Monday, July 16, 2007

Happens to the Best of Us

Per CNN:

The longtime chairman of the Roger Williams University board admitted Monday to using the N-word during a board meeting, saying it "kind of slipped out."...Papitto, who has given the school at least $7 million and whose name is on the only law school in Rhode Island, said he had never used the term before.

"The first time I heard it was on television or rap music or something," he told WPRO.


That's understandable. As we all know, the N-word is bandied about like nobody's business on network television these days. And since Papitto, like most 80-year old white men, probably listens to rap music two or three hours per day, one can understand how it could slip out in a casual conversation about the difficulty of finding minorities to sit on the university board. It must be tough, having grown up in '30 and '40s--when, of course, racial slurs were unknown--only to endure a coarsened 21st century culture to which he inevitably, and forgiveably, succumbed.

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