Geraldo Rivera: ‘C*cksucking f*ggot’ is not an anti-gay slur if you grew up with it

[kpete]

In an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show Thursday night, Geraldo Rivera defended actor Alec Baldwin’s use of the epithet “c*cksucking f*ggot” in an angry confrontation with a photographer.

Rivera was agreeing with host Sean Hannity that A&E is making a mistake by suspending “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson for his anti-LGBT and racist statements in an interview with Drew Magarry of GQ magazine.

The people criticizing Robertson, he said, are the same “fundamentalist gay activists” who criticized Baldwin for his insults to the photographer.

.........

Rivera countered that the offensive phrase doesn’t count as a slur because such utterances were “commonplace,” default insults when Baldwin was younger and growing up.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/12/20/geraldo-rivera-ccksucking-fggot-is-not-an-anti-gay-slur-if-you-grew-up-with-it/

[get the red out]

1. Well

I grew up with it being no big deal to play with mercury too.

[arcane1]

5. Segregated bus-seats aren't discrimination if you grew up with them.

Lead paint is safe if you grew up eating the chips.

Leaches are legitimate medical cures if you grew up with them.

"Muskrat Love" is a great song if you grew up around it.

[LibertyLover]

23. Leaches can be useful

during certain reattachment and repair plastic surgeries. From what I understand their saliva keeps blood from clotting, permitting the reattached part, like a hand for example, or skin tubes in the case of repair plastic surgical procedures, to receive a good blood flow and helping with healing.

[MineralMan]

8. It wasn't a big deal, really.

I used to have a small vial of the stuff when I was a kid. I did all kinds of fun things with it. Somehow, I avoided a childhood death from mercury. Odd, that.

Today, they'd call a hazmat crew to remove it from my home, where it sat on a shelf for many years.

[LanternWaste]

13. Many people also avoided death from the 1918 European Influenza outbreak... odd that, too.

Many people also avoided death from the 1918 European Influenza outbreak... odd that, too.

[MineralMan]

18. Yah, well, metallic mercury isn't all that hazardous.

Mercury compounds and mercury vapor can be, though. So, my closed vial of mercury and my experimentation with the metal as a kid wasn't really much of a risk to me or to others. In fact, I had lots of far more risky stuff around at the time. I even had a wax container of hydrofluoric acid carefully stored with my other chemicals. I used that to mess around with glass etching. Very carefully and with the knowledge that it was quite dangerous.

All of those things are very useful, despite their relative hazardous nature. I was a preteen boy with a fascination with all of the sciences. My parents trusted me to handle the stuff I had safely. And, well, I did handle them safely.

Now, influenza in the early 20th century was something else again. It wasn't something a guy could control, so an epidemic of it was not really the same thing as a kid with a small vial of metallic mercury, was it? Fortunately, the flu vaccine is doing a pretty good job, for those who get vaccinated. We learned how to fight influenza. Some of the people who worked that vaccine out may well have been kids like me, messing around with chemistry at home as kids.

We also treat mercury differently than we did in the 1950s, when I was experimenting with my vial of the metal. I don't have any metallic mercury in my house any longer. I do, however, have several amalgam fillings in my mouth and a shit load of CFLs, each of which contains some mercury. The thermostat on my wall in the hall has a mercury switch inside of it that turns my furnace on and off. Mercury switches are very useful devices, and I don't think the one in my thermostat is much of a risk. I think there's an old mercury fever thermometer somewhere in my medicine cabinet, too, despite the fact that I have digital ones that work better now. Mercury has many uses. It's a metal with lots of potential.

Comparing a vial of metallic mercury to the 1918 flu epidemic, though...what a concept!

[Jackpine Radical]

2. So were all kinds of other nasty ethnic/racial slurs.

That doesn't make it OK. Rivera himself belongs to an ethnic group with a whole bunch of derogatory names.

Society evolves. When its members don't, that is a problem.

[Archae]

14. Agreed.

When I was a kid, we'd pile on each other at the playground, and yell "N***** pile!"

Kids don't yell that anymore, thankfully.
They yell "Dog pile!"

One common phrase adults used when I was a kid was to "Jew someone/Jew them down" regarding money.
I don't hear that one anymore either.

[Jackpine Radical]

16. My Favorite Wingnut sometimes tries to make fun of "PC" speech, but

in his ignorance blows it altogether, often in hilarious ways. For example, his alternative for "Jewing him down" is "Caucasianing him down." Clueless on so many levels…

[joeglow3]

21. It blows my mind the shit we did

I am 36 years old, which still feels relatively young. We used to sit indian style in kindergarten. Now, my kids sit criss-cross applesauce. Our favorite sport at recess was "smear the queer." Now, my kids play "kill the man with the ball." Glad to see society evolve. However, it still blows my mind that we just accepted those things as kids and had no problem with it.

[LiberalAndProud]

15. Yes, they were. A couple would have been hurled in Geraldo's direction

in a commonplace way. That makes them okay, I guess. NOT.

[sendero]

3. The gay stuff..

.. is small potatoes compared to the racist stuff. they are doing the same thing they did with Paula Dean, focusing on the most minor of her transgressions and acting like the rest of it didn't happen.

[sibelian]

4. "fundamentalist"!

[Cali_Democrat]

10. Projection

People like Hannity are the fundamentalists.

It's just like how conservatives accuse liberals of being racist, but they're the actual racists.

[MineralMan]

6. What crap, Geraldo!

I suppose the n-word isn't racist if you grew up using it, too.

I also remember a long string of insults for Hispanic folks whose last names ended in "a" and "ez." They were wrong to use then, and they're wrong to use now, so I will refrain from referring to you with any of them. Bigotry sucks!

Moron! That one I'll use freely in your case, though.

[Packerowner740]

7. Jerry is a moron.

[yurbud]

9. it was commonplace when a lot of us grew up, as was the N word and some others we don't say today

somehow, when I get mad, I don't have a flashback to the 70's or Jim Crow.

[Initech]

11. Giraldo Rivera = Snidley Whiplash

[Ganja Ninja]

12. Funny you should mention c*cksucking Geraldo.

FOX's liberal prostitutes are the lowest of the low. I wonder how much cash Rupert waived at him to get him to say that?

[Rex]

17. Rivera is fucking stupid and shows it just about every chance he gets.

Okay so let me get this right - IF you grow up in an environment that is hostile toward the LGBT community, slurs are not slurs because they are commonplace in that environment? What kind of fucked up logic is that?

Like I said, fucking stupid.

[seabeyond]

19. oh and minorities... do not wear hoodies or you are asking for it. ya. the guy is stupid. nt

[Le Taz Hot]

20. No, Geraldo,

"cocksucking faggot" was a slur back then too. Does he think none of us were around back then?

[MisterP]

22. ah, the Michael Vick defense makes a comeback

[Jefferson23]

24. Did Rivera defend Baldwin when it happened at the time?

Or is this just another means of defending the Duck idiot...I don't know. Either way, it is
disgusting Rivera would use such a stupid argument...moron.

Baldwin lost his job, as he should have..same should be for this Duck idiot. Two losers.

[intaglio]

25. It was also commonplace for rock stars to be pedophiles

It does not mean it was right then or now.

Link Diamonds from the Mine

[ChisolmTrailDem]

26. Rivera's head is as empty as Capone's vault. n/t

[frylock]

27. i'm sure that spic, wetback, and beaner were rather commonplace as well..

stupid fucking asshole is a term that gets bandied about from time to time, and that will never go out of style.

[Warpy]

28. Or "greaser," a word that will still get you flattened in any bar in New Mexico

The words were ignorant and hurtful then and they are just as bad now, Horrendo.

[frylock]

29. word up