Back in distant 2008 I wrote about the vile N-word:

What is the precise mechanism which makes people start to talk in arch post-modern jargon?

Like this: Labour needs to provide a convincing new narrative if left-of-centre politics are to remain the driving force in Britain.

Or this: Mr Brown and Mr Darling must find new ways of telling a story … a change of narrative will not be easy for them.

And this: An effective Labour narrative on the environment can help us win back many of the middle-class voters…

Polly: A new leader urgently needs to find a way to tell Labour’s narrative anew.

Countless tragic Labour narratives around at the moment, but a cursory Google search reveals that the Conservatives have plenty too.

I railed against this horrible n-word when it started being used by the European Directorate of the FCO. It conveys a sense of unserious sly, slippery subjectivity. Of made-up fiction, not hard facts. Of fleeting disloyalty to Ideas as to Purpose…

It seems to me to have receded a bit, but maybe I don’t get out enough. No, I’m wrong. Look at the Guardian:

On Egypt (12 June): 

The announcements were eventually removed by officials who worried that the point of the videos was being missed. It wasn’t. The adverts are very clearly the continuation of a state TV narrative that existed before last year’s revolution.

On the Olympic opening ceremony:

According to the ceremonies’ executive producer, Stephen Daldry, the narrative will invoke "who we were, who we are and what we will be". Both Boyle and Daldry used the word visceral.

*Sighs*

However, what about the real N-word: nigger and all its Twitterish variations of form, grammar (gramma?)and effect: nigga, niggas, niggah, niggaz?

juicy j‏@therealjuicyj

Yall feeling that "bands a make her dance"? I got anotha remix imma drop dats gone freak u niggaz out

Is it ever OK for any ‘white’ person other than those in Pulp Fiction ever to use these words? If so, when? And who decides?

Luckily someone other than me has dared to dive deep into these murky waters – Jonah Weiner at Slate. And, credit where credit is due, he goes into the subject with vigour and subtlety:

Abundant apprehensiveness about white people saying “nigger,” in any variation, regardless of context, is warranted. There is no possible utopian future in which racial injustice has been eradicated and white people can say “nigga” or “nigger” all day without any negative effects. This fantasy is, at root, nightmarish: The word nigger is a living monument to atrocity that we shouldn’t want to ever see eroded. An imaginary future where the word is free of its wounding potential wouldn’t be utopian at all, because it would entail historical amnesia.

At the same time, as C.K.’s bit helps to illustrate, we shouldn’t prohibit interesting engagements with a fraught word in the name of knee-jerk political correctness. Why is it so hard to imagine a (nonblack) musician today titling a song “Woman is the Nigger of the World,” as John Lennon and Yoko Ono did in 1972? The title is incendiary, but it would be silly to accuse Lennon and Ono of racism, at least without doing anything more than pointing at the presence of “nigger” in the title. We recognize the complex, critical way that the word functions in that formulation.

This is a fine conclusion:

There are no straightforward answers or blanket truths available in this line of inquiry, except that anyone who purports to have them isn’t to be trusted. The word nigger sits at the center of innumerable tensions, abuses, and traumas, like a diamond perched within a vast latticework of laser beams. Brush up against just one, and the sirens wail.

Nah-nah-nah-nah-nah-nah