On our shiny new news tab, someone posted a link to a Rush Limbaugh transcript, where Rushbo uses “slumdog” as something akin to an ethnic slur:
CALLER: Perseverance. America, you have to persevere, you have to be patient. … What really irks me is with corporate America, people saying, “Rush, can I get my job back? Are you going to be able to get my job back from something that’s been outsourced and the corporations are going all over, out of the country.” Why don’t these people invest in America, invest in corporate America, become stockholders. The CEOs and the boards of directors pay lip service to their shareholders. Invest in America and invest in yourself by investing in corporate America. Wouldn’t that help?
RUSH: It might. No question about it. But the whole thing about outsourcing, even President Obama slipped up. I love this, ’cause the teleprompter, that teleprompter sometimes sneaks things in there that are not in Obama’s best interests to say, but the teleprompter nevertheless makes him say them. Obama got a call during his virtual town meeting about outsourcing jobs, he said, “Look, those jobs aren’t coming back.” There’s a reason they aren’t coming back. They’re outsourced for a reason, an economic reason, and they’re not coming back. If you’re sitting out waiting for a job that’s now being done by a slumdog in India, and you’re waiting for that job to be canceled, for the slumdog to be thrown out of work, and you to get the job, it ain’t going to happen. It’s not the way economics works. Even Obama’s teleprompter got him to admit that. (link)
The odd thing is, I agree roughly with what Rush Limbaugh is saying about some outsourced jobs. He has Obama all wrong, of course (see an excerpt of Obama’s Virtual Town Hall Meeting below). The real problem here is the contemptuous way he’s throwing around the word “slumdog.” But then, contempt is Rush Limbaugh’s only working emotion.
I’m not going to start a letter-writing campaign or a boycott, or anything; there’s no point tilting at this particular “Windbagmill.” But it still needs to be said: Rush, for your information, many of the jobs that have been outsourced in recent years involve high levels of skill and training. The people who do them are not “slumdogs”; they are professionals.
Here is what President Obama actually had to say about outsourcing in his Virtual Town Hall Meeting a few weeks ago:
Now, a lot of the outsourcing that was referred to in the question really has to do with the fact that our economy — if it’s dependent on low-wage, low-skill labor, it’s very hard to hang on to those jobs because there’s always a country out there that pays lower wages than the U.S. And so we’ve got to go after the high-skill, high-wage jobs of the future. That’s why it’s so important to train our folks more effectively and that’s why it’s so important for us to find new industries — building solar panels or wind turbines or the new biofuel — that involve these higher-value, higher-skill, higher-paying jobs.
So I guess the answer to the question is, not all of these jobs are going to come back. And it probably wouldn’t be good for our economy for a bunch of these jobs to come back because, frankly, there’s no way that people could be getting paid a living wage on some of these jobs — at least in order to be competitive in an international setting.
So what we’ve got to do is create new jobs that can’t be outsourced. And that’s why energy is so promising. We’ve been talking about what’s called a smart grid, and some of you may have heard of this. The basic idea is, is that we’re still using an electricity grid that dates back 100, 150 years ago. Well, think about all the gizmos you guys are carrying — (laughter) –all the phones and the BlackBerrys and the this and the that. You’re plugging in all kinds of stuff in your house. We’ve got an entirely new set of technologies, huge demands in terms of energy, but we’ve got a grid that’s completely outdated. (link)
What I like about this approach is that it balances economic realities with a positive, constructive message. What might be more concerning is Obama’s conflation of the loss of manufacturing jobs with jobs in IT and finance. The movement in manufacturing jobs probably shouldn’t be thought of as “outsourcing,” in my view (this may be a debatable point).
Rush’s message is, “Some slumdog in a loincloth in India is taking your job, but quit Whining, you lousy Whiners.” He mocks both Americans and Indians. Obama’s message is, “Maybe some jobs aren’t coming back. Let’s create new ones, which are better.” No scapegoating, no hate. Still: is the difference here one of content, or of tone?
But Amardeep, there’s a problem even with saying what needs to be said.
Saying:
is implying, in effect, that there’s something wrong with being called a “slumdog” when one is a professional. And that, in effect, means that there is something wrong about living in a slum, period. And stating that IT workers in India are not slumdogs (however much that needs to be said) implies that there is something wrong in being a slumdog, about growing up and living in a slum.
This reminds me of the time when Praful Bidwai wrote a column calling IT workers “cyber-coolies” and it felt wrong on so many different levels.
is implying, in effect, that there’s something wrong with being called a “slumdog” when one is a professional. And that, in effect, means that there is something wrong about living in a slum, period. And stating that IT workers in India are not slumdogs (however much that needs to be said) implies that there is something wrong in being a slumdog, about growing up and living in a slum.
Well, actually no. There is nothing wrong with living in a slum, though there is certainly something wrong with the fact that slums are so prevalent in Indian cities.
What’s wrong is use of the word “slumdog,” wielded as an insult, directed against anyone.
The film tried to “redirect” what might be an insult by attaching it to an improbable, verging on silly, rags-to-riches story. But the way people like Rush are using the word, it no longer carries that “triumph of the human spirit over adversity” message. Here, it’s just a crude ethnic slur.
Yeah, I think his comment is just more PR for that movie.
As if that movie needs any more PR than it already got.
I agree. But the model minority types don’t want to be lumped in with slum dwellers, noble or not.
I actually hope that some of these jobs are going to slum residents. They need jobs too for goodness sake!
The jobs that would go to slums, don’t go to India. They either go to China or are lost to machines (our real overlords :))
TELEPROMPTER! TELEPROMPTER! TELEPROMPTER! TELEPROMPTER!
Rush is the Skipper to Piyush Jindal’s Gilligan. Good, Skipper. Keep calling us slumdogs. Stick that image in your base’s head when they go to the primary polls.
who cares about Rush anyway yunno he’s Fred Savage in disguise:) slumdog please!
Rush’s didn’t go to college himself. His ignorance and the general dumbing down of the media is only one example of why American needs to put more effort into education, technological innovation, scientific research and becoming globally competitive.
Without fair and equal access to quality education and health care the divide between poor and rich will grow ever greater. Without improving education and reversing the worst high school drop out rate in the modern world leaders of industry will continue to look elsewhere for skilled labor, and in so doing hurt both the American market and its people.
As the cover of the latest Wired Magazine says “Obama gets it!”
Rush didn’t go to college himself. His ignorance and the general dumbing down of the media is one example of why America needs to put more effort into education, technological innovation, scientific research and becoming globally competitive.
Without fair and equal access to quality education and health care the divide between poor and rich will grow ever greater. Without improving education and reversing the worst high school drop out rate in the modern world leaders of industry will continue to look elsewhere for skilled labor, and in so doing hurt both the American market and its people.
As the cover of the latest Wired Magazine says “Obama gets it!”
Maybe it’s high time Rush got a telemprompter 🙂 and I do think Rush’s tone was of contempt, and I find it increasingly uncomfortable to be answering questions about ‘slumdog millionaire’ in general. Just the other day an assitant acting instructor caught me offgaurd when she said ‘Thank god for the kid in the movie, looks like the hole he jumped into was actually made of peanut butter and some other stuff.’ I’m like – wtf? You expected him to jump into real sh*t? Maybe, the protests against the movie name are valid – for people like Rush. They at least need to know it is not an exact word in English (he may need a spell checker for his teleprompter to understand that), and then an offensive-syntax checker that can point out his mostly meaningless rhetoric that he keeps spewing out at Obama.
The following para from an interesting book The Global Class War sums up the big picture problem of globalization/outsourcing –
“….Markets within nations inevitably produce groups who have more money than others. So it would be odd if global markets were not creating an international class of people whose economic interests have more in common with each other than with the majority people who share their nationality……”
I guess Rush belongs to the “left out” group.
‘Without fair and equal access to quality education and health care the divide between poor and rich will grow ever greater. Without improving education and reversing the worst high school drop out rate in the modern world leaders of industry will continue to look elsewhere for skilled labor, and in so doing hurt both the American market and its people”
The airwaves have been filled with this liberal bs for the last thirty years. Increased spending on education and health care have not reversed widening social inequality in the last thirty five years. Liberals want to make sure there are jobs for them in education and health care and constantly harp about the allegedly poor quality of education and healthcare. No mention is a made of an immigration policy that draws uneducated people into the country and depressess the wages of labor. Free trade has decimated manufacturing which paid decent wages. America’s decision to embrace free trade has been a disaster for most americans.
Tenali says: “Liberals want to make sure there are jobs for them in education and health care and constantly harp about the allegedly poor quality of education and healthcare”
Funny that you brought it up, because at almost all the so called welfare projects that I worked at, the majority of workforce comprised of people with conservative ideas. Its almost as if the government is a bastion of the right wingers. I always wanted to question this dichotomy in their thinking, about their quality of sleep because they are earning their bread and butter from a program that they so seem to despise. Not to mention, their commitment towards it because of their opposing views of the program.
Any thoughts on that?
Obama did get it right. I am amazed at the guy’s wisdom, (specially since it coincides with my own musings!). But I am afraid he might be getting caught-up in the bureaucratic process. On the campaign trail, Obama said that spending on education was not the issue as kids in India (and China) study in almost deplorable conditions and are still being competitive. But now he throwing more money at the education system with no truly innovative initiatives, money which will probably be wasted as usual.
I disagree. There’s no way Rush’s statements even come close to the level of bigotry Obama is enabling, especially considering the power differnce between the 2 men.
Rush, I assume, is pro-outsourcing on principle, and is willing to stand on principle even if it benefits Indians at the expense of Americans. What could be more anti-racist than to advocate policies that hurt your own group, simply because they’re the right thing to do? The caller gives Rush the opportunity to play the race card, insult Indians, instead he turns it around and puts down whiny Americans. Unlike Obama, he’s willing to offend a group from whom he needs support. His language my be edgy, arguably racist, but the end result is to advocate policies that treat individuals equally under the law, without regard to which group benefits.
Obama is almost the precise opposite. His rhetoric’s sensitive but his politics play the race card, while being unprincipled to boot. The best evidence of this is the nafta/canada flap during the primaries, when he went around spouting anti-nafta rhetoric to white working class voters in PA and OH while simultaneously winking and nodding to the Canadians that he doesn’t really mean it. At least Reagan believed in states rights.
All this was part of the democrats southern strategy to retake states like OH and PA by playing on the Xenophobic fears of working class Americans during a severe recession, when protectionism, nationalism and racism historically go hand in hand. Hillary started it off with her unfortunate “Hard-working white Americans” comment while Marc Warner used the convention to take aim at “Bangalore, India”, directly stroking anti-Indian resentment for the sake of Obama, who himself was caught in a “d-Punjab” brouhaha earlier, apparently failing to head Lee atwaters’s advice:
This was what the democrats were doing, except replace Indians for blacks. In this instance, Rush schooled Obama on how to be a true anti-racist.
Manju, what’s the matter with you? You’re using complete sentences and spellcheck in the defense of Rush? He doesn’t deserve the effort!
Amardeep,
To me, a slumdog is a term for a smart, tenacious, and innovative person. I am going to give Rush a pass on this cuz he might have inadvertently praised Indians working on the outsourced jobs.
I did not grow up in a slum btw. 🙂
This was what the democrats were doing, except replace Indians for blacks
See the Dems are actually doing the Indians in PA and OH a favor. For example, as Manju can attest to, the whites did the same thing against Jews in New York. So the Jews then started Investment Banks and other financial insitutions. So the Dems are in a very clever fashion, helping Indians in OH and PA. They can aspire to be the new Jews of Ohio and PA. Manju is very well informed on how to pull yourself up by your financial boot straps and start Lehman etc.
Ever since Slumdog came out I have been receiving so many questions about how bad it must be in India. First, Americans (whites) need to realize that there is also poverty in the US. Now, idiots like Rush think its okay to call Indians slumdog. I am really starting to hate this film.
Touche white trash, touche.
“In this instance, Rush schooled Obama on how to be a true anti-racist. “
passes out on computer in disbelief of others’ stupidity
For my part, I have always hated the term “states rights” – always code for ‘we’ll get to the issue on OUR terms’ even if people are being treated unequally, stop telling us what to do. Even saw an old black and white Reagan movie where he delivers a monologue stating the same thing – poor, oppressed southerners – anyone wonder how patriotic secession was ? But I digress.
John Stewart and Colbert have done some great stuff skewering Limbaugh.
This the same guy that stated: Michael J Fox is faking / exaggerating his condition, Colin Powell supported Obama only because he is black, got his audience riled up on things that don’t affect the majority of them (estate tax) and makes sexist / racist statements all the time – but they very scary thing is that he does indeed have a huge following. Just look at all the Repubs who have had to pay him respect and apologies after making statements against him, and then getting fallout from their constituents. He is like a very ignorant godfather. As people have stated here – he is not educated and yet people feel informed from his statements – something I consider very dangerous and irresponsible (like Hannity casually stating on FOX that global warming is a hoax – not a scientific debate, but a broad, one sided statement from a laymen).
I am more scared of Glen Beck and his calls to arms.
Manju Says:
I wonder how well your ‘sarcasm-radar” works. If you couldn’t detect any trace of sarcasm in what Rush said, you must at least be able detect his frustration of losing America to a third world. I guess one cannot blame you if you choose to perform head-in-sand-ostrich-meditation.
Yes, the whole world is coming after your money, your hard inherited money. Save it or better yet, take it with you – burn it on your pyre when you log out.
Scared? Did anyone see that one episode where Glen was talking taxes to that martial arts actor (forget his name but he played a Texan cop in some TV show – OK Chuck Norris, it just came to me) and Glen complained that at a MacDonald’s drive thru they didn’t get something right about the order, or the window person forgot to put straws in the bag or something, and he was going on and on about how he doesn’t want his hard earned money in the form of taxes going to pay for these people? And that in this country if you “take pride in your work” and work hard, you will get ahead, but why should conscientious workers like him have to have their tax money go to “supporting” lazy fast food workers who don’t take “pride” in their work and forget stuff like straws or ketchup?
Can someone explain what he meant?
I mean, if someone is working at a fast food chain, aren’t they paying their own taxes? Whenever I had jobs like that, taxes were automatically taken out of the weekly check.
So then Maritial Arts Actor chuckles and said, “yes it annoys me too when that happens” and then tried to steer the conversation in a more sensible direction.
i didn’t hear the quote in question and haven’t listened to the radio in years, but knowing rush i would be surprised to learn he wasn’t ideologically mated to free-markets and thus pro globalization and out-sourcing. i could be wrong and am open to evidence that he’s moved more toward pat Buchanan’s position, but short of that, i would have to say rush is not being sarcastic.
well said, pagal! hurray to the democrats’ whatchammacalit?? southern strategy.
i did a quick google to find out his postion on outsourcing, and came up with this:
so, he wacked Americans again, it seems. good for him. dissent is the highest form of patriotism.
obama, in contrast, takes the easy road, telling American workers what they want to hear. his position, it should be noted, is harder to discern, since its apparent he’s generally pro-free trade (nafta-canada flack for example) but wants to simultaneously appear to be protectionist, since its political winner, especially during a recession, and especially with working class whites who he needed to win crucial swing states. however, he doesn’t want to appear so protectionist that he triggers xenophobia (like the d-punjab thing) so he must be careful to stay in dogwhitle land. benefit from a policy that nicely overlaps with racism while maintaining plausible denial.
this platitude is funniest when mouthed by a limbaugh devotee.
There is difference between poverty in US and widespread abject poverty that you see in India. 26% of India or 260m Indians live below Rs 12 a day and 77% on less than $1 a day. About 230 million Indians are undernourished and 42% of children below the age of 5 are underweight.
Limbaugh is a corporate stooge. His job is to distract the middle class and working class from identifying their interests and dealing with threats to their interests.
Repeat after me: Slumdog is a term of endearment, Slumdog is a term of endearment, Slumdog is a term of endearment, Slumdog is a term of endearment, Slumdog is a term of endearment…
Here is letter which summarizes the state of the economy.
“Even though national productivity has steadily risen since 1980, approximately doubling every decade, the share of the bottom 90 percent decreased more than 20 percent from 1980 to 2006, while the wealthiest 1 percent nearly tripled their after-tax percentage of our nation’s income. The top 1 percent of Americans now owns more than the bottom 90 percent.
Reagan reduced the top tax rates for the wealthy and corporations in 1981, resulting in the worst recession since the 1930s. In 1983, he signed the largest payroll tax increase in history, promising to create a Social
Security surplus to fund baby boomer retirements, knowing he would loot it to pay for additional tax cuts for the wealthy, which he did. He simultaneously raised the bottom rate and taxed unemployment benefits. Our Social Security surplus is gone. The transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the wealthy has been up to $3 trillion, according to economist Ravi Batra.
A progressive income tax is not “penalizing success†or “envying the rich.†It is necessary in order to avoid excessive concentrations of wealth and power that, if left unchecked, would result in economic collapse and destruction of the system that enables people to generate wealth in the first place.
Ted Daum, Corvallis “
Professional Indians:
Slum Dweller Indians: “…VOX POP 1 (translated): In the film they refer to slum dwellers as dogs. It’s a word the British used to use to refer to Indians. Now Indians are calling us by that name and the film has an Oscar nomination.
VOX POP 2 (translated): They call us dogs in the film. We’re not dogs. We’re humans, just like everyone else. We eat and play like others and we also want to live….” http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2008/s2477354.htm
“…”Referring to people living in slums as dogs is a violation of human rights,” said Mr Vishwakarma, who works for a group promoting the rights of slum dwellers….” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article5597745.ece
Kinda finding it hard to feel sympathy for Indians who are “professionals” and object to being called Slumdog. Too many were focused on winning an Oscar when Indians who lived in the slums were speaking up for themselves. Any professional Indian who really did not see it coming that all Indians would be vulnerable to be called Slumdogs is really naive.
Ombama – when I say scared, I don’t mean that Glen Beck’s crying jags scare me, just the fact that these guys even think the way they do and also have a large following which thinks the same. When they have vague discussions on ‘revolution’ because of taxes, it scares me because guys like Limbaugh and Beck and everyone else at Fox come from such a place of blind cynicism – complete utter contempt for ‘liberals’ and ‘community workers’.
Yet these same people do not consider wiretapping, torture, rendition, etc ‘big government’ – but hey, if you want to raise taxes by 3 percent on the rich, and spend money on health and education, you’re a socialist who wants to give away free abortions. They can go ahead and ‘teabag’ whoever they want – but they underlying hysteria and hypocrisy is frightening.
Existential question: Do things happen to us or for us?
I see name calling as an oppurtunity to stand in solidarity with the disenfranchised. Slumdog? Why not? They are poor people with the world pitted against them yet have you ever noticed the poor can be amongst the kindest, most generous people you will ever meet?
Take them oppurtunity to share with the namecaller whatever you know about the struggles of our global poor.
Someone calls you a “ho”? – stand in solidarity with poor single moms who work hard in the world’s oldest profession in order to feed and clothe their children.
Don’t hate. Educate.
Then obviously working class people would not be the demographic these men are trying to reach, and it’s not likely that working class people would support them.
That’s the thing – he does have a large following with white, working class people – this is why those politicians, including the head of the RNC had to apologize to Limbaugh – because their working class constituents raised hell.
He has over 15 million listeners, and climbing since the election. This is the irony – they get regular people worked up about issues which only affect the rich – but on principle – they agree because this is all they listen to.
That is just it. It would have been nice for more “professional” Indians to have stood in solidarity with the disenfranchised when in the beginning it was only the Indians living in the slums being called slumdog. Like one of them said in the interview above, other Indians began calling them slumdogs (in addition to every other thing their are called). Now that professional Indians are being called slumdogs by Westerners they are upset.
Manju@15, Both Obama and Rush are masters of mixing logic and rhetoric. Thats why they appeal even though sometimes they appear disingenuous.
If his outsourcing stance is due to stooginess, then how do you explain his position on tarp (he’s oppressed)? Surely nothing is more corporate that tarp but yet he’s stocking a populist backlash.
Clearly what’s hap penned is that a huge swath of the republican party, led by rush, are hiding behind theory: taking a hyper-principled stance in response to the economic crises knowing that their policies (lasisez faire) have no chance of actually being enacted. Thus they can keep their integrity in tact without suffering the consequences. after all, we’ll never know what would’ve happened if we had just let the banks go under.
there’s a lot wrong with this stance–its childish, simplistic, unpractical, etc— but being racist or even corporatist is not one of them.
The dems, led by obama, are in the opposite position. they’re being the adults–making hard and ugly choices (like bailing out banks, allowing for bonus, hiring people like summers and geinter who contributed to the mess). all these choices reek of corporatism and pose a moral dilemma (welfare for the rich), but making imperfect choices with no clear cut principles is what politics in the real world is all about…something rush has the luxuary not to have to consider. but like anti-torture dems, he gets to keep his principles.
There’s no way Obama actually believes that.
Who actually protested against the movie? Amitabh, Hindus, “slum” residents… I still remember the choice expletives hurled at these people by “professional Indians” (whatever that is). And now it turns out that Amitabh was right. Don’t expect any sympathy.
It is sad to see us poor Indians derided over and over again. We are just trying to earn a living – be it the H1 workers in the US, or the Indians working from ‘offshore’ centers.
Whatever happened to the much touted ‘global economy’?
You are correct. In general, Rush has been quite consistently pro-globalization and that is one issue where he can stand apart from the rest of right-wing talk show hosts. One good example is the Dubai Ports World controversy [link] when he was strongly behind Bush’s position. Sean, Laura, Savage etc. opposed the deal. Rush is not a protectionist. Neither is Obama, of course.
I see this as first of all a triumph for Slumdog Millionaire. This insult didn’t exist before the screenwriter invented it, and now it has gotten into the brain of a man who strikes me as very unlikely to spend much time watching foreign films.
There is a larger issue here, though. The US has, in my lifetime, moved from a society in which scientists and engineers were seen as essential to progress to a society which mostly assumes that science and engineering will happen, but what really matters is law or business. India still tends to see scientists and engineers as essential to progress and progress is very important to Indians {as best I can judge as an American}. This can be understood economically, by noticing that that the real income of US engineers is about what it was in the early 1970’s {MBS’s and lawyers have done better}. It can be seen in the problems NASA has had, though the US has much more to spend, and thus much more to spend on space flight than the Soviet Unioin and Russia ever did, it has not come close to spending the same proportion of its budgets on space flight as Russia has {or probably India}. Etc. The point is not that the US will collapse due to failure to engineer things, but that societies that seem to be much poorer will do much better relative to the US than one might expect.
Another issue is that the US is perfectly willing to train and hire Indian {and Chinese} scientists and engineers, and then send them back to India or China in an economic downturn. If India and China make effective use of the people we briefly employ and send back there, we might end up regretting this.
Also, since most scientists and engineers are not strong in social analysis, and it is not obvious how to transform the US system, US scientists and engineers will tend to think of Indians as lower wage competition. After all, the Indians are lower wage competition. It is much easier to blame the Indians, most of whom are not that powerful, than it is to blame the people who set up the system. It is even harder, if you come from the small subculture that is still excited about NASA and technical progress, to figure out how why the system is the way it is and how to change it.
Starting to ramble, I guess.
For those who want more, I have a blog: http://www.rememberjenkinsear.blogspot.com/
though it is mostly about the Pakistan crisis. Back in 2005-6, when everyone was worried about Iran getting the Bomb, it occurred to me that since many of our enemies were in Pakistan, and Pakistan had tested the bomb, our worries might be misplaced. Once I got interested, I started reading more, etc.
Good luck,
Ray,
Rush is hilarious. His show, while it often provides deep insights, is meant to be overblown, overhyped and he chooses to deliberately cause controversy. That’s what makes it so damn entertaining. He’s an equal opportunity hater in a sense, and he makes good points economically. You have to take his words with a dash of salt, because he’s explicitly trying not to be PC. So it’s best not to be offended, and listen to his show for what it is, a sarcastic and insightful critique on the administration’s hypocrisy and cultish nature of liberal politics.
Actually, just this one time, Rush Limbaugh actually gets it, in terms of the global competitive landscape American workers are facing. And its quite unclear to me whether he’s using “slumdog” as an term of contempt or of admiration.
But that itself perhaps gives the game away. Limbaugh being Limbaugh, he’s probably hoping it catches on as a term of derision-it would make his mission easier. But if anyone kicks up a fuss about the term he can always wear his halo and justify it as admiration, not epithet.
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/rushlimbaugh/a/limbaughquotes.htm
Add this Rushie’s quotes..
They’re 12 percent of the population. Who the hell cares?
Take that bone out of your nose and call me back(to an African American female caller).
So “slum dog” is the new “macaca” epithet ? Ironic since everybody so wanted the film to win at the Oscars. This time it didn’t need some lone camera man capturing the scene. Up there ion the big screen in 5.1 Dolby sound. Don’t wish for something, you will get it.
“It’s a word the British used to use to refer to Indians. Now Indians are calling us by that name and the film has an Oscar nomination.”
Are you sure about this? If they did, they probably borrowed the term from the locals. Generally the British quite loved and respected dogs. At one point Parliament wanted to extend rights to dogs denied to the working classes. Just kidding in the last sentence. I once listened to a lecture by a Persian psychologist who talked about the word ‘dog’ being an insult in his country. He laughed about the wonderful life dogs have in America–special food, doctors, toys, movies about them, etc. But in persia they were very badly treated.
Then the white American friend I had who grew up in africa. Africans would use the world ‘dog’ as an insult and the American kids thought it was hilarious because they really liked dogs. “Dog” wasn’t a common insult (well, bitch was, but that has a different connotation), among northwest Euros. I don’t know why. It’s just never been.
Slumdog was a term coined by Danny Boyle and Simon Beaufoy; it was never really part of the common vernacular before. But as a previous poster said, it’s so intricately connected to the film that anyone using it is just doing PR for the film.