Dear, Lisa Lampanelli: You Will Never Be A N*gga, So Stop Saying It

Self-proclaimed comedian, Lisa Lampanelli, has once again proven her fondness for back-door racism by referring to Girls creator, Lena Dunham, as her “nigga” on Twitter. That in and of itself is nothing spectacular, but her pathetic, self-serving attempts at justifying her vocabulary choice have probably been her funniest — unintentional — jokes to date.

And I don’t mean funny ha-ha; I mean funny as in she sounds like a damn idiot.

Me with my nigga @LenaDunham of @HBOGirls – I love this beyotch!! say.ly/oKP5chO—
Lisa Lampanelli (@LisaLampanelli) February 18, 2013

Undeniably, calling a woman bitch as an endearment is another problematic conversation worth having; but today, let’s deal with the most combustible issue. From Huffington Post to XOJane, Lampanelli has recycled the same tired, misguided rhetoric that some Black people use to justify re-purposing  plantation language as a show of camaraderie — namely, that the use of an “a” instead of an “er” makes the word acceptable:

“The N-word ending in ‘er’ is far different context from the word ending in ‘a.’ Ask any person who knows the urban dictionary, it means ‘friend,’” she said to Huffington Post’s Rob Shuter. “And by the way, if I had put the word ending in ‘er,’ that would have been a very derogatory thing about Lena meaning she is less than me, and I view her as very above me. ‘A’ on the end means ‘my friend.’

“I’ve played every comedy club and every theatre across the country for the last 25 years and seen a lot of audience members from different ethnic persuasions,” she continued. “I have been using these words since I started in comedy and guess what, people? I won’t stop anytime soon, just because your ass is up on Twitter. I have always used in my act every racial slur there is for Asians, blacks, gays, and Hispanics. To me, it’s acceptable if the joke is funny and if it is said in a context of no hate. It’s about taking the hate out of the word.”

You may be asking yourselves right now,“Did she really refer to the Urban Dictionary to get a more comprehensive grasp of “nigger” etiquette?”  Why, yes; yes, she did.

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Then in an interview dripping with White privilege, she told Pia Glenn that she doesn’t plan on censoring herself, because that would water down the art:

“…because I have, I think, over 800 likes of it on Instagram, I forget the number, I have to look it up. But here’s the thing, I’m not being pejorative, I’m not being dismissive, but I have to say I don’t care. And you wanna know why I don’t care? ‘Cause the minute a comic starts caring about every single person’s opinion, they become watered down, and horrible, and have no sense of relevance whatsoever.

“I’m not—and I’m not saying that about this gentleman, I’m just naming a name. I’m not Seinfeld. I’m not safe.”