That Diss Song Known as 'Yankee Doodle'

[Miigwech]

You know that words can change their meaning ... let it happen by groups that seek to own insulting phrase by usurping those. Why attack liberal, progressive folks who use those words to fight back. Even our founders did so.

It’s not just any insult, either. With “Yankee Doodle,” the Redcoats were delivering the most puerile, schoolyard insult in the schoolyard insult book. They were suggesting that American soldiers were gay.

Gay and bumbling, actually.

“Such a figure, essenced and perfumed, with a bunch of lace sticking out under its chin, puzzles the common passenger to determine the thing’s sex,” wrote Town and Country Magazine in 1772. “And many a time an honest laboring porter has said, ‘By your leave, madam,’ without intending to give offense.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/01/sunday-review/that-diss-song-known-as-yankee-doodle.html