Political correctness lives: Evil defined as a different perspective
By John David Powell (11/22/05)
Funny how these things happen. A few days ago, an
outfit called the Global Language Monitor
(languagemonitor.com) announced its list of the top
politically incorrect words for 2005. Number one on
the list is the term “misguided criminals”, which the
British Broadcasting Corporation (bbc.com) used in
place of “terrorists” to describe the murderous
bombers who blew up themselves and innocent bystanders
in the London Tubes.
Also on the list is “thought (or word) shower” to
replace “brainstorm”, in deference to individuals with
brain disorders, specifically those with epilepsy.
Number 6 on the list is “deferred success”, which the
Professional Association of Teachers (www.pat.org.uk)
in the United Kingdom considered to replace the idea
of “failure” and to bolster the self-esteem of failing
students.
Right after that is “womyn” instead of “women” for
reasons any gender-sensitive person would understand.
(I have long advocated using “womban” for the singular
and “wombaen” for the plural; thereby combining
“womb”, which is pretty easy to understand, with Latin
feminine endings. Try it out with your wombaen
colleagues. They’ll admire your sensitivity.)
Releasing an annual best-of / worst-of list before the
end of the year is problematic, because something
always comes up that should be included.
For example, about the time the language monitor folks
released their list, cable-tv host Chris Matthews
coined a phrase that surely must belong at the top of
someone’s politically correct list. Speaking to
political science students at the University of
Toronto, Matthews said the United States should have
had a robust discussion of what we were doing between
the time crazed terrorists flew jetliners into the
World Trade Center and the time the US-led coalition
invaded Iraq. He said most Americans just hate their
enemies, because they have not learned to know them.
Said Matthews: “If we stop trying to figure out the
other side, we’ve given up. The person on the other
side is not evil; they just have a different
perspective.
And, thus, we have a new contender for the title of
The Year’s Goofiest Euphemism: that cat who’s a
literal walking time bomb is not EVIL, he just has a
DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE.
A few years back, the head thinkers at Stockport
College of Further and Higher Education
(stockport.com) in the UK banned the use of more than
40 words and phrases deemed offensive. Stockport’s
managers claimed “taking the mickey”, “lady”, and
“history” could offend homosexuals, slaves, the Irish,
wombaen, and ethnic minorities.
They also nixed “mad”, “manic”, and “crazy”, because
those words risk upsetting folks who are mad, manic,
and crazy.
Anyone with lots of time to kill can do a bit of web
surfing (also known as research) and find a whole
bunch of sites with politically correct words and
phrases.
Here’s a very short list from what’s out there.
A person is not lazy, just motivationally deficient.
That was not the worst fruitcake you received. It was
the least best.
Your spouse/partner/significant other is not a
spendthrift, just a negative saver.
The term paper you turned in was not plagiarized. It
contained previously owned prose.
The Cowardly Lion of Oz was really the Challenge
Challenged Lion.
You are not a cannibal. You are one who prefers
intra-species dining.
You will not die. You will attain actuarial maturity.
The person you’re ogling does not have a hot body, but
one that is anatomically gifted.
Your spouse/partner/significant other does not have a
beer belly; it is, instead, abdominally extended.
Your former spouse/partner/significant other did not
play around. He/she/it was an extensively enjoyed
companion.
Your boss is not conceited, just self stimulated.
You do not get a tan. You experience solar
enhancement.
You don’t talk a lot. You are abundantly verbal.
Your Christmas tree is a holiday tree decorated with
holiday lights instead of Christmas lights.
There even exists a list of politically correct terms
for cats. For example:
Your cat is not a pest. It’s just attention deprived.
Your cat is not fat, it’s just mass enhanced.
Your cat does not gobble; it eats with alacrity.
And, that cat is not evil; it is badness enhanced.
Somehow “badness enhanced” sounds a whole lot more
evil than having a “different perspective”.
Mundus vult decipi
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