According to dictionary.com, a mook is a “contemptible or insignificant person.” It has a certain appeal for referring to someone who inconveniences you, eg “some mook held up the line at lunch,” but I’m hesitant to use it in case it turns out to have any racial connotations. Could I use it in place of “jerk” or would I be alienating people?
Mook was a standard term of opprobrium employed by the late, lamented Mike Royko in his syndicated column from Chicago. I have never heard a racial implication associated with it and Mr. Royko spent enough years as a bonafide liberal in Chicago that I’m pretty sure that any racial overtones would have eliminated it from his vocabulary. In most of the stories in whch he referred to mooks, he was describing denizens of Irish or Polish working class bars–or politicians, of course.
This, of course, is not to prevent some person from choosing to take offense at its use in the manner of the objections raised against niggardly, but the mid- late-20th century use of the word did not customarily carry any racial or ethnic baggage.
(I am aware that Mr. Royko, literally following the definition of a conservative as a “liberal who has been mugged” might not be perceived by the younger set as a classic liberal, but even in his later years (and always in his forthright speech) he never went out of his way to be offensive–brutal, but not offensive).
Even late into his career, Royko had at least one major accusation of racism. In Chicago, liberal isn’t necessarily free from “groupist” thoughts. Many Irish/Polish/Mexican/Black/Chinese/etc. groups that are seemingly liberal exclude other groups in their policies in ways that could be construed (and not without cause) as racist.
