Sometimes a c____ is just a c____

... and sometimes not.

So that we don't seem like over-amped activist yahoos, it has to be acknowledged that 'chink in the armor' is a common idiom that you do indeed hear all the time in sports, politics, etc. I use it myself from time to time. It's an excellent term to use to describe a weakness in something that otherwise seems impenetrable. The same could be said about the swastika: an interesting graphical design that is used in many cultures throughout the world. However, one would also have to say that that one would be wise to avoid using either if at all possible. It's important to consider the context when either or these occur and respond accordingly.

It's entirely possible for the phrase to pop up without any malice IF it came up spontaneously in a discussion. It's mainly a question of how considered the choice was -- much like many offenses, premeditation is important.

For something like this to get published on a major website after any kind of review is revolting. However, the on-air utterance seems a little more ambiguous -- he may have been reading the prompter or he may have been ad-libbing. He didn't say it with any particular emphasis on the word, which suggests to me he really was just using the idiom.

That's sort of the problem in fixating on superficial (*) offenses like terminology, doubly so when you draw the short straw and have a racial slur that's a homonym of a word used in such a common idiom. Whether it reflects deep racial animus or benign ignorance can't honestly be determined without resorting to Freudian-style speculation on what the offender intended.

Offensive terminology should be dealt with severely, but I can't help but feel like such skirmishes don't truly address deeper problems. Headlines are easy to retract, second-tier on-line editors who write weekend headlines at 2:30 am are easy to fire, and sports anchors easy to suspend. It's easy to just avoid a particular word, no matter what you actually think of a particular group of people.

It's the more insidious stuff that I'm concerned about. It's headlines like "American beats Kwan", or the post-Katrina photo captions that describe black families 'looting' food and white families 'finding' food. It's whenever anybody compliments me on my English. These kinds of things reflect presumptions so ingrained that whoever says these kinds of things doesn't even think they're saying something controversial. It's the kind of thing that needs far more attention, but isn't the kind of thing you can describe in 155 characters or less.

* Look it up. Superficial doesn't necessarily mean minor.