What's in a word? Especially when that word carries with it the pain of hundreds of years of racism? This week we talk about how the controversy over the public use of the N-word plays out differently in French and English in this country.
Jesse Brown
Host & Publisher
Sarah Lawrynuik
Senior Producer
Jonathan Goldsbie
News Editor
Tristan Capacchione
Audio Editor & Technical Producer
Kieran Oudshoorn
Managing Editor, Podcasts
Hosted by Jesse Brown
When a CBC host used the N-word in pre-production meetings, she was taken off the air. When the French arm of the public broadcaster, Radio-Canada, had a program just months later where the N-word was used four times in both languages, the broadcaster dismissed charges that there was anything wrong with the program. That is, until the CRTC stepped in and said an apology was in order.
Why two different responses at the same company in two languages? And why does the 1968 book by Pierre Vallières always seem to be at the heart of the controversy?
Dan Aykroyd blew in from Ottawa. Andrea Martin came in from Maine and Joe Flaherty came in from Pittsburgh. Paul Schaffer came in from Thunder Bay. Marty Short and Eugene Levy and I came in from Hamilton. We congregated (in Toronto) because we had similar comic sensibilities.
“ It was hot girls having a blast. There's nothing wrong with that. I thought it was aspirational. I did not yet realize that we were in fact shooting porn and that that was actually happening in the back room of the bus that we were living on.”
- Courtney Kocak, former Girls Gone Wild “Merch Girl”
“ My brother, first and foremost, was a good person. He was very bright, he was educated, and he was autistic. And I think had he not met the creeper hunter, I think he would still be alive today.” -Brother of “John Doe #1”
