Nate Diaz, the UFC and the other F-word

It takes a certain brand of belligerence to get yourself suspended from the UFC over someone else’s positive drug test.

That kind of nose for trouble almost qualifies as a skill, or at the very least the low grumbling of an undeveloped talent.

Nate Diaz works in the rare business where you usually get paid extra to call your coworkers names, and still he couldn’t stop himself from using one of the relatively few slurs that could get him in instant trouble. That he did it in the post-Mitrione age – when the UFC has finally broken down and spelled out what not to do, and then demonstrated its willingness to bring the hammer down on those who do it anyway – that’s what makes it kind of amazing in its lack of foresight.

Anybody who’s even read a story about the UFC’s code of conduct could have told Diaz what was likely to happen after he sent out a tweet calling Bryan Caraway the other F-word (you know, the one that rhymes with bag). The fact that he did anyway tells us that Diaz either doesn’t follow MMA news very closely, or else he’s terrible at risk-assessment.

Or, a third option that seems more plausible once you read his manager’s eager defense of the tweet is that Diaz is one of the people who still doesn’t understand that you don’t get to decide for yourself what words mean.

That’s essentially what Mike Kogan, who recently took over as Diaz’s manager, unwittingly argued to our own Steven Marrocco on Thursday.

“Guess what?” Kogan told MMAjunkie.com (www.mmajunkie.com). “The word f—-t, at least in Northern California, and where Nate is from, means bitch. It means you’re a little punk. It has nothing to do with homosexuals at all. So when Nate made the comment that he made, he didn’t make it in reference to homosexuals or calling Caraway a homosexual. He just said it was a bitch move.”

Yeah, no. Sorry, Mike. That’s not the way words work. If you use a word that’s known primarily as a gay slur, then insist it’s OK because, in your own geographic region, that word also acts as a stand-in for other negative words, that does not make it any better. It’s like if you used the N-word to describe someone, then attempted to smooth things over by claiming that, hey, where you’re from, that’s just a word applied to people you hate.

Try that some time. Then go ahead and see yourself out, quickly.

The thing is, Kogan isn’t explaining anything we don’t already understand, though he seems to think he is. I doubt anyone read that tweet and thought Diaz was trying to call Caraway – a man who’s known as much for his relationship with female fighter Miesha Tate as for his own athletic achievements – a homosexual. He was using a gay slur as a synonym for weak or stupid or immoral or underhanded (and for, what, accepting bonus money from the UFC? As if Diaz would have turned it down on ethical grounds). We get that. It’s just that we still don’t like it.

Or, I guess I should say, some of us don’t like it. Using gay slurs to insult people is still pretty popular in some circles. It really wasn’t that long ago that UFC President Dana White was a member of those circles. One of his most vitriolic rants included a generous helping of that F-word (and, of course, the other one too). He thought nothing of using the term to attack people who had acted as anonymous sources for a Sherdog story.

See? He wasn’t going after gay people. Just using a gay slur as a synonym for coward. Then, according to White, he spoke to some gay people who informed him that, yeah, that doesn’t make them feel any better about a word with a long and violent history.

So White apologized. Somewhat surprisingly, he actually seemed to get it, too. It was the rare apology of a famous public figure that actually felt sincere, especially since he went out of his way to not apologize for the other slurs he used in the video.

“I went on the attack and I ended up attacking someone I didn’t mean to,” White told ESPN in 2009. “I absolutely, positively meant to attack the reporter, Loretta Hunt from Sherdog. Absolutely.”

But, White said, the worst part was how many positive responses he got to the video where he was heard shouting a gay slur.

“At the end of the day, the worst thing for me is that I don’t want anybody thinking that it’s cool to say that word, especially now that I know the word ‘faggot’ is as powerful as the N-word,” White said. “I don’t want these kids out there watching me and thinking it’s cool. I don’t want that.”

That’s how White learned that you don’t get to decide for yourself what a word means. It’s a lesson I think a lot of us have to learn, especially with that particular word, which generations of American boys have grown up lobbing carelessly at one another. You do that enough and you think the word is yours, but it’s not. It was here before you, and it spent years being charged with a hateful emotional energy that’s still buzzing around in there. If you come along and pick it up without knowing what it is, it’ll zap you.

That’s what happened to White. Now it’s happened to Diaz. The question is whether he can learn the right lesson from it, whether he can be humble enough to admit that he didn’t think it through enough to realize what he was really saying. That’s one option. The other is to throw his hands up and declare himself a victim of the PC thought police. As if it’s somehow fine for him to use whatever word he likes, but not OK for others to form an opinion about him because of it. As if that’s how words work.