Obama Australia visit given racially insensitive operational title
The New South Wales police use a computer program to come up with operational titles:
"Various groups of nouns belonging to a selection of themes are entered and the operation name is generated from an existing database," a spokeswoman said last night.
Police seeking an operation name ask the computer to provide one. "This was the case in this instance," she said.
US consular officials were aghast when briefed by their counterparts in the NSW Police Force about the title, Blue Gum. In America, a "bluegum" is offensive slang for a lazy African-American who refuses to work.
Contacts in the NSW police inform me that they are relieved computer-generated alternatives to Blue Gum were 86ed. Some of the computer-suggested alternative operational names for the now cancelled Obama visit:
Flash in the pan
KFC
Monkey business
Ace of spades
Midnight
One term wonder
Bonzo
Watermelon
And those are the names that are reproducible.
posted by Anonymous at 5:35 PM |
2 Comments:
I am fifty-seven years old. I have lived that entire time in the American South, and not in a monastery. I have never, ever heard the phrase 'bluegum' or 'blue gum' used in any way, let alone as a racial epithet.
A reference from 2005:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=blue+gum
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