Need an adult... what? Bookstore? Is she running out of Yaoi?
And "Marbles" is a brilliant nickname...
Marigold is an adult. The joke is from a meme.
Had to look it up. Still doesn't make much sense in this context...
I too have considered the word "Jew" as pejorative. I came to realize that sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't, and I don't think Jews have a problem with the word in their own usage. This link sheds a little light on the usage as well as the suggestion that referring to, say, "the Jew" or "the transgender" is limiting and more likely to be offensive.
Re: Jew. My mother's family was "conservative" (halfway between orthodox and reformed - my grandfather always wore a hat, only a yarmulka at schul, which he attended regularly, but no beard). My mother gave it up and married my father, a goy. I am at best cuturally jewish, growing up with the food, Yiddish around the house, and a nod to a few holidays.
But when I moved to the midwest for college, I was surprised to hear an expression that I've heard here in central PA as well (in a town with two synagogues, mind you), and throughout the south;
"I jewed him down / he jewed me out of it" in reference to driving a
really hard (and by implication unfair) bargain. The first time I heard it I could've sworn the guy had said "he
chewed me down", but it only took me a minute to realize what was actually being said.
And though my grampa would proudly state that he was a Jew, despite having come here in 1902 fresh from a russo/polish pogrom, this verb usage is downright offensive. The negative connotations of Jew as a noun were, I think, established more by the negative stereotyping campaign that led up to WWII - not that Jews were looked at in a favorable light before then, but it was not as out in the open, the very word was not an automatic condemnation. Not in all circles. They were tolerated in many places, even allowed to participate in society in some small ways. Persecuted and often blamed for things, yes, but not universally on the receiving end of a pike.
But the money thing?
That's where it gets sticky. Even Jews don't tell those jokes. And the casual use of that verb just left me stunned. I mean, the holocaust was 40 years previous when I first heard it - had nothing penetrated?
I still hear it. And I still feel sick when someone I know, someone I respect, brings it into casual conversation. Suddenly, they look much uglier to me than they did before. And that pisses me off, because it'll be someone I liked, and I'm not going to be able to disabuse them of this ingrained idea, and... well, I mourn their ignorance. It's
hard impossible to not have it bug me.
Sorry, I'll stop ranting now.
Warning - while you were typing 6 new replies have been posted, because you got distracted and ate dinner. You may wish to review your post.Nah, I'm good.