Dirty words

I spent a lot of time listening to the radio this summer. I took summer classes at home in Minnesota, and my commute to campus involved more than the familiar 10-minute jaunt to Ballantine Hall.

Like many college students, I spent more time listening to the radio during the summer months at home than I do here at school, where I rarely drive.

Switching back and forth between our local trashy hip-hop and top 40 stations and National Public Radio, a few unfortunate semantic choices repeatedly caught my attention. Since 1934, the Federal Communications Commission has regulated the language we hear on the radio, and since most of us were in elementary school, the organization has been one among many targets of Eminem’s rage.

With the release of Eminem’s latest album, radio stations made a censorship decision that went beyond the normal blurring of a rainbow of swearing. I’m certain that when “the real Slim Shady” wrote that “he does not mean to lesbian offend/but Lindsay please come back to seeing men,” “he” in fact did know that, true to angry stereotype, some lesbians (along with reasonable people of any sexual orientation) would find his plea objectionable.

While it wasn’t shocking to hear Eminem’s disrespectful remarks about Lohan’s choices, I was shocked by what I heard on the radio: “He does not mean to blank-space-in-the-rap offend/but Lindsay please come back to seeing men.”

This editorial choice – the disapproval of the very utterance of the term “lesbian” on the radio – reveals more cause for worry than Eminem’s original lyric ever did. It’s one thing to question Lindsay’s sexual preference, but it’s quite another to implicitly state that radio listeners must be protected from even hearing a reference to homosexuality.

I cringe to think that “lesbian” is still a dirty word. If you listened to the confirmation hearings for our newest Supreme Court justice, Sonia Sotomayor, you will know that “activist” is, too. 

During her judicial confirmation hearings, Justice Sonia Sotomayor dodged unfair questions and defended herself against ridiculous accusations. One accusation tempted me to switch the radio back to Eminem every time I heard it thrown around.

While I understand that judicial activism has a different meaning than run-of-the-mill social or political civilian activism, it’s a shame that activism, and the desire to make changes in society, was portrayed as a cardinal sin.

While I have faith, apparently along with Congress, that Sotomayor will refrain from “legislating from the bench” or abusing her honorable position in any way, the achievements of non-judicial activism should be celebrated – Sotomayor’s and everyone else’s.

We know the risks of apathy far too well to allow “activism” to become a dirty word.

The words we say (or don’t say) and how we say them influence the way we think about the world. Lets hope that as we switch out our beach bags for backpacks and our chick lit for (way too expensive) textbooks, our vocabularies won’t exclude the words radio “dirtied” this summer.