Hip-hop culture has embraced a racial insult, but does that make it any less insulting? The first 30 seconds of Trio's documentary The N Word is a bit like the Reader's Digest version of those Mark Fuhrman tapes played at the O.J. Simpson trial: You hear the N word -- yeah, that one -- 42 times. Screamed, whispered, sneered, jeered, muttered, mumbled, crooned, barked, wailed -- in just about every tone of voice available to the human vocal cords. And the 42nd repetition is just as shocking, embarrassing and ugly as the first. That's the point of The N Word....
