No, Time Magazine Isn’t Racist. We Just Need To Relax A Bit.

Guys? Guys? The word “rejigger” is not a racial slur. It doesn’t originate from a racial slur.

When you rejigger something, you give it a good shake. The word probably comes from the word “jigger”, which is a machine that…well…gives something a good shake. That paint-mixing machine at the local Sherwin Williams could probably be called a “jigger”, if we still used the term anymore. A potter’s wheel also used to be called a jigger as well, so you could also say that rejigger means to recast or reform something.

So, Time Magazine didn’t use the word improperly. It seems to me that Barak’s mini-landslide in South Carolina certainly did shake up the conventional wisdom on the Dem side of the primaries and there’s no doubt that it recast the race. I think the headline was a very clever use of a word that we don’t hear much anymore. I’d think that a little bit of wit and the use of a perfetly cromulent word would be something we’d like to see. Perhaps not.

I’m not going to the dictionary here because I don’t think I need to. It’s an awful long stretch to go from “rejigger” to racial epithet based on the word “jig”. Those who are chiding Time Magazine, even gently, are, I think, guilty of being just a little bit (dare I say it?) niggling.

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Category: Oh, THAT liberal media., The 2008 Horse Race