CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word’s been thrown around —
[LAURA] SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.
CALLER: That isn’t —
SCHLESSINGER: I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it’s affectionate…
CALLER: So it’s OK to say “nigger”?
SCHLESSINGER: — and not enough sense of humor.
CALLER: It’s OK to say that word?
SCHLESSINGER: It depends how it’s said.
CALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?
SCHLESSINGER: It’s — it depends how it’s said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it’s OK.
CALLER: But you’re not black. They’re not black. My husband is white.
SCHLESSINGER: Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can’t do much about that.
CALLER: I can’t believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the “nigger” word, and I hope everybody heard it.
SCHLESSINGER: I didn’t spew out the “nigger” word.
CALLER: You said, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.”
SCHLESSINGER: Right, I said that’s what you hear.
CALLER: Everybody heard it.
SCHLESSINGER: Yes, they did.
CALLER: I hope everybody heard it.
SCHLESSINGER: They did, and I’ll say it again —
CALLER: So what makes it OK for you to say the word?
SCHLESSINGER: — nigger, nigger, nigger is what you hear on HB —
CALLER: So what makes it —
SCHLESSINGER: Why don’t you let me finish a sentence?
CALLER: OK.
SCHLESSINGER: Don’t take things out of context. Don’t double N — NAACP me. Tape the —
CALLER: I know what the NAACP —
SCHLESSINGER: Leave them in context.
– Right-wing radio talk show host Laura Schlessinger, speaking with an African-American woman who called in to her show last week. After the call was over, Schlessinger told her audience, “And what I just heard from Jade is a lot of what I hear from black-think — and it’s really distressting [sic] and disturbing. And to put it in its context, she said the N-word, and I said, on HBO, listening to black comics, you hear “nigger, nigger, nigger.” I didn’t call anybody a nigger. Nice try, Jade. Actually, sucky try.”.
