I like words.  I enjoy playing with language.   Police officers quickly find out they can’t say what they would like to, but at the same time can’t let a zinger go by unchallenged.  When I first started working there were buttons with a “Smiley Face” accompanying the phrase “have a nice day”. Perfect, in cop speak “Have a nice day” became just what it says or “Fuck You!”  While the recipient might have suspicions that “Have a Nice Day” was not what the officer intended to say, there it was.

Suspects are always apologizing, “I’m sorry” rolls off their tongue with all the sincerity of a politician promising no new taxes.  A quick  acknowledgment , “I know you are,” leaves a suspect with a dilemma. Did the cop just acknowledge my apology or is he rendering judgment on my personality?  It’s all in the delivery and context.

Then there is Donald Trump.  The MSM is trying to make a big deal out of Trump’s use of the term “schlonged”.  Apparently it is a yiddish word oftentimes associated with a penis, schlong.  Unless, that is, one happens to be from New York and are a political junkie. Then as Trump demonstrated the word takes on new meaning.  The Politio article, at the link and excerpted below, explains:

While the expression is rare, it has in fact shown up in earlier political contexts, typically from New Yorkers like Trump. The Post notes that Neal Conan, host of NPR’s Talk of the Nation, said in a 2011 broadcast that the 1984 Democratic ticket of Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro “went on to get schlonged at the polls.” And on Fox News in 2006, Dick Morris warned that President George W. Bush was “going to get schlonged” in the midterm elections.

Long before that, the phrase made an appearance in New York City collegiate politics. The Daily Mail uncovered a 1967 article in the student newspaper of the City College of New York in which Ellen Turkish, a candidate on the losing slate for student council, said, “We got schlonged.” (As Ellen T. Comisso, she would go on to a distinguished career as a political scientist.)

From Trump to Vonnegut, in the Breakfast of Champions Vonnegut discusses the beaver in all it’s glory.  

From Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut

A wide-open beaver was a photograph of a woman not wearing underpants, and with her legs far apart, so that the mouth of her vagina could be seen. The expression was first used by news photographers, who often got to see up women’s skirts at accidents and sporting events and from underneath fire escapes and so on. They needed a code word to yell to other newsmen and friendly policemen and firemen and so on, to let them know what could be seen, in case they wanted to see it. The word was this: “Beaver!”

A beaver was actually a large rodent. It loved water, so it built dams. It looked like this:

The sort of beaver which excited news photographers so much looked like this:

This was where babies came from.

© Kurt Vonnegut

Vonnegut

From Vonnegut we transition to David Howard a civil servant who had the misfortune to work for D.C. Mayor Anthony Williams.  Mr. Howard used the term niggardly in the proper context and within the intended meaning with no gamesmanship involved.  Mr. Howard was forced to resign.  A description of the event and the link follows.

Williams Aide Resigns in Language Dispute (01/27/99)
          “The director of D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams’s constituent services office resigned after being accused of using a racial slur, the mayor’s office said yesterday.  David Howard, head of the Office of Public Advocate, said he used the word ‘niggardly’ in a Jan. 15 conversation about funding with two employees.

          ” ‘I used the word ‘niggardly’ in reference to my administration of a fund,’  Howard said in a written statement yesterday.  ‘Although the word, which is defined as miserly, does not have any racial connotations, I realize that staff members present were offended by the word.  I immediately apologized,’  Howard said. ‘ . . . I would never think of making a racist remark. I regret that the word I did use offended anyone.’

          “When Howard, who is white, noticed the reaction to his use of the word, he apologized to his three-member staff, which is made up of two blacks and another white. It is unclear which two employees he was addressing when he used the word.

          “Soon after the remark was uttered, the rumor mill started churning that Howard had used the word ‘nigger’.”   (Washington Post, 01/27/99, Page B1, by Yolanda Woodlee)
[link http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/local/daily/jan99/district27.htm ]

The response to Mr. Howard’s use of the term niggardly may be most illustrative of the problem speakers need to keep in mind.  Niggardly sounds like it ought to be a racial slur, don’t confuse me with the facts. It isn’t what you say, or even how you say it that will get you in trouble.  It is the biases, ignorance and outright ill will that the audience brings to the table. On TV beavers paddling in a stream are bucolic.  Paddling a beaver on adult pay-per-view will induce colic in a Baptist. Whether one treats a schlong as a verb or a noun, Trump just stuck it to the MSM where the sun don’t shine.