COMMENT | Demeaning epithets will devalue our polity

COMMENT | PAS election director Muhammad Sanusi Md Nor has a talent for getting under your skin.

His "apek seluar pendek" (Chinese man clad in shorts) is a particularly disparaging epithet.

Its phonetics ensures it drips off the tongue readily, its concision hides its odium, and its ambivalence between joke and insult leaves you momentarily confused.

You want to laugh until you realise it’s a slur that dehumanises the target, demeans the person who laughs and suggests that the narrator is an ogre.

When realising how vile it is, you’d start to regret laughing and begin to feel like the jokester belongs in a zoo...