In all the stories about the "slur" that got retired Irish racecar driver Derek Daly fired from a broadcasting job, and caused his son Conor, an American racecar driver, to lose a sponsorship with Lily Diabetes, you won't hear what his father actually said, a common feature of "slur" stories.
Last night WISH - TV severed ties with me after former sports broadcaster Bob Lamey apparently inaccurately attributed a racial slur to me during an interview in the early 80’s. It was reported on their web site that I confirmed this. Both of these reports are factually incorrect. On this subject, I was never interviewed by Bob Lamey. The slanderous statements made by Bob, and now being attributed to me, are not only factually incorrect, but offensive.
The facts are: In the early 80’s, after I had recently relocated to the United States, I was interviewed by radio reporter Larry Henry and I was asked about my situation with my new American team. I responded by explaining that I was a foreign driver now in America, driving for an American team, with an American crew, and with an American sponsor – and that if things did not go well, the only ‘n’ in the wood pile” would be me.
At the time, I meant that I, as the new foreigner on the team, would shoulder the blame and I would be the scapegoat. This was not in any way shape or form meant to be a racial slur. This phrase was commonly used in Ireland, Britain, and Australia. When I used that phrase in the early 80’s, I had no idea that in this country that phrase had a horribly different meaning and connotation, as it was commonplace in Ireland.[More]
This expression--"the [Deplorable Word] in the woodpile" is an old one, and goes back in the US to the election of 1860, when the Republicans were accused of hiding an anti-slavery agenda. Wikipedia defines it as
a figure of speech originating in the United States meaning "some fact of considerable importance that is not disclosed—something suspicious or wrong".
It almost never refers to an actual person of African descent. Derek Daly, a white immigrant from then monoracial Ireland used it to refer to himself.
In 2003 Media Watch Australia (a lefty organization) defended its use on radio by left-wing journalist Margo Kingston on the grounds that it was "a colloquialism, which means a hidden or unacknowledged problem. Some people may feel it's in bad taste, but we wouldn't pick up someone for using the term in context." But in 2017, Theresa May suspended an English MP named Anne Marie Morris for using it in exactly that sense.
“Now I’m sure there will be many people who’ll challenge that, but my response and my request is look at the detail, it isn’t all doom and gloom. Now we get to the real [slur] in the woodpile, which is, in two years what happens if there is no deal?”
See A vicious reaction to a very bad word | Tory MP Anne Marie Morris was undone by an out-of-date idiom, by Rod Liddle, Spectator, July 15, 2017.
Why did this expression survive in relatively polite company in Ireland, Australia (where it appeared in the media just the other day) and Devon, where Ms. Morris hails from, when it vanished from use in America years ago? Well, those places had few actual blacks to be offended. Now they do.
Oh, and it's the Current Year.
