White Men Can’t Talk
There is a priceless moment in Oliver Stone’s unfairly maligned The Doors, when our heroes are prepping to go on the Ed Sullivan Show. They are met by a stage assistant, a real twerp, who informs them that, “The network guys have a problem with one of your lyrics. ‘Girl, we couldn’t get much higher.’” He goes on: “You can’t say ‘higher’ on the network, so they asked if you could say instead: ‘Girl, we couldn’t get much better.’”
The band looks at him, bemused. He finishes with: “Could you dig that?”
That dork’s use of the word “dig” in this context perfectly illustrates what often happens when mainstream folks try to appropriate street talk: they get it wrong, either by not understanding proper usage, or just plain sounding silly. While we play such things for laughs, they ring true because we see the same thing every day.
I remember a song by a milquetoast rapper named Vanilla Ice, called “Ice Ice Baby.” You probably remember it too. It’s your standard 1990′s fare, filled with braggadocio about the protagonist’s many fine exploits. I can’t help laughing when I hear some of the lines in the tune. Vanilla says he is “Rollin’ in my 5.0″ at one point. We all remember the angular 5.0 liter Mustang that was popular then. Vanilla spends three couplets on his “5.0,” with evident pride not just in its fanciness but also in his street cred for knowing such slang. Thing is, that’s not what the term “5-0″ meant at the time — it meant “police,” as in “Hawaii 5-0.” (Vanilla, whose real name is Rob Van Winkle, is a far more mature person now and a new crowd has come to enjoy his music.)
All this came back to me as the David Shuster saga unfolded. In an intemperate moment, our chalk-stripe-suited host says that Chelsea Clinton is being “pimped out” by her mom’s campaign.
This has generated a firestorm and Shuster is now suspended for uttering such a derogatory remark. For my part, I would have wanted to suspend him for not understanding the language he was trying to use. He pulled a Vanilla Ice.
Dig: “Pimped out” means “made very fancy,” as a stereotypical pimp might decorate something. There are overtones of exploitation, too, as in when something is “tricked out” — that is, made alluring enough for a trick.
What Shuster probably meant to say was that he felt Chelsea was being “pimped,” as in “exploited.” It’s a small slip, like Vanilla Ice’s slip when it comes to his car, but it matters. On its face, Shuster’s remark meant the campaign was dressing Chelsea up. In context, it was incoherent. In trying to appropriate so-called street lingo, he botched the job and made the same mistakes any foreign speaker makes when idiomatically out of their depth, with similarly hilarious results.
When I was in high school, I hosted an exchange student from Belgium. He fancied himself quite the Casanova, but most of my friends thought him the opposite. We taught him that the term “doughbrain” was our slang expression for “ladies’ man.” I regret it, now, as it was just mean — but, man was it funny at the time.
If I were advising my exchange brother now, I would say to watch out and double check what idiomatic expressions mean, because you might just wind up sounding like a real Newman.
I guess David Shuster could use the same advice.
Addendum: Looks like I made a mistake, and relied on my recollection and the lyric sheet when it came to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” — instead of re-listening to the song itself. He doesn’t say “five-oh” (which is what I remembered) but says “five point oh.” Commenters who have pointed that out are right. Kicking myself. You should, too!
They’re also right that it knocks a big leg out from under my point, but not entirely: Shuster sounded really silly saying “pimped out,” like a suit trying to talk street, and (this much I still maintain) misusing the term in that way.
Brad Rourke writes a column on public life called Public Comments, produces an occasional videolog called Taxonomies, is a founder of the Maryland neighborhood blog, Rockville Central, and is in a band called The West End.
“Oliver Stone’s unfairly maligned The Doors“?!?!
Mr. Rourke, just how good are your powers of observation if you think anything by Oliver Stone or having Val Kilmer in it is worth wasting life over?
That was my first, last, and only Stone fiasco and one can’t get over first impressions…
Yes, being disciplined and accustomed to using more precise language does indeed make it difficult to retrogress.
These people are quite foolish for attempting to dumb themselves down. They deserve every bit of derision they receive. One would hope that they’d have the moral courage to pull people up rather than allow themselves to be diminished.
Pimp Out currently means to fix up, but for a different generation, i.e. those from the 70′s and 80′s, “Pimp out” meant to sell a woman on the street like property. So, in that context, David Shuster, would be grammatically correct, even though he fell afoul of the PC police.
So that’s the spin? That Shuster was using “street lingo”? Sorry, Brad, Shuster was using “pimped out” as in “prostituted”, he wasn’t using “street lingo”. He was correct in the usage and he could also have correctly said that “MS-NBC has been pimped out to the Clintons”.
While it’s true that such slang term may not be right for newsreaders, pimped out can mean either. While ‘pimping out my ride’ is a newer use of the term pimp most people will still see it as an act of using someone else exploitatively for their own impersonal gain.
I agree with Mark H…. Shuster used the terminology within the proper context and, in my opinion, did nothing wrong at all.
I’m a sub-contractor and I talk about my contracting clients pimping me out to various end clients. My context is that someone else is pushing me out to someone else for their own benefit.
The term has become somewhat innocuous through overuse. It’s not really a street term anymore (hell, my parents use it!), it just a phrase that accurately indicates the exploitation, however mild, of one person for another persons benefit. Within this context, the Clintons are pimping out Chelsea (sending her out to their “clients” for their own benefit).
As I see it, Shuster’s the victim of a particularly vicious Clinton campaign manipulating an overly PC culture for their own benefit.
I think it was perfect as a double entendre; and not from the street lingo aspect.
The whole point of argot is to change so rapidly and be so incomprehensible that nobody who doesn’t live the life of the speakers can understand it, let alone speak it.
If our surly local argonauts don’t like the way we use their language – that’s fair. I don’t like the way they use mine, either. But at least mine moves slowly enough they have a prayer of learning it, if they are so inclined.
Does Vanilla Ice say “Five Point O” or just “Five O”? If Vanilla says “Five Point O” I think you are guilty of the offense you accuse him of. I was 15 or 16 at the time and those Mustangs were definitely caled “Five Point O’s” by us hip kids. I guess that would ruin your whole article.
Seems to me Curly Smith is correct. Additionally, seems to me the entire mainstream media has “pimped itself out” to the Democrats more this time around than ever before.
We can no longer count on slight verbal slips by the media, since almost all they say has slipped into the abyss of politically correct socialist babble.
Shuster’s point was inane. Chelsea Clinton is a 28 years old Stanford/Oxford educated adult and old enough to make and take responsibility for her own decisions.
Shuster is an idiot. For that alone he should be fired.
LOL… I laughed when I first read the Shuster comment and took it as ‘used to anothers advantage’, which is typically Clintonian. Having cast my appreciation for all things Clintonian to the trash heaps of forgetable history, I just kept moving, but not in the direction of ‘moveon’.
You’re wrong on many counts. The kids DID refer to a Mustang as a 5 “oh”. just becuase that also refers to Po po it’s off limits to anything else? ::(
And in the contracting community we use “pimped out” in it’s original usage the way it refers to pimping out prostitutes.
You seem to imagine that what you happen to know precludes other usages of the same term.
You are wrong.
Thanks for the good comments, all.
Rob: Vanilla says “five oh.”
Brushfyr et al.: listening/viewing his comment a number of times, I just think Shuster got the term wrong and it made him sound silly. I could be wrong; it has happened before! But even so . . . He sure did sound silly. Fo shizzle.
Note I am not commenting on his moral rectitude or how PC the comment was, which is another kettle of fish.
–Brad
Actually, the author may have a point. The phrase for putting a female out on the streets to turn tricks for you, is “turned out.” For example: “I first got turned out when I were 12 and I been on the streets ever since then.”
On the other hand, everybody who was listening knew what he meant by “pimped out” and so the point was made. Right?
Whether Shuster was right is the question for which we will never have a real answer. Is Chelsea doing this on her own or did her parents ask/direct her to help? Inquiring minds may want to know, but the fact is that you never, ever, know what is really in a politician’s heart. The same goes for the members of their immediate family.
I don’t spend a lot of time on the street anymore, but it seems to me that it was the pimp who was “pimped out” or very flashily dressed to advertise his profession and financial status. The pimp’s car was always very flashy as well for the same reason. But “pimped out” has a different meaning when referring to a woman and is very inappropriate and offensive when referring to the daughter of a presidential candidate. Shuster said exactly what he meant and deserves to be suspended or even fired for displaying such lousy judgment.
“Five O” means Mustang? Not to anybody who was around when the Mustang appeared. Or for that matter when the five liter engine appeared. It started life as an engine for station wagons (remember those?), and by the time it reached five liters found new life as an engine for pickup trucks and school busses. (Cool, huh?) Lingo ephemerally fashionable among dumb high school kids at some particular point in time hardly establishes an eternal definition of a phrase … thank gawd. And let’s not confuse “pimp out” with “pimp up.” “Pimp out” is what was done to the Lincoln bedroom – an appropriately Clintonian concept.
The reporter was using English correctly – as a tool of communication. Current street lingo is a tool of communication if you happen to live on the street. Most of us don’t – again, thank gawd.
“You can’t catch a 5.0.”
Well, Mr. Rourke, ironically, another artist relying on a variant of the “ice” moniker proves that you know not of what you speak. The Ford Mustang of the late ’80′s and early ’90′s was absolutely referred to as the “5.0,” by virtually anyone with an interest in cars and by rappers (Ice Cube for one example) too.
I’m not Vanilla Ice’s defender, by any means, but Brad Rourke looks particularly MSM with this lazy piece (of…).
Brad Rourke on “street cred?”
Lame.
Wow….I mean wow. How can someone be so confident yet be so completely wrong. Vanilla ice said “5.0″…..at the time, we knew what he meant. “5-0″ is a completely DIFFERENT slang word. Ice had it right….you are confused. You can’t even win an argument with 15 year old lyrics. So what to think about the rest of your article?
And the reason that “pimp” means to fix up is because…..wait for it….pimps had nice, “fixed up” cars.
It’s pretty obvious what he meant. He (unlike you) understood the slang, and used it properly.
five-oh was used to refer to the mustang when i was a kid, coming from a lower middle-class mixed school with a lot of race tension, both blacks and whites used five-oh to refer to the car and the coppers. the hippy set used six-up for cops for some reason I never figured but nobody liked them even back then so it didn’t catch up
you have it all wrong, ace.
vanilla ice CORRECTLY referred to his mustang as a 5.0 .
and yes, pimped out can mean to “decorate” something…that is not how shuster meant it…he meant “pimped out” in its non street lingo meaning…the clinton campaign is indeed pimping chelsea out…and that’s ok!
but brad rourke needs to work on his street cred…before he gets pimp slapped…
don’t get cut, brad…
Looks like I made a mistake, and relied on my recollection and the lyric sheet when it came to Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” — instead of re-listening to the song itself. He doesn’t say “five-oh” (which is what I remembered) but says “five point oh.” Commenters who have pointed that out are right. Kicking myself. You should, too!
They’re also right that it knocks a big leg out from under my point, but not entirely: Shuster sounded really silly saying “pimped out,” like a suit trying to talk street, and (this much I still maintain) misusing the term in that way.
–Brad
“Mr. Rourke, just how good are your powers of observation if you think anything by Oliver Stone or having Val Kilmer in it is worth wasting life over?”
I’ve never seen any Oliver Stone movie, so you may well be right on that point. But Val Kilmer deserves more credit. I thoroughly enjoyed Willow. I think Kilmer was quite good in Batman Forever. And I have to assume that you’ve never seen Top Secret, one of the funniest films I’ve ever seen (and the only picture ever to spoof both spy films and Elvis Presley movies). Kilmer starred in that.
I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I actually have a recording of Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” on my laptop at the moment. Yes, he definitely says “five point oh”. Sorry, Brad.
I’m pretty sure Rob is correct and the author’s lynchpin Vanilla Ice example is inapposite.
“Rollin in my 5 point 0″
Rollin’ in my 5.0
With my rag-top down so my hair can blow
The girlies on standby, waving just to say hi
Did you sto–no I just drove by
It was the street lingo that crossed the line. Instead, just think of this as more Clintonian campaign pandering, which as a familiy trait has a long history.
In case anyone needs reminding:
pan·der -noun Also, pan·der·er. 1. a person who furnishes clients for a prostitute or supplies persons for illicit sexual intercourse; procurer; pimp.
You know what? Using language like that (“pimped out” – that is: pimping their daughter…) on a nationally televised news (meaning: “serious, adult, etc.”) would’ve been equated with using the profanity of the uneducated, unwashed masses as late as maybe five years ago.
Personally, I wouldn’t be using that kind of language unless I had been drinking a lot. Man, all those people who called me a bore during my college days in the 1980s owe me an apology!
This was a great article. This was the kind of great writing one could expect to see in The Rolling Stone. When strolling through the gutter it is important to have a comprehensive grasp of both current teenage and criminal cant. Those hip enough to hang with those upwardly mobile drug users need to be aware of the waves and eddies of criminal code speech in order to have sleaze and slime credibility. Making a reference to someone’s daughter and using the word pimp in the sentence is about as appropriate as referring to someone’s successful college kid as a Ho’. It is not who said it, of how it was said, it is what was said. Please make an all out effort to get real.
I would vote for David Shuster for president before I would vote for Hillary Clinton. The Clinton’s will use anyone to get ahead including their daughter. Why all the righteous indignation? So boycott MSNBC who cares. That move would be more damaging to the Clinton campaign anyway but I guess it’s never too late to stand on principle – no matter how shaky the principle.
Why is it okay for whites to imitate blacks, but blacks are accused of “tomming” if they don’t dress, speak, and act like illiterate thugs?
The most subversive cable channel is HGTV (Home and Garden TV). You regularly see successful married black professionals living in mansions and speaking standard English, with nary an African cultural object in sight.
My favorite was a couple who had a spare room converted into a Scottish pub, complete with snooker table, to honor where they spent their honeymoon. They were huge fans of the moors and heathers.
I’m sure lots of people would criticize them for “trying to be white,” and I’m just as sure that this couple is too rich and happy to care.
Ok Hill is upset that she pimped out her daughter? I don’t see bill beating his chest and pounding the table over this nonsense!
What if china calls her daughter a name ? Is she gonna “George Bush” the “Button” on them. As far as the MSNBC debate threat..Ob is sick of the debate nonsense….he may not even agree to do it. Hill needs to WOMAN-UP! I don’t remember her putting chel on the “strole” for other campaigns …why now? Oh yea desperate times call for desperate measures!
————————————
Here is the funny thing….Clintons own Press Sec did not even know what the term “Pimped Out” meant!
Riddle me this…How can you be upset about a term that you don’t understand???
If the Press Sec googled the term the 1st hit reads…….
From-Urban Dictionary: “pimped outpimped out cool pimp awesome tricked out nice phat pimpin ride … By the amount of bling-bling he was flashing, we knew he was pimped out. …”
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=pimped+out ”
“cool” “awesome” does not sound bad to me….
Now we all know there are other connotations but why take the low road? Maybe Hill wanted to play the sympathy vote??
Original Message–
From: Philippe Reines
To: David Shuster
Date: Thu, 7 Feb 2008 7:14 p.m.
David – how hard is it for someone, anyone, in the vast MS/NBC universe to contact any one of us at the campaign for comment about Chelsea before going on air and saying that she is being “pimped out” ? It’s absurdly offensive. And what the hell does that even mean?
I just don’t get MSNBC – does GE not allow you to make toll calls? What’s the problem.
Philippe Reines
Press Secretary
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton
LOL! ya gotta love white ppl! you can’t even reach denial mode that the little cable mouth called chelsea clinton a whore without getting into…vanilla ice of all people! i just love it. you so desperately want it to be ok to call the clintons names- but you need an excuse when it happens- some back door vagueness or alternative meaning. the daughter of a first lady- chelsea clinton- was called a whore by a television professional without even speaking to her- with her picture on the screen- and you so desperately want it to be… OK…if it’s OK- it’s OK- you don’t need vanilla ice. (i can’t believe you know less about thug life than vanilla ice lol)
Mr Rourke,
Are you going to write a complementary article ‘Black men cannot communicate complex ideas’ for balance?
This article is equally as juvenile and foolish.
What is the relationship of Chelsea to the campaign? Is she a volunteer, using her own (or her parent’s) money to travel, set up speaking engagements, etc.? Is she a paid campaigner? Does she collect speaking fees?
Did she take a leave of absence from her day job? Is it a paid leave of absence? Does that count as a campaign contribution from her employers to the campaign under current campaign finance laws?
These are the sort of things a REPORTER should be reporting.
Pure bunk… English is a ‘mongrel’ language which absorbs all words of utility. Check a dictionary sometime — it’s full of “russ” and “Hindu” and other notations of origin, for words which enter our ‘slang’ with daily regularity.
Who is the official leftwing version of the French Academy? Who grant ‘permission’ for anyone outside the Original Group to use a term of slang?
This is LEFTWING FASCISM, but fortunately in this rare instance, it stung a lefty journalist for once. A mixed review here: he used a phrase which was absolutely perfect for the occasion, but got stung by his own PC view which he never condemns.
sometimes the Gods Laugh Loud at these numbskulls, but greater numbskullery is that which excuses the notion that ‘pipm’ an dother terms are limited in any way.
how about “Diss” and other terms which have been borrowed by non-blacks for two decades? Where do we whitey boys go to get ‘permission slip’ from the teacher to practice that normal dictionary freedom?