EVEN BEFORE THE one literate guy in the unsurprisingly illiterate District of Columbia government was castigated for using the word “niggardly,” we should have become overly sensitive to those who are overly sensitive.
And as direct communicators, we should direct streams of disgust at those who yell “Foul!” at imagined slights. Those who see the devil in the Procter & Gamble logo or the “Mr. Ed” theme song played backward can target us too, because our dedication is to information optimizing…creating the most positive word-images possible within our command of the lexicon. We have to pre-empt those cretins.
The most extreme example of misplaced hypersensitivity I’ve found is one sent to me by my son Bob, who may be excused for living in Minneapolis. The local newspaper, the Star Tribune, has embraced the campaign to rename baseball teams. The Cleveland Indians, says the paper, are an insult. Well, that name existed many decades before the introduction of “Native Americans,” a misnomer because every one of us is a descendant of a migrant. That some got here earlier than others doesn’t alter the external origin.
The Star Tribune also wants to rename the Atlanta Braves and for some insane reason the Kansas City Chiefs. Down where I live, the Florida Marlins give off a fishy smell when they’re on the field, but I mask my disdain by not buying their overpriced T-shirts.
A woman named Suzan Shown Harjo filed a lawsuit, saying the Washington Redskins football team is a racial slur. Most football fans think the team is a pigskin slur, but as a result of her suit a court eliminated the team’s trademark protection. American jurisprudence strikes again!
Baseball and football teams don’t have an exclusive on ridiculous political correctness. Manufacturers that want to sell direct refer to disintermediation instead of cutting out the middleman. Suddenly gambling doesn’t exist anymore-it’s too declasse. The word is gaming.
Those of us in the force-communications business have long since denied that used cars exist: They’re pre-owned. Computer programs are what people installed on their computers 10 years ago. Today any self-respecting program isn’t a program, it’s an application. And here’s an oversized comic book. Comic book? That’s what our grandparents read. Today it’s a graphic novel.
We also have a whole new lexicon the wide-open world of sexual information has brought us. These aren’t porno videos; they’re adult videos. They aren’t dirty movies; they have mature themes.
Do you get the feeling we’re operating in fear? The Kosovo mess is about ethnic Albanians. We swallow the term without chewing on it. Just what are ethnic Albanians, anyway? And why do we sanitize extermination by calling it ethnic cleansing? Nothing clean about it.
Some historian or anthropologist, a couple of centuries from now, might trace the origins of political correctness to Ronald Reagan or George Bush. Their administrations replaced rebel with freedom fighter. Clever! The euphemism eliminates any possibility of mistaking who the heroes are. Bill Clinton didn’t have an affair (or whatever) with Monica Lewinsky; he had an improper relationship. Hell, I’ve had improper relationships with my publishers for years, and now because of Bill Clinton I have to find another term for it or draw stares.
Remember when department stores had complaint departments? That wasn’t smart of them, so they became adjustment departments. Now they’re information desks…closed during store hours.
Drug addicts don’t exist anymore. They’re substance abusers. A janitor who asks for a raise won’t get it; instead, he gets a new title: stationary engineer. And fireman has disappeared through the gender gap. It’s firefighter, which combines sexual equality with Ramboism.
At colleges, we can’t call new entries freshmen. They have to be freshpersons, probably more accurate in contemporary ambience. And full professor has too many negative connotations, leading us to realize what they’re full of. If we’re afraid of niggardly, what repercussions might we expect when a student matriculates? They’ll call out June Allyson (who always seems to be about to cry) with whatever that absorber is she’s hawking, and instead of dry eyes there won’t be a dry pair of pants in the house.
The clamor for equality-unnecessary, as my own household can witness-leads to some strange word combinations. The International Herald-Tribune reported on a tennis match in which Venus Williams “woman-handled” her opponent, Anna Kournikova.
Gloria Steinem has resurrected Ms. magazine. But the magazine’s philosophy, like its founder, is somewhat more sedate than it was in Ms. Steinem’s Playboy bunny-bashing years. Then Ms. might have attacked terms such as “manhole cover” as being sexist. What might the replacement be? “His/Ms.-hole cover” seems mildly salacious, and “personhole cover” suggests a defective blanket. I guess we’ve come a long way, baby-but in what direction?
Beauty contests aren’t beauty contests anymore. They’re pageants. Wrestling matches have become a little more honest. They’re now wrestling exhibitions.
And no one has a defect. Short people are vertically challenged. Daisy Fuentes and Keanu Reeves aren’t untalented; they’re talent-impaired. The producers who hire them aren’t stupid; they’re intellectually challenged. People don’t die; they pass on. Their doctors, whose patients fail to achieve their wellness potential, haven’t misdiagnosed; they just were mild witnesses to negative patient outcomes. I guess that means that drunks are bourbonically oversufficient. (Who was it who said, “I’d rather be a drunk than an alcoholic, because drunks don’t have to go to meetings”?)
But a backlash is under way. I actually heard a doctor refer to older folks-not senior citizens or chronologically challenged. Weight reduction plans have given up on euphemisms such as take off inches and gone back to the more graphic, ergo more dynamic, melt away fat. So maybe we’re in a renaissance of candor. Maybe being politically correct isn’t the Kingdom of Heaven it was even a year or two ago. Well, thank heaven. (Or to be correct, should that be Heaven? The Great Beyond? That Great DM Response Device in the Sky? Or just plain Lewis’ Follies?)
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