Too Politically Correct is Wrong

[Racoon]

Here are some examples of Political Correctness gone Crazy...:love:

You can't even call someone a "terrorist" they are rather a misguided criminal..

for those who didn't bother reading the links in the now defunct PC thread..

 

Warning... Do not use a word that may have "Value Judgements"! :cup:

please do not offend Anyone! ever!

 

:)

 

The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for 2005:

 

1. Misguided Criminals for Terrorist: The BBC attempts to strip away all emotion by using what it considers neutral descriptions when describing those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes. The rub: the professed intent of these misguided criminals was to kill, without warning, as many innocents as possible (which is the common definition for the term, terrorist). The phrase was selected by GLM as but one example in line with the published BBC Editorial Guidelines where it is noted that the word 'terrorist' itself can be a barrier rather than aid to understanding. Suggested alternatives include: bomber, attacker, insurgent and militant, among others. These and similar words are deemed to have no emotional or value judgments. However, the word Terrorist can be used as long as it appears in a quoted attribution.

 

2. Intrinsic Aptitude (or lack thereof) was a suggestion by Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard, on why women might be underrepresented in engineering and science. He was nearly fired for his speculation.

 

3. Thought Shower or Word Shower substituting for brainstorm so as not to offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy.

 

4. Scum or "la racaille" for French citizens of Moslem and North African descent inhabiting the projects ringing French Cities. France's Interior Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, used this most Politically inCorrect (and reprehensible) label to describe the young rioters (and by extension all the inhabitants of the Cites).

 

5. Out of the Mainstream when used to describe the ideology of any political opponent: At one time slavery was in the mainstream, thinking the sun orbited the earth was in the mainstream, having your blood sucked out by leeches was in the mainstream. What's so great about being in the mainstream?

 

6. Deferred Success as a euphemism for the word fail. The Professional Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace any notion of failure with deferred success in order to bolster students self-esteem.

 

7. Womyn for Women to distance the word from man. This in spite of the fact that the term man in the original Indo-European is gender neutral (as have been its successors for some 5,000 years).

 

8. C.E. for A.D.: Is the current year A.D. 2005 or 2005 C.E.? There is a movement to strip A.D. (Latin for "In the Year of the Lord") from the year designation used in the West since the 5th century and replace it with the supposedly more neutral Common Era (though the zero reference year for the beginning of the Common Era remains the year of Christ's birth).

 

9. "God Rest Ye Merry Persons" for "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen": A Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history is not enough to sway the Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original lyrics. There are those who suggest going one step further: "Higher Power Rest Ye Merry Persons".

 

10. Banning the word Mate: the Department of Parliamentary Services in Canberra issued a general warning to its security staff banning the use of the word 'mate' in dealings t with both members of Parliament and the public. What next? banning 'no worries' so as not to offend the worried, or banning 'Down Under' So as not to offend those of us who live in the "Up Over".

 

Holiday Bonus: Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings for Christmas (which in some UK schools now label Wintervale). However, the word holiday is derived directly from Holy Day, and in the word X-Mas, the Greek letter 'chi' represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two letters of the name Christ.) Now there are published reports of organization banning the traditional Christmas Colours of red and green.

 

Last year the Top Politically Incorrect words were: Los Angeles Countys insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking protocols that mention master/slave jargon. Following closely were same-sex marriage for marriage and waitron for waiter of waitress.

 

 

http://www.languagemonitor.com/wst_page20.html

[Racoon]

From the link:

http://www.civitas.org.uk/press/prcs47.php

 

 

Anthony Browne argues in The Retreat of Reason that political correctness, which classifies certain groups of people as victims in need of protection from criticism and allows no dissent to be expressed, is poisoning the wells of debate in modern Britain.

 

'Members of the public, academics, journalists and politicians are afraid of thinking certain thoughts' (p.xii). Political correctness started in academia, but it now dominates schools, hospitals, local authorities, the civil service, the media, companies, the police and the army. Since 1997 Britain has been ruled by political correctness for the first time. 'The Labour government was the first UK government not to stand up to political correctness, but to try and enact its dictates when they are not too electorally unpopular or seriously mugged by reality, and even sometimes when they are' (p.34).

 

Anthony Browne describes political correctness as a 'heresy of liberalism' (p.2) under which 'a reliance on reason has been replaced with a reliance on the emotional appeal of an argument' (p.6). Adopting certain positions makes the politically correct feel virtuous, even more so when they are preventing the expression of an opinion that conflicts with their own: 'political correctness is the dictatorship of virtue'.

 

Whether an argument is true or not is a secondary consideration to whether it fits with the PC view of the world:

 

'In the topsy-turvy politically correct world, truth comes in two forms: the politically correct, and the factually correct. The politically correct truth is publicly proclaimed correct by politicians, celebrities and the BBC even if it is wrong, while the factually correct truth is publicly condemned as wrong even when it is right. Factually correct truths suffer the disadvantage that they don't have to be shown to be wrong, merely stated that they are politically incorrect. To the politically correct, truth is no defence; to the politically incorrect, truth is the ultimate defence. (p.7)'

 

Anthony Browne gives some examples (p.8) of factually incorrect arguments that trump factually correct ones, because they are PC:

*note this table did not copy as was modified*

 

Issue/ Politically Correct Truth / *Factually Correct Truth*

 

Women's pay less than men's/ Sex discrimination/ *Different work,life choices, childcare breaks*

Explosion in HIV/ Teenagers having unsafe sex/ *African immigration*

Rise in anti-semitic attacks/ White skinheads/ *Muslim youths*

Africa getting poorer/ West not giving enough aid / *Bad governance*

 

He argues that PC is much more than just a dispute about words, or the hope of avoiding hurtful expressions: it leads to an incorrect analysis of real problems, which means that the wrong solutions are attempted. People suffer as a result:

 

'Black communities are encouraged to blame racist teachers for the failings of their boys at school, rather than re-examine their own culture and attitudes to education that may be the prime reasons. The poor sick have ended up having worse healthcare in Britain than they would in mainland Europe because PC for long closed down debate on fundamental NHS reform. Women's employment opportunities can be harmed by giving them ever more rights that are not given to men. The unemployed are encouraged to languish on benefits blaming others for their fate. Poor Africans are condemned to live in poverty so long as they and their governments are encouraged to blame the West for all their problems, rather than confronting the real causes of poor governance, corruption and poor education'. (p.xiv) The end of political correctness?

[hallenrm]

Political correctness is a relative term, whether it has gone beyond limits (too much) or not depends on the political motives of the politician. If the motive is to get support of a backward community you will give them a name economically disadvantaged.

 

If you are targetting theives what will be the politically correct phrase to use that they start supporting you.

 

Quite interestingly there is no PC phrase for corrupt politicians. May be because they are numerically few and no one is really interested to get btheir votes.

 

So to be politically correct is to avoid conflict of interest and perhaps get mass support, after all that is the primary motivation of politicians.

 

People like you and me, dear Racoon, should just watch the fun from the sidelines and not get unneccesarily worked up about them. If one comes face to face with a situation where you would have to use a phrase that is politically incorrect, one should go ahead and do it, but at the same time be ready to face any consequences. Afterall we live in democratic societies where everybody has atleast the right to be vocally violent. :lol:

[Racoon]

Excellent Point HallenRM :)

 

and here is some more funny Double speak of those with PC agendas...

(I didn't print the entire article, as it would be too lengthy, but here are the more relevant points)

 

It's a living language. but sometimes it's dead on arrival when people toss around euphemisms and gobbledygook. If a hospital charges $58 for a "thermal therapy unit," what is the patient getting for the money? Answer: an ice pack. Suppose a patient spots an "optical illuminator enhancer" entering his room. Should he be alarmed? No. The visitor is a window washer. If a doctor removes a patient's right kidney when he was supposed to remove the left one, no problem. It's merely an "error of laterality." And if a doctor tells you that your medical problem is "supratentorial," back out of the room swiftly and go get a second opinion. He is saying that there's nothing wrong with your body--the problem is in your mind.

....

A Pittsburgh steel company, liable to pay workers a great deal of money if it closed a mill, halted all operations and tried to argue that it wasn't really shutting the place down, just "indefinitely idling" it.

....

"Insurging." The list of euphemisms for firings keeps growing. Downsize, rightsize, derecruit, and outplace are old hat. New ones in Britain include "selected out through performance management assessments" and "agreed departures" ("Wilson, I hope we can both agree that you've just been fired. Now get out"). Also in England, firing someone is referred to as "icing," from ICE--"involuntary career event."

 

In politics, Republicans and Democrats seem to be evolving separate languages or, at least, long lists of different nouns. Democrats warn of "global warming" ; Republicans talk calmly about "climate change." Democrats are starting to call themselves "progressives." Republicans just say "liberals." Other Republican/Democratic partisan pairs include trial lawyer/personal injury lawyer, death tax/estate tax, collateral damage/civilian dead, quotas/goals and timetables, campus race preferences/race-sensitive admissions, indoctrination/sensitivity training, faith-based/religious, school choice/school vouchers, personal accounts/privatization, tax relief/tax cuts, illegal/undocumented, fetus/uterine contents, military difficulties/quagmire, rendition/shipping captives out for torture, racial charlatan Al Sharpton/civil rights activist Al Sharpton, John Kerry's weaseling/John Kerry's nuanced approach.

 

Most of us have no problem using the word "terrorists" for people who regularly blow up innocent bystanders for political effect. But the mainstream media still shun the "T" word in favor of "insurgents" or "the resistance." The "insurgents" in Iraq aren't really "insurging." They are blowing up large numbers of random people. But the press keeps talking about activists, rebels, militants, fighters, assailants, attackers, hostage-takers, etc., etc. Some media outlets are willing to refer to "acts of terrorism," as long as they don't have to call the people who perform those acts "terrorists." We have sin, but there are no sinners.

 

:eek2:

[Racoon]

Theres definitely something wrong with trickle-down political correctness as well...

 

This latest example makes you wonder if all speach, displays, attitudes, and thought should be hermetically sealed as not to potentially offend anyone, at any time. ?

:thumbs_up

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15912456/

 

DENVER - A homeowners association in southwestern Colorado has threatened to fine a resident $25 a day until she removes a Christmas wreath with a peace sign that some say is an anti-Iraq war protest or a symbol of Satan.

 

Some residents who have complained have children serving in Iraq, said Bob Kearns, president of the Loma Linda Homeowners Association in Pagosa Springs. He said some residents have also believed it was a symbol of Satan. Three or four residents complained, he said.

 

“Somebody could put up signs that say drop bombs on Iraq. If you let one go up you have to let them all go up,” he said in a telephone interview Sunday.

 

[InfiniteNow]

That's not a PC issue, it's a moron issue. Talk about trying to pick a fight over nonsense. The homeowners associations might be more dangerous than the Taliban... :evil:

 

"You laced the final lace of your shoes on the inside instead of the outside! We're going to make you change it or face a fine!!" ;)

 

I wonder what they'd have done if they put up a wreath that said "Yay Iraq!" :D If only all this energy were put into something more, I don't know, rational and meaningful...

[pgrmdave]

I never realized that peace was such a divisive issue...

[CraigD]

The homeowners associations might be more dangerous than the Taliban...

In my experience, homeowners associations can be hard to distinguish from the Taliban, other than by their lack of guns and guts :hihi:

 

I was once fined by a homeowners association of which I was not a member, for having a birdbath in my front yard. Apparently, this organization had incorporated itself a decade earlier, but been unsuccessful in convincing many property owners to join – I’d been living in my house for a couple of years before their attempted extortion brought them to my attention. I sent them a reply saying I wouldn’t pay or comply, and that if they had further contact with me, I’d sue them for harassment (a bluff), adding (as I noticed that their “citation” had been placed by hand in my mailbox) that I also intended to notify the Postmaster of their 18 U.S.C. § 1725 violation. I never received a reply.

 

The birdbath, a gift, was rather ugly, so I eventually moved it to my back yard.

[Boerseun]

Jeez! PC-speak gives me the willies.

 

Whenever somebody starts talking about the 'economically disadvantaged' rather than 'the poor', or 'physically challenged' rather than 'cripple', or even 'melatonin challenged' rather than 'white', you have to ask yourself what the heck they're trying to achieve.

 

Every single instance of Political Correctness, is, in my opinion, utter horsesh!t and a thin veil hiding some ulterior motive.

 

I think the world will be a much better place if we commoners unite and stand up against these speakers of horse manure, and say "Enough is enough, dammit! A soil relocation device is a damn spade!"

[pgrmdave]

I think that Political Correctness comes from the right place, and goes in the wrong direction. It is there because there is a need to be respectful to people, and I think that much of it starts because of a genuine attempt to be respectful. There are words which mean more than they say, and those are words that we try to avoid. There is a difference in the way we perceive someone we call "handicapped" vs. "crippled", and thus there is good reason for us to use one over the other. It becomes too much when it is about not offending people, rather than being respectful to them.

[Pyrotex]

I think that Political Correctness comes from the right place, and goes in the wrong direction. It is there because there is a need to be respectful to people, and I think that much of it starts because of a genuine attempt to be respectful. ...

I'm a cripple. That is, I am handicapped. Granted, both words carry a lot of cultural baggage, mostly negative. The first one is the most negative. I grew up being referred to as handicapped. Once I got over the fact that it was TRUE, it never bothered me again.

 

Then, in the seventies, I was physically challenged, and I hated it. What did it mean, for crying out loud? And then a miracle happened. "Physically challenged" became offensive, too!!!!!!!!! :phones: Then the new buzzword was physicall special. (Yuchy!!) And then IT became offensive, too!!!!! :):):) Then there was (briefly) wheelchair person and disabled. And they all were criticized by SOMEBODY as insulting or demeaning!! HOO HAH!!!

 

Now, it's all I can do to keep from laughing in people's faces when they stammer for some word or phrase to refer to "you people". (In fact, recently, they started using "you people" -- and I responded with "oh, you mean the intellectually gifted afluent sex objects in wheelchairs?")

 

No matter how PC you try to get, the truth is going to offend someone, and your neutral terms will become insults.

 

I'm handicapped. Deal with it, sucker!

 

And if you kick my tires one more time, I will leave gray rubber tread marks all over your ugly face.

[HydrogenBond]

Poltical correctness is based on trying to spare feelings. This is a nobel intension. But using feelings to drive reason is backfiring. Instead of lowering the amount of hurt feelings, it is increasing hyper-sensitivity, requiring a constant flux of new feel good phrases. This is female illogic gone astray. It protects and regresses all in one step.

 

I think a group of young guy friends have it correct. They dump on each other with insults until everyone gets desensitised. After that, you barely need the top of the politically correct fluff-stuff to get by in life.

 

Well not exactly. Inner security against names may get you in trouble. One may assume that others are as secure as yourself, when all along they are sliding deeper and deeper down the slippery slope of social insecurity. Such as these, may do their best to get you on their slippery slide, with the iron fist of law. A couple of wacks and you will need a special fuzzy phrase to rub on your bruised hinnie.

 

This reminds me of a story. A few years back, I shared a summer place at the beach with my sister and her family. We met a neighboring couple who were very loud and rude. The kids got alone, so the parents tried also. After the first intro meeting the wife said to my sister, "see you later b!tch.

 

When my sister left, she was besides herself fuming with anger. The next day my sister was going to confront the women, but woman came over first, very friendly. She noticed my sister was preoccupied and asked what was wrong. My sister brought up the b!tch comment. The neighbor explained it was not meant as an insult, but from where she came from it was a term used by close toughskinned girlfriends. It was a term to start a friendly, comical and energetic exchange of girl talk (one of the guys). Once my sister realized that, the two would thereafter greet each other as "hey b!tch", even in public places (made others uncomfortable). They became instant friends because the social wall of insecure words was knocked down and they could see each other clearly.

[Edella]

One word thats been getting a lot of press lately is the "n-word",due to Michael Richards' racial outburst at the Laugh Factory.

 

It is a word known primarily as a means to denigrate African Americans. The word packs such power to represent overt racial hatred, most people will not even utter it in any context. Members of the media reporting on the Micheal Richards story use "the N-word" instead of repeating the actual word, to avoid offending audiences and advertisers I assume.This seems silly to me.Context is everything,and such blanket refusals to say or print "nigger" simply eradicate context and intent,the very reasons words are offensive ! If a joke is begun: two N-words walk into a bar... is it any less offensive?

 

 

 

The Rev. Jesse Jackson has recently called for a ban on the N-word in TV shows and films and music .Will this help with the problem of bigotry and racism in the U.S,? I think not.When Jackson was asked about free-speech issues, he said the word is ''unprotected." :)

 

I hate racism and all it stands for, if anyone is offended by my use of the word "nigger", please consider the context and intent.

[Boerseun]

I have to agree with Edella that context dictates the 'offensiveness' of words.

Me, being a white guy, will be in deep trouble when I adress a black American as 'nigger', whilst they tend to use the word amongst themselves with some pride, I might add. But nobody will question the black guy's intent when I'm adressed by him as 'honky', whilst the argument could be made that 'nigger' and 'honky' is equally offensive. And this sprouts from the whites having enslaved the blacks hundreds of years ago, and some guilt over the whole mess still existing amongst the descendents of those original slavedrivers - regardless of the fact that the current population of whites have absolutely nothing to do with slavery. This is just plain silly, as far as I'm concerned. It's words, dammit - but the context will make it offensive or not. In my mind, 'African-American' is equally offensive (or not), because it points to exactly the same people as 'nigger'.

 

Where I'm not getting the 'equality' of it all, why don't we refer to the Smiths of the US as 'British-American', or the Meiers as 'German-American', or the Blumenthals as 'Jewish-American'? Whites in the US are universally referred to as 'Americans', and insisting on referring to black Americans as 'African-Americans' is insulting to them, perpetuating their 'outsiderness'.

 

But I digress.

 

I can stand up in a meeting and say "If we don't do this, the company will be crippled by debt." Imagine if I had to say "If we don't do this, the company would be financially challenged." The first comment, the 'crippled' one, is by no means offensive. But I can't refer to the chairman who sits in a wheelchair as such. Then it becomes insulting and demeaning. Where do we draw the line? It's like Edella said - it's all in the context. But personally I think that in plenty cases (maybe most) we simply take it too far, and any word you can think off will be offenssive to someone to some degree. Live and let live, I say. As long as you understand what the next guy is trying to say, let him be.

[Turtle]

Me, being a white guy, will be in deep trouble when I adress a black American as 'nigger', whilst they tend to use the word amongst themselves with some pride, I might add. But nobody will question the black guy's intent when I'm adressed by him as 'honky', whilst the argument could be made that 'nigger' and 'honky' is equally offensive. And this sprouts from the whites having enslaved the blacks hundreds of years ago, and some guilt over the whole mess still existing amongst the descendents of those original slavedrivers - regardless of the fact that the current population of whites have absolutely nothing to do with slavery.

 

I am as much offended by blacks using the term as any other race, if not more so. No end of it in rap music and black comedians sketches, with a "we can say it but you can't" attitude. Hypocrisy.

 

Carrying someone's guilt besides your own strikes me as ludicrous, especially someone from the past. A lot of people in the deep South are still fighting the civil war for crying out loud. :) Get over it. :Clown:

[CraigD]

The Rev. [an US congressman]Jesse Jackson has recently called for a ban on the N-word in TV shows and films and music .Will this help with the problem of bigotry and racism in the U.S,? I think not.When Jackson was asked about free-speech issues, he said the word is ''unprotected." ;)

I share Edella’s :eek_big: concerning Jackson’s suggestion that some words are “unprotected” by the first amendment. The rhetoric, and in some cases, the actual policy of the US government in the last few years lead me to wonder if the reading (or rereading) of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four should be a made a voter registration requirement – or at least a requirement of government office holders. At least then, legislation such as Jackson proposes could go by the catchy name “newspeak”.

 

Most paradoxical, I think, is that a ban on publishing and distributing media containing the word “nigger” would effect primarily black artists, who use it far more than artists of other ethnicities. It would ban the best work of the late Richard Pryor, arguably one of the best stand-up comedians ever, and, IMHO, a significant champion of racial harmony and mutual respect and understanding. When I first read Jackson’s comments, I though he meant to apply them only to the speech of non-blacks – an impression that lasted only a few sentences, where he called specifically for a ban on rap music. Jackson appears to despise rap.

[Chacmool]

Now, it's all I can do to keep from laughing in people's faces when they stammer for some word or phrase to refer to "you people". (In fact, recently, they started using "you people" -- and I responded with "oh, you mean the intellectually gifted afluent sex objects in wheelchairs?")

Well said, Pyro! But all of us here already know that you're our local intellectually gifted, afluent sex object in a wheelchair. Cheers! ;)