In not saying the word, he wrongly believed he wasn’t using it ‘I’m not going to use the R-word.” Jeremy Hunt’s refusal to call out Donald Trump’s racist tweet as racist was craven. His refusal even to say “racist” out loud was gutless. I’ve always thought strange the convention that we can feign not to use a word by talking about it as the “X word”. There are two kinds of words we often pretend we’re not using. First, there are profanities and obscenities. Some newspapers talk of the “F-word” or “f**k”. I understand why one may not want to use the word “fuck”, but replacing certain letters with asterisks, or using only the capitalised initial, is not “not using” the word. Nor does it make the sentiment any less profane or obscene. Continue reading...