial reported from the Democrats’ Charleston convention that after the split, “rampant Southerners” were all saying “Seward is the next President” (he then being the Republican front-runner). Possibly the split depressed Democrat campaigning in the North; Lincoln narrowly carried New York and Illinois, and split New Jersey, so these outcomes could have varied.
Richard, that’s not correct. The Dred Scott case was brought in a state (Missouri), not one of the territories. And even if it had been brought in a territory, the crux of Justice Taney’s decision was that blacks could never be citizens and thus could never avail themselves of the federal courts.
This was true for slaves, for freed slaves, even for the children of freed slaves. (Taney goes into great detail in explaining his rationale, but that’s irrelevant here.) What matters is that the Dred Scott decision was just as binding in any of the states as it was in Missouri or any of the other territories.