Word: buffalo
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...staff position dutifully piles onto the pack of commentators who justifiably criticize the behavior of the University of Pennsylvania administration in the water buffalo incident. To be sure, free speech on college campuses must be vigorously protected, and restrictive speech codes are a very bad idea...
...staff position ignores the more intriguing question of why so much media space was devoted to the water buffalo incident, why so many people discussed the story with such enthusiasm. Our guess is this...
...Garden-Ville nursery in Austin, "poorly adapted plants put gardeners on a chemical treadmill, a treadmill we're trying to help them get off." Dromgoole, host of a popular radio and TV garden show, tells his audiences to get rid of Kentucky bluegrass and seed their lawns with buffalo grass, a robust short-stemmed native needing only occasional mowing. Instead of finicky azaleas, Dromgoole recommends lantana, an attractive flowering shrub that, in central Texas at least, thrives on benign neglect...
Professor Dan Ben-Amos, an expert in Black culture and a linguistics expert, corroborated Jacobowitz's contention that "water buffalo" was a derivation of the Yiddish word "behema" which means "water oxen" and is slang for a "stupid person" or "fool...
...tragedy here is that the environment of free speech and expression has been poisoned at one of America's ostensibly finest instutions and those in charge, by their inaction and cowardice, aided in the process. Those concerned with freedom of thought and expression should join water buffalo everywhere in taking offense...