Sticks and Stones and Names

“Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me!”

That was chant we learned in grammar school, the response we were taught, for bullies who were calling us names. It was supposed to give power to us and show the bullies they couldn’t get to us (not with words anyway).

Unfortunately, it was a false promise. Growing up taught us that the bullies COULD get to us, with sticks, with stones and with words. And sometimes, it is the words that inflict the most painful damage of all.

Don Imus was the playground bully, and the Rutgers women’s basketball team was his victim. The team held its head up high, got an apology and, for the time being at least, saw the silencing of a bully. However, the damage done by the words uttered by Imus is not so easily healed. Unlike most broken bones, which can heal in a matter of weeks or months, the wounds opened by words can remain raw for a long, long time. How long will it be before any mention of the Rutgers women’s basketball team will not conjure up an echo of the terrible names they were called?

This week, we saw another example of the terrible power of words, the damage of name calling. When Alec Baldwin left that message for his daughter, he may have been justified in his anger, but was he justified in calling his daughter a “pig?” Does being angry excuse telling a young child that she doesn’t have “the brains and the decency of a human being”?

There probably isn’t a parent who hasn’t said something to his or her child that was regrettable. There are things, I am sure, that most parents wish had been handled differently. I’m sure Alec Baldwin is feeling that way now.

This is something that should never have been played for the public. Yet, there is something we can learn. Not only from Alec Baldwin’s rant, but Don Imus’ cheap shot comments too.

Words are powerful. Words can hurt. Did my stepfather think he was inflicting long lasting pain on me each time he called me “the Brainless Wonder?” Probably not, but I still wince today, even to type the words. And so it will be for the Rutgers team, and for Alec Baldwin’s daughter. Every time those words are repeated, in public, in private or in print – those wounds will open up again.

It is not the pen that is mightier than the sword, but the word.