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Weather: Sunny. Not as cool with highs in the mid 70s. West winds around 5 mph. Wednesday Night: Mostly clear in the evening, then becoming partly cloudy. Lows in the upper 40s. Southwest winds around 5 mph, becoming west after midnight.See the daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
Today at a Glance:
In court: An evidentiary hearing is scheduled before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins at 9 a.m. at the Flagler County courthouse in the case of George Proulx, 69, who was sentenced to four years in prison, followed by 11 on sex-offender probation, for molesting and having unlawful sex with runaway girls. Proulx is contesting his sentence.
Joint Workshop on 5-Year Public Safety Plan: The Flagler County Commission, the Palm Coast City Council and Sheriff Rick Staly hold a joint workshop to discuss a five-year public safety plan for Palm Coast and the county, at 1 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. This workshop was rescheduled from Feb. 26.
The Palm Coast Planning and Land Development Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
Separation Chat, Open Discussion: The Atlantic Chapter of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State hosts an open, freewheeling discussion on the topic here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at its new location, Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 9-18, at the Flagler County Public Library: Do you enjoy Chess, trying out new moves, or even like some friendly competition? Come visit the Flagler County Public Library at the Teen Spot every Wednesday from 4 to 5 p.m. for Chess Club. Everyone is welcome, for beginners who want to learn how to play all the way to advanced players. For more information contact the Youth Service department 386-446-6763 ext. 3714 or email us at [email protected]
On Language: The word today is thug and thuggery. “A violent or aggressive person, esp. a criminal; a hoodlum,” the OED tells us. Fair enough. The use of the word goes back to the early 1800s in the United States. But it has enjoyed–I am using the word wryly–a renaissance as a dog whistle. Thug is now commonly used, in supposedly polite company, often by your average politician or police chief, as a substitute for the n-word. Let me explain to you my writing process here. I wrote these few lines based on what I have come to know from observation, from reporting around Flagler County, from listening to national politicians. I wanted to verify this conclusion, knowing that I easily could with the ease of a Google search. My search words: “thug dog whistle.” First result: “The Racially Charged Meaning Behind The Word ‘Thug’,” an NPR story from 2015. John McWhorter, the linguist, is soon quoted in the story: “Well, the truth is that thug today is a nominally polite way of using the N-word. Many people suspect it, and they are correct. When somebody talks about thugs ruining a place, it is almost impossible today that they are referring to somebody with blond hair. It is a sly way of saying there go those black people ruining things again. And so anybody who wonders whether thug is becoming the new N-word doesn’t need to. It’s most certainly is.” He was speaking around the time when Obama himself used the word to describe looters in Baltimore. “Yep, and that is because just like the N-word, we have another one of these strangely bifurcated words. Thug in the black community, for about the past 25 to 30 years, has also meant ruffian, but there is a tinge of affection. A thug in black people’s speech is somebody who is a ruffian but in being a ruffian is displaying a healthy sort of countercultural initiative, displaying a kind of resilience in the face of racism etc. Of course nobody puts it that way, but that’s the feeling. And so when black people say it, they don’t mean what white people mean, and that’s why I think Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and Barack Obama saying it means something different from the white housewife wherever who says it.” The origin of the word is fascinating: it originated with “Thuggee,” in India, which the OED describes as “A member of a society or cult of robbers and murderers in India known for strangling their victims… Thugs were known for winning the confidence of travellers, whom they would then murder, especially by strangulation, in a sudden surprise attack, before taking their belongings. They were suppressed under British rule in the 1830s and considered eliminated by the late 19th century. In an influential tradition in the 19th century, they were considered to be devotees of the goddess Kali, killing their victims in a ritually prescribed manner. However, many modern historians have questioned this, as well other aspects of historical accounts of Thugs and their practices.” The word, anyway, was adopted by the British during their occupation of India,, and they imported it to Britain–their own little souvenir dog whistle.
—P.T.
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Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
Rotary’s Fantasy Lights Festival in Palm Coast’s Town Center
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Semiautomatic weapons on city streets threaten whole communities and they alarm the police. In some places, police feel so outgunned that they are reaching for heavier weapons of their own. Punks who fought with chains and knives seem like ”West Side Story” innocents compared with today’s teen-age gangsters with their Rambo guns: the Uzi carbine, the AR-15, the MAC-10 and the AKS, a semiautomatic version of the Soviet AK-47. A 1986 law banned manufacture for private sale of fully automatic machine guns, which fire repeatedly while the trigger is pressed. But no Federal law limits military assault rifles that are semiautomatic – requiring a trigger pull for each shot. It’s a flimsy distinction. Many semiautomatics can be made fully automatic with a screwdriver, even a paperclip. The National Rifle Association opposes any controls on such weapons, pointing out that their rapid firing mechanism resembles that of popular semiautomatic hunting rifles. But the issue of definition isn’t insurmountable. The overall design of weapons intended for military use – to kill humans at relatively short range – differs markedly from that of guns intended to kill animals at a distance. Federal officials prevented the importation of semiautomatic shotguns explicitly designed for ”crowd control” in South Africa on grounds that they were clearly inappropriate for hunting.
–From an editorial titled “Drug Thugs and Rambo Guns,” The New York Times, Aug. 1, 1988.
Chaim Goodman says
Absolutely floored. The “big nose sociopath” stereotype still perpetuated after all these years. Why don’t you just post a picture of “the happy merchant”? I have relatives who died in The Holocaust. I see Anti Semitism is alive and well in Flagler County.
ASF says
“Occupier”, eh? Considering the indigenous Jewish history in Judea and Samaria and the fact that so many Mosques in the region are built OVER the conquered, burnt and looted remains of Synagogues (and Churches), I think a good case be made for the above cartoon being a classic case of Projection as far as “Occupaion” is concerned.
Pierre Tristam says
Following that reasoning, Stanley Kubrick’s apes in that fabulous sequence at the beginning of 2001 have a case: they should claim Jerusalem as their own. They were there first (being so close to Olduvai). If we dig deep enough we’d probably find that monolith. Or a similar symbol of imperious presumption so often verbalized since by hierosolymitan pretenders from Jews to Fatimids to Ayubis to Seljuks to Brits to Fedaiyins, and so on.
On a side note, I appreciate the notable hints, however faint, of humanity in ASF’s more recent comments: even ASF cannot abide the barbaric inhumanity to the power twenty of the Israeli response to Hamas’s base-barbaric inhumanity. She just has a hard time expressing it openly. Loyalty is admirable, up to a point.
ASF says
It’s more than just “loyalty.” I find it unacceptable when a particular group of people or nation of people are judged by standards that are different and more punishing than others. That, to me, is the operative deifntion of prejudice.
While I naturally react strongly when it’s people in my own backyard who being threatened by the above being the case–as others do–I would remind others to consult history when it comes to Jews simply being harbingers of worse things to come in that regard. That’s why Jews have so often been called the “canary in the coal mine.” The prejudicial conduct that starts with Jews as an acceptable scapegoat never ends there.