Larry Wilmore, a Black American comedy writer, spoke at the White House Correspondents Dinner this past Saturday, April 30th 2016. After telling jokes about politicians and the news media for some 20 minutes, he gave Barack Obama, the guest of honour, his heartfelt congratulations:
“When I was a kid I lived in a country where people couldn’t accept a Black quarterback. Now think about that: A Black man was thought by his mere colour not good enough to lead a football team. And now to live in your time, Mr. President, when a Black man can lead the entire free world. Words alone do me no justice. So, Mr. President, I’m going to keep it a hundred: Yo Barry, you did it, my niggah.”
Backstage, in private, Wilmore’s words could have been a beautiful moment.
But frontstage, in front of the hyper-White audience in the room and a White-majority audience on national television, it was, at best, cringeworthy, if not worse. At least to me. I know not everyone will agree.
Full disclosure: I am one of those who think the word cannot be reclaimed in a country as racist as the US.
Larry Wilmore has written for tons of television shows. He created “The Bernie Mac Show” (2001-2006) and has his own show on Comedy Central, “The Nightly Show” (2015- ), in Stephen Colbert’s old time slot. But he is probably best known for being the Senior Black Correspondent on “The Daily Show”, a news comedy made famous by Jon Stewart. Even there Wilmore had his cringeworthy moments, walking the fine line of racist satire. You know, the kind where you know he is trying to make fun of racism, but you feel like racists are laughing at it for the wrong reasons.
Wilmore did use the affectionate conjugation, ending the N-word with an -ah instead of an -er. But it seems that was quickly lost on White people. Even the country’s foremost Beyonceologist, Piers Morgan, misquoted Wilmore using the -er ending.
Wilmore, a Black comedian, does this in front of a country where White people point to Black comedians as a reason they should be allowed to use the N-word in mixed company. And there Wilmore is, using it in mixed company. On television. Coast to coast. To the president.
And, contrary to what Black comedians have White people believing, not all Black people use the word or think it is acceptable, however affectionately conjugated.
If Hillary Clinton becomes president, will it be all right if, say, Sarah Silverman “affectionately” calls her a “bitch” on national television at a White House dinner? Or will the respect due the president’s office make that, suddenly, unacceptable?
And none of that is even the worst part. The worst part is that Wilmore did this in front of a country where, for the past eight years, many White people, like at least a third, have thought of Obama as “nothing but a n*****”. Unaffectionately conjugated.
– Abagond, 2016.
See also:
- The N-word
- Larry Wilmore
- Kenya Barris
- Decoded: A World Without Black History
- Issa Rae – Wilmore is not mentioned in that post, but he has helped her to get her show off the ground as someone who understands both Hollywood and race as a long-time industry insider.
- racist jokes – bad for many of the same reasons racial slurs are.
- Beyonce
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I thought the mic drop was epic but i didn’t appreciate Wilmore and his use of the N-word i hate that word so much and even if the POTUS didn’t seem to have a problem with it i still thought it was disrespectful and inappropriate. I may be in the minority.
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No other President has been shown the level of disrespect that President Obama has been subjected too.
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Even though i don’t care for Wilmore and his brand of comedy i did tink it was funny that he referred to Don Lemon as an “alleged journalist.” And Lemon flipped him the bird.
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I think he did a low key dig at the audience because he knew most of them wouldn’t dare say it to The President’s face even if they wanted to. But he can and did because at the end of the day both Larry and The President are black men who understand what that means in America. He was basically flaunting his understanding of that fact.
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Fortunately, Barry is such a dignified, well-humored gentleman – I don’t think he minded at all. AND I am sure that the monologue was looked at well before its performance. AND I don’t care what white people think.
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So, for anything a black person says or does, he/she should first ask what will whites think? Isn’t such caution a form of mental slavery? How does use of the word injure blacks?
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“Full disclosure: I am one of those who think the word cannot be reclaimed in a country as racist as the US.”- Me too.
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@Abagond: “I am one of those who think the word cannot be reclaimed in a country as racist as the U.S.” Could you please elaborate what that means please? I just need some clarity on that one statement.
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Acts 13:1 “Now there were in the church that was at Antioch certain prophets and teachers; as Barnabas, and Simeon that was called Niger.”
Black folks have allowed white supremacy to corrupt the name Niger, which simply means dark man or black man to mean something ominous; negative, unprincipled or something decadent. Rightfully so and perhaps unknowingly, black people in a sense are attempting to reclaim this biblical name through some variations thereof.
Just as soon as we as a people quit worrying about what white Amerika or people of other nations thinks of our usage of this word/name, there goes the sting and controversy as well. It’s all about the context and Mr. Wilmore used the word in a praising manner. Obomber doesn’t appear to be perturbed about the term, therefore, no one else should be.
Pardon me, … allow me to take a walk down the block with my intentional limp; flip my SF baseball cap to the rear; ensure that my bell-bottom jeans are starched; wearing sunglasses even when it’s cloudy and say what’s up to my Niggahs with a 1970’s vernacular, Ebonics, Hebrew or country grammar. Peace!
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Gro jo asked: “How does use of the word injure blacks?”
To me, this word/name doesn’t injure black folks at all. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them have secretly bought into the concept or notion of what white supremacy as a whole says what it means.
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well said
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I agree with Abagond. Even in the atmosphere of the evening’s mud-slinging crucifying humor, his statement was inappropriate. It was in poor taste, and unnecessary and speaks volumes about his poor judgement.
In my perception, his statement wasn’t thinking about Black people, nor the president sharing an in-joke between the African Americans in this nation. He took that moment to make gracious Obama, the butt of a joke with the term that a large percentage of Americans feel defines the reason, he never belonged in the White House in the first place.
Wilmore used that national opportunity to showcase his ‘ego’, like the now boring and embarrassing antics of another who loves showcasing his poor judgement. What do you think? Did Wilmore give us his version of a Kanyesque move~ seizing the moment to steal the spotlight.
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If Larry Wilmore’s mission was to get people talking, it worked.
I personally don’t use the word, any variation of it whatsoever. I also don’t knock black folks who use the more affectionate conjugation. I just think there are more important issues to confront, but then again, it’s just my opinion.
I’m trying hard not to give a fig about what white people will think about this as I try to keep in mind that they are in no position to tell us what’s wrong and what’s right when it comes to race. The fact that they were stunned that a black man used a modified version of a word THEY invented shouldn’t be something they should cry over.
But they will.
Out of over 1,025,109.8 words in the English language, and they whine about not being able to one of them without being labeled a racist.
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@All,
Those without shame are shameless. I didn’t work for this election, the one my parents didn’t live to see, to see our hopes and dreams reduced to spittle by a clown.
Those of my people who see affection in the clown’s remarks are lost souls. If our hopes and dreams realized in this presidents election mean so little then consider the lasting image that your children will see.
I am reminded of the lasting image of Chief Justice Roberts blundering through President Obama’s name during the inaugural oath of office ceremony and thinking to myself the permanent stain that bastard put on our magic moment that would be recorded for all of our people, for all time to see.
Larry Wilmore did the same thing. I truly pity those who seek unity in being niggas. The ignorance is truly, truly overwhelming.
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I agree and I have zero problem with WHAT Larry Wilmore said, because I truly believe a comment like his could come from a place of immense racial pride. I share your concerns about WHERE he said it though, because of the whole “national spotlight” and “reinforcing racist opinions” angle.
Maybe the words and sentiment were genuine, but the delivery was forced. That could have created the “awkwardness” we all saw.
However, his attempt to make a statement cheapens the office of the President and, Barack Obama personally. In the case of President Obama, race has been used by many as “everything they need to know about him”. That’s just as true of the racist Whites that despise him because of his skin and Blacks, like Wilmore (by his own words), that love him because of it. So, I suppose it’s possible that, to Wilmore, “Barry” is just someone he views as a peer rather than the exceptional man and solid President that he is. That’s wouldn’t be unique to Larry Wilmore though. We’ve been attempting to reduce presidents to peers for a while now and with the way the impending election is shaping up, it’ll only continue.
However, I’m gonna go ahead and give Larry the benefit of the doubt and believe that he knowingly took a tremendous risk to express his overwhelming pride and that his only “statement” was in his willingness to risk popularity and career to express that pride.
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“…he knowingly took a tremendous risk to express his overwhelming pride …”
@ OpenMinded
I believe many Blacks all across Amerika would have enjoyed his sense of overwhelming pride if he had said:
So, Mr. President, I’m going to keep it a hundred: Yo Barry, you did it, my MAN!”
One word (MAN) means the essence of male adulthood. It is palatable, acceptable, respectful. No opportunity to be offensive. It is a colloquialism for either respect/achievement.
The other word rings loud as a reminder of Amerika’s never ending racism… especially in mixed company. It can also be offensive! There are many Black people who’d prefer NOT to be called that, ever.
It’s not about caring about what white people think. It’s about what we think about the way we conduct ourselves with each other. Just my opinion.
No one is going to respect us much, until we respect ourselves, much.
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People can debate on it if they want to, it was inappropriate. He did not need those last few words. That moment to be real would have better been used in text message or private it was very stupid for him to do and to me he looks like he doesn’t know when to be professional.
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@Fan
Well said, Fan. I agree, that word would have been more appropriate.
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“Yo Barry, you did it, my MAN!”
I agree.
Maybe “My dog”?
“My brother”?
maybe “Dude”?
He picked the worse possible term of endearment.
Or maybe even “Sir”.
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Why do I keep thinking that the offensive part of that phrase is the “my” part. But I guest any adjective placed in front of “nigga” becomes offensive, but this one amplifies the offensiveness of “nigga” by suggesting ownership of said nigga. Attached to the supposed liberated word it shackles the word and drags it back to ignominy of its origins in slavery. We can now crow like the slave owners of old. My nigga. My nigga. My nigga.
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“Maybe “My dog”?”
————————————
I’d rather replace dog with Brother Warrior, or Brother King, or Brother Prince, or any of your other choices.
I tend to call all brothers (offline), Sir. Even those younger than me. It’s fun watching their reactions to receive that sort of respect from an older brother.
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Boyce Watkins didn’t like it either.
(https://youtu.be/eHmQ4z_tcRc)
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@Black Sci-Fi: I totally agree with your post. It made me angry as well when Chief Justice Roberts mangled President Obama’s name not bothering to learn how to pronounce it. I too have a huge problem with how Wilborn addressed the President. I don’t like my President being referenced in that disgusting manner and it bothers me that other people especially black people think that’s cool.
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John McWhorter agrees with Larry Wilmore:
http://time.com/4316322/larry-wilmore-obama-n-word/
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John McWhorter annoys me to no end but i will click on the link just to read what this dip stick has to say.
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@ Mary
LOL. Being a linguist and all, I thought he would be a bit more profound.
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@ nomad
“My brother” would have got his meaning across to way more people.
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@Abagond: I am still awaiting your answer about the word being reclaimed in a country as racist as U.S. could you please clarifying what you meant by this?
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This is yet another case difintely for me personally though I think it could benefit us all
its actual scientific research ,not opinions and arguments ,but perhaps I’m naive and delusional to think most people want the truth.
Anyway I agree with abagond on this issue ,but I am not surprised by Mr.witmore and other African Americans like him.
A large percentage of african Americans I know and have been around have internalized white European concepts of them to a large degree.
And with regard to black males like Mr.whitmore I suspect a great degree of internalized racism due to one obvious external factor – hair ,or in this case the extreme lack there of.
See in addition to the darkness of our skin, probably the second most hated and reject part of us – is our hair.
From infancy we are raised by mother’s the vast majority of whom hair texture and stylization is of primary importance
With negative values placed on our natural hair texture and length while extreme positive value is placed on altering it to resemble the whitest of Europeans.
So when I see a bald head African american male and a certain of behavior I suspect very internalized racism, and I have rarely if ever been wrong ,same goes for females even more so.
However a really comprehensive and objective evaluation can only be had by many people being willing to do so.
As it is,it just distance goal while I endure various opinions.
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@Abagond and Mary Burrell
I couldn’t make it through the whole thing. Nigga and nigger two different words? Utter nonsense.
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@Nomad: I agree with Boyce Watkins
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@nomad: You are referring to said “dip stick John McWhorter? My eyes started crossing up trying to get through that gobbledygook and got frustrated reading it. Frustration and annoyance happens when i attempt to read anything McWhorter. I can’t with that guy. he irritates me to no end.
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And it’s crazy but Kenya Barris the screenwriter for black.ish was on TMZ of all the stupid things to be on saying he didn’t have a problem with Larry Wilmore and his use of the n-word in referral to the POTUS.
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@nomad: I couldn’t get through it either McWhorter annoys me.
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@ Mary
Some think that Blacks can reclaim the N-word, take it back, take the racist sting out of it and make it mean something good, like what was done with “black” in the 1960s. Larry Wilmore clearly belongs to that camp.
I think that strategy has backfired. White people now use the word more than ever – and the racist sting is still there some 25 years later. If Black Americans left for the stars, sure, they could reclaim it. But they live in a White-majority country where White people’s sense of self-worth is built on anti-Black racism. They are not about to give up the racist meaning of the word – no matter how often Larry Wilmore says “my niggah”.
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@ Mary Burrell
They work together. Larry Wilmore is an executive producer of “Black-ish”.
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@Abagond: Thank you so much for clarifying i thought that was what you meant but wanted to make sure i comprehended correctly.
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I am on one of my social media sites Google Plus and there is a community called Interesting Things and the moderator of that community posted how Eminem the rapper used the word “nigga” but decided to bleep it out. And the posters mostly teenagers thought it was okay and a few black poster were in opposition to the use of this stupid and disgusting word. I know that white people want to use it and then they ask why can’t they use it. I get so sick of this word being used by our people. It made me sad to listen to one of my favorite pod cast Another Round and Ta Nehesi Coats was a guest and one of the host Traci Clayton asked Coats what was one of his favorite cuss words in French since he has been living in France he said he didn’t speak French well enough to answer that because he would mangle the language. She then asked What’s your favorite cuss word in English and he said “nigga” and they all giggled and laughed gleefully. I can’t tell you how sad this made me.
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@Anne
“He was basically flaunting his understanding of that fact.”
Exactly……..
EXCEPT for the Ted Cruz Zodiac Killer overkill, I thought Wilmore’s performance was funny overall, and simply fearless.
@gro jo
“So, for anything a black person says or does, he/she should first ask what will whites think? Isn’t such caution a form of mental slavery? ”
Exactly….
@Abagond
“If Hillary Clinton becomes president, will it be all right if, say, Sarah Silverman “affectionately” calls her a “bitch” on national television at a White House dinner?”
Yes, if Sarah Silverman said “congratulations, my bitch” in the same comedic/endearing manner that Larry Wilmore said “you did it, my niggah”. Clearly there’s a difference between that and “Hillary you are such a bitch”
“White people now use the word more than ever – and the racist sting is still there some 25 years later.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but what is true is they are far less likely to use it in the presence of a black person today than 25 years+ ago. And that’s a monumental difference.
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“Nigga” is just the ebonic pronunciation of “nigger”.
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@Mbeti
That is an interesting observation.
Two questions:
1. What experiences led you to this conclusion?
2. How do bald headed African American females figure into this pattern of behavior?
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“Backstage, in private, Wilmore’s words could have been a beautiful moment.”
that reminds me of a white friend from college he said ‘shouldn’t say [whatever it was]’ in mixed company… he was like nodding ah my first black girlfriend at the time with the whole ‘wink, wink, nudge, nudge’ thing going
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I thought it was funny. But then I put up with a lot of bullshit from white people on the daily that’s a hell of a lot more disrespectful.
Which to me is the point. White people have made Trump the nominee based on sheer racism and Sanders delusionalism, yet the main conversation is about what one black man said to another because he said it in front of white people who don’t give a shit about us anyhow.
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@ nomad
Comments deleted for use of Mock Ebonics.
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@abagond
I figured that. But don’t you mean ‘comment’?
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@ThatDeborahGirl and Kiwi
Here is a thorough discussion of why it matters what one high profile black person says to a black president.
(https://youtu.be/lJEaDuD4ANU)
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A quick observation. For those who claim ‘nigga’ is an affectionate term when used among blacks. Well yeah, it can be. I suppose. But when black people use it in a non-affectionate way they don’t revert to the original pronunciation. They don’t say n.gg -er. They use the same pronunciation that they used when applying it affectionately.
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@nomad: I that link was very good I like those two. I subscribed to that channel on YouTube. I want to hear more of them. Like I said in my previous posts and I know I read like a broken record but that was not cool what Wilmore did. But thank you for posting that link.
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“For those who claim ‘nigga’ is an affectionate term when used among blacks. Well yeah, it can be.”
Nomad,
That might work as a name to call your pet… cat , dog, snake, lizard.
It ought not be a name to call another brother or sister!
I still can’t wrap my mind around HOW a degrading word that whites came up with to mark our supposed humanity in Amerika which has all the negativity and hate/racism and history that this word has, can be used as an affectionate term!
We’ve got some unresolved major mental health (colonization/captivity) issues that go back hundreds of years stemming from slavery, and it’s still sadly affecting us 400 – 500 later.
I know we can come up with much BETTER affectionate words for one another. It’s not hard to beat out the N-word!
There’s no profit whatsoever in calling another a bitch, thot, dawg, hoe, ni**ga and whatnot. None of those words are UPLIFTING or reflect who we once were, or supposed to be, now.
Guess who is the NUMBER ONE party responsible for investing in keeping us confused, separate, divided – as much as possible??
It’s not us.
Awake Black people had better wake the flock up, or a lot of us ain’t gonna make it!
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@Fan …
“Guess who is the NUMBER ONE party responsible for investing in keeping us confused, separate, divided – as much as possible??”
Hmmm….
Could it be the people who control the banks and the media?
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And another thing, come to think of it. The guy that more or less started it all was not spelling ‘n.gg.r’ in the way that online black denizens are now spelling it. Richard Pryor’s groundbreaking album was not called ‘That Nigga’s Crazy’.
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“Could it be the people who control the banks and the media?”
@ Nomad
Yep!!
Some call it the nine major areas of people’s activity:
ECONOMICS, ENTERTAINMENT, Education, Labor, LAW, Politics, RELIGION, SEX and WAR. You know, the racist/WHITE supremacist global system that we’re all immersed in.
We have no business helping THEM to enslave our minds – and hearts.
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@ nomad
Excellent, excellent video. I especially like the part where Antonio Moore says that what Wilmore did went beyond just the N-word, that it was verbal blackface: Wilmore is trying to talk as if he grew up in the hood in the 1990s or something when in fact he grew up in White suburbia in the 1960s and 1970s!
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Yeah right Abagond because only black people from “the hood” ever use the word nigga?
Every white person in that room, hell every white person who heard it, was just mad because they could never say that to the President of the United States and get a hug and a handshake.
Verbal blackface my ass. Wilmore is black. So now we’re back to some sort of weird litmus test for who’s black enough to say nigga?
Ice Cube? Yes. Janet Jackson? No. Dave Chappelle? Yes. Micheal Strahan? Maybe? But not on Live and definitely not on GMA but covering the NFL? Maybe?
JayZ yes? Beyonce? No.
Negro please.
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@ ThatDeborahGirl
Antonio Moore is NOT saying that “nigga” is itself verbal blackface. He is saying that Wilmore does not naturally say things like “I’m going to keep it a hundred: Yo Barry, you did it, my niggah.”, that coming from him it is fake, a put-on. He bases that on a) where he grew up, b) his age, and c) that he said the “d” in hundred.
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Larry Wilmore is a CLOWN and I don’t mean that in a positive way I mean he is a damn buffoon! Don’t forget Wilmore used to work as a token for Stewart so I don’t think for one second he didn’t get what was woefully wrong with what he said. He is a total coon
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What he said was in poor taste in my opinion.
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@Dave
Comment deleted for use of trans phobic slur.
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