It doesn’t seem to really limit his ability to harass people-- after all, “snitch,” “informer,” “rat,” “tattler,” “fink,” and “stoolie” are all perfectly servicable words. If he can adapt to substituting “lawn” or “green” for the Forbidden Word in order to stay out of lockup, he should be able to stretch his vocabulary in other ways, no? I imagine that the order has other, (less ridiculous,) provisions to limit his behaviour in that area. So why the broad ban against uttering the most common word for narrow herbs?
I don’t really get it. If he has been such a terror to his community, and have damaged and stolen things, why not already put him in ‘detention’?
Secondly, why bann the word grass? Why not the cussing ones?
Well he is also banned from saying ‘cripple’ as well, and no report I can find gives what it claims is a complete list of his restricted words. My guess is sensationalist reporting not mentioning that he would be similarly in trouble for any swear words as well. Still dissalowing the use of the word grass is stupid, surely they could dissalow him from calling anyone a grass instead?
Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. This youngster has been terrorizing his neighbors for years, often using abusive language. The court has responded to this by saying, essentially, “knock of with the bad language”. :rolleyes:
I guess the point is, if you are going to be a British thug, by God you are going to be a polite well spoken British thug!
I’ll have to confess a bit of ingnorance here. Is grass a common bigoted slur? I’ve never heard it as one, and I really have no idea what is going on there.
Well, I suppose if the little twit (I’m an American…can I say “twit”?) ever gets a little culture and goes for American poetry, he’ll have to steer clear of Walt Whitman. You know, Leaves of Herbage of which the blades or leaves and stalks are eaten by cattle, sheep, horses, etc..
You ever seen those “world’s worst driver” specials from the UK? They’ll have helicopter and police-dashboard video footage of some complete wackjob plowing his Mercedes the wrong way up a rush-hour freeway, destroying property and knocking over pedestrians, before diving from his inevitably wrecked and burning car and leading the bobbies on a two-mile sprint through back yards and shopping malls and brawling with them when they catch up to him. And then the announcer concludes in his calm, plummy voice, “He was taken into custody, fined fifty quid, and had his license suspended for ninety days.” I mean, WTF? Somebody pulls that in, say, Louisiana, he’ll be lucky if he still has bones when the cops are done with him.
Not in Australia, to the best of my knowledge. Their cricket team is almost always known as “the Pakis” in the same way that the team from the Carribbean is known as “the Windies”.
Now that I think of it, though, this is actually the first tour where I haven’t heard the Indians described as “the currymunchers” in the cricket commentary, so times may be changing. “Zimbobs” appears to be OK, though.
Pardon my ignorance of words from around the globe, but what the heck is “a grass” or a “slag?” I’ve never before heard those as insults, and I can’t find them in the Wiki database of ethnic slurs (and I was pretty surprised to find that there even is one). I have no clue why they’re supposed to be insulting.
Just had a look myself - jeez, they aren’t exactly comprehensive, are they? No mention of jaarpies, seppos, noogs, suxty-suxers, ten-pound tourists or even blackfellas or whitefellas. And they got “coconut” wrong in its Australian usage.
And yeah, Larry, the Indians have been the currymunchers since at least the late '70s. On recent tours they’ve been bringing a cheer squad over that’s been nicknamed the Biryani Army.
Okay, thanks. Follow-up question: am I supposed to be insulted by that? I mean, that’s the kind of thing you’d hear from the midget gangster in Bugs Bunny cartoons. “Mugsy, go take out da snitch.” It doesn’t exactly inspire moral outrage in my ears.
That’s the beauty of Wiki - you can add information to the communal database. Of course, that’s if you want to be updating international databases of ethnic slurs.
