‘Sticks, Stones’ and Sophomoric Sayings of Sen. D’Amato

One of the adages I apparently took way too literally as a youngster was the old schoolyard refrain:

Sticks and stones may break my bones,

But words can never harm me.

Applied to my venue in late-1950s rural Nebraska, the lesson required only that I withstand such verbal broadsides as “four-eyes,” “hey, skinny,” and “you big sissy.”

We had never heard of self-esteem then, but could that have been one of its earliest incarnations? Must have been, because the message we were supposed to absorb was that name-calling meant nothing if we were strong enough to ignore it.

Over the years, personal attacks never got much more serious than that. Let’s face it, how vicious could other people get when describing a nondescript guy of Swedish heritage?

So, let me say right out of the chute that I haven’t been the target of racial or ethnic jokes.

That alone may disqualify me to discuss the subject, but I confess to a lifelong fascination over the concept of words as weapons and, more to the point in the current day, why people react so strongly to joking references about race or ethnicity.

The latest example (unless you count the Howard Stern radio show every day) is New York Sen. Al D’Amato’s over-the-top impression of Judge Lance Ito, in which the senator used the exaggerated caricature of a Japanese accent that polite society abandoned many years ago. In this case, it wasn’t the content that offended, but the use of the dialect.

D’Amato has been vilified from coast to coast, with some calling for his removal as a Senate committee chairman.

Don’t get excited, I’m not taking up the defense for D’Amato, but I’m wondering why my reaction is more of a yawn than a yelp.

When I heard the replay of D’Amato’s bit on the New York radio station, my reaction was that it was sophomoric and ill-becoming of a U.S. senator. For argument’s sake, I find myself wondering why that isn’t the common reaction--why D’Amato isn’t just seen as a boob and a boor, period, end of story.

Does this rise to the level of conduct unbecoming a senator? Or does it merely sink to the level of someone with a slightly more twisted sense of what’s funny than other people? Doesn’t the fact that scores of people have upbraided D’Amato make it clear that no one really buys into his caricature? Simply put, aren’t Japanese Americans too well ingrained in our society to be parodied anymore and aren’t we giving D’Amato way too much attention?

Let’s try a different spin on all this. Let’s start with the premise that D’Amato isn’t stupid. His most recent achievement before this was getting George Pataki elected governor of New York, so the senator has some savvy. Nor is he oblivious to ethnic put-ons, in that he’s Italian and has no doubt heard his share of caricatured Mafioso dialects. It isn’t as though D’Amato is unfamiliar with the milieu in which he was working.

The conclusion I draw--and I’m sorry if it’s much more benign than the conventional wisdom--is that D’Amato thinks stuff like that is funny even if others don’t. He’s a sticks-and-stones guy who probably thinks it’s too bad if nobody laughed.

The reflexive response was that D’Amato offended people of Japanese heritage. To be sure, many were offended, as were those of non-Japanese heritage.

So be it, but what keeps ringing in my ear is the level of reaction. In the current climate of political correctness or whatever you want to call it, words aren’t mere words anymore. If they were, D’Amato’s would be given the short shrift they deserve, he’d be branded a dunce and be forced to sit in the corner. People wouldn’t shriek at what he said; they’d ignore it.

That doesn’t seem to be an option anymore. Whether someone makes intemperate remarks about Jews or Arabs or Japanese or blacks or women or whomever, it no longer is enough to just shake our heads and wonder how the speaker comes up with such dumbness.

The response these days is that those words somehow sear into our collective flesh--that they aren’t words but swords that inflict deep physical wounds. Insults prompt us to stop just shy of asking for special counsels and legislative hearings.

Maybe I’m merely as dense as D’Amato. Maybe if there were more ethnic Swedish jokes, I’d get with the program and get outraged more easily.

And yet, for whatever reason, I’d welcome a retreat to the old days. To my ear, D’Amato just sounds like another of the dopey 9-year-olds in Nebraska who would have called me “four-eyes” and thought it was funny.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.