POLITICAL CORRECT - what's up with that?

It used to be mailman, now it’s mail-carrier. Remember when you wanted to be a fireman? No cigar – now you have to settle with firefighter. But firefighter is better than fireperson. The days are over when we could call some jerk an idiot; now we have to use mentally challenged – and where’s the fun in that? Are we soon changing mankind to peoplekind? Is it getting confusing expressing ourselves correctly and would that be marked as linguistically challenged?

The old meaning of political correct or political correctness is from the 18. century and meaning precisely what it says: relating to fundamental political thoughts and policies at the time – plain and simple; even I get that one.

But then we had to screw it all out of proportion by eradicate the use of certain phrases, descriptions and so forth, making us tremble in fear of saying the right thing the wrong way. I see the start of all this during the equality revolution of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Bra burning fumes mixed with an assortment of colorful inhalants. And then it picked up speed in the 1990’s and became political correct since then, involving many other issues – go figure…

PC covers a lot of territory and is seen as a minimizer of social and institutional offense with respect to society related concerns, including gender, occupation, racism, cultural, sexual orientation, religions and lots more. We all of a sudden felt we didn’t approach some things the (politically!) correct way; we were abruptly seen as insensitive brutes - not you and I, of course; so we changed it. But have we gone too far? You are very ugly is rude and crude, but is you are so far from good looking any better? And being political correct just sounds ignorant: Sorry, dear, you seem to be rather appearance challenged.

It has become somewhat of a joke the way we use some of these new language changes; sarcasm mixed with a bit of irony, my two favorites. We often underline our use of political correct, not so much to confirm the accurate use of what we just said, but more so to place it loosely on a giggle level; maybe we feel a bit silly using this “new” language – because at times it is silly to use.

Suddenly the word challenged was integrated with a lot of expressions; like it was some kind of bloody contest. A former retarded person is now mentally challenged. I fully see the rightness in that, as the term retarded has been and still is used in derogatory ways beyond the understanding of the mental condition being retarded. But now we are (sarcastically) using this new term instead of the old term – so have we moved forward at all? It’s not handicapped anymore, but physically challenged, though I’m still looking for Physically Challenged parking spots.

Negro or black has been changed to African-American, even if you are a Negro person from Bergen, Norway. The silly thing is that I even have a hard time writing Negro and black, as I feel it’s (politically) wrong. But calling me white I’m okay with – so go figure the logic in that. (During the summer I should be called light-brown, as I spend a lot of time with my face in the sun – working on that skin-cancer thing – there’s a real challenge).

Now former white people are called Caucasians; a word few former white people can actually spell correctly – white was much easier. We can’t even call Christmas Christmas anymore – now it’s the Holidays, being sensitive and respectful to other religions having the audacity of not celebrating on the same schedule. Minorities are People of Color, which I think is utterly old fashioned, silly and still sounds derogatory to me - really.

But then it started getting real crazy. Now don’t quote me on this, but a woman defied the use of wider descriptive words involving MAN; she felt there should be a broader equality understanding, perhaps a more politically correct unisex way of renaming these words. She obviously sees MAN the gender in more words than I do. Don’t worry; it’s confusing to me too. You know that mankind describes all human beings; it should now be peoplekind. And after you are done giggling, you realize that this is starting to smell like crazy.

According to the above, Manchester (England), becomes Peoplechester. Manhattan would be Personhattan, manhandle = peoplehandle. Well, you get the idea and this is all silly and for the most it would not work at all, no matter how funny it can be. I mean WOMAN is 60% MAN, so would politically correct be Wopeople or Woperson? Doesn't sound right, huh?

 

Fat people; remember when we could actually use that term without being slapped with a lawsuit? Now its weight challenged, but to me, we are still fat; no challenge there. Sure we could use overweight to lighten the load, but using fat is faster. We are vision challenged, hearing challenged, sexually challenged, a lot are driving challenged, and now you can make your own list.

 I do embrace a lot of the PC term adjustments, as they make us more sensitive to our differences and our equalities, thereby unlocking doors for a wider understanding of each other; and then we get along better. The politically correct bandwagon has helped us with this step, but has also given us ammunition to be silly, ironic and sarcastic behind the use of same – and I’m all for that as well, equality or no equality. But I never mean any harm – I really don’t. Do you?

In the end, it doesn’t matter what color we paint the duck, if it goes QUACK and walks funny, it’s still a duck; calling it a swimming bird or Donald (Duck not Trump), doesn’t change that – but now we are at least more polite about it and isn’t that nice?

See you next Monday

 

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