Lenny Bruce and Dave Chappelle Are Right, Of Course, and Justice Harlan Concurs

In case I am so old that I know stuff you don’t know, Lenny Bruce was a ground-breaking comedian in the 1950s and 1960s. One of his themes was this. Words themselves contain nothing wrong. There are no bad words; just bad people, bad connotations. Words acquire bad connotations through censorship; eliminate censorship and you eliminate the state of mind that says words have to be censored. Remove the taboo and no one will care. Then the word will lose its harmful potency.  Click: Dustin Hoffman channels Lenny Bruce.   It is not very difficult to connect Lenny Bruce to …

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