Polictical Correctness

[Elfhelm]

So, these two Jersey Girls were talking and one said, my boyfriend the doctor bought me a Porsche for Christmas, to which the other replied, my boyfriend the lawyer is sueing your boyfriend, don't you dare put a scratch on my car.

http://www.hardcoretruth.com/Hypocrisy/

[inked]

Posted by dvirtue on 2004/12/21 5:41:00 (518 reads)
We are committing cultural suicide

Anthony Browne
TIMES ONLINE

LONDON (12/21/2004)--Christianity is being insidiously erased from the map. It’s time we fought back

COMPARE AND contrast 1:
(a) Sikhs storm a theatre in Britain showing a play depicting rape inside a Sikh temple;

(b) The Red Cross bans Nativity scenes in its shops;

Compare and contrast 2:

(a) Christmas trees and decorations are banned in Saudi Arabia;
(b) Christmas trees and decorations are banned in Britain’s Jobcentres.

The extremes that other religions go to preserve their cultural heritage is only matched in Christianity by its extreme death-wish.

Christmas has always stirred passion, attracting opponents and supporters. But until recently banning it has been so culturally offensive that fictional Christophobes entered the English language for their infamy. Ebenezer Scrooge declared “every idiot who goes about with ‘Merry Christmas’ on his lips should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly in his heart”. Dr Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas declared that the Grinch’s motivation was “that his heart was two sizes too small”.

But real-life Scrooges and Grinches have banned Christmas before, not because their hearts were too small, but because their bigotry was too great. And now it is happening again.

In 1647 Oliver Cromwell cancelled Christmas: no parties, no fun, no days off work. Cromwell’s Puritanism was offended by bacchanalian revelry, led by the Lord of Misrule. Each year, town criers went through the land ordering that “Christmas and all other superstitious festivals” should not be celebrated.

The English were outraged. Secret festivities were held, pro-Christmas riots broke out and dozens of Christmas martyrs were jailed. A pamphlet called An Hue and Cry after Christmas was published, demanding that: “Any man or woman, that can give any knowledge, or tell any tidings of an old, old, very old grey bearded gentleman, called Christmas . . . let him bring him back again into England.”

In the past century, the godless Communists banned Christmas. In Cuba, Fidel Castro allowed people to take Christmas Day off work only after an intervention by the Pope.

Now the Christophobes are on the rampage again. The heirs of the Puritans and Communists have declared war on Christmas. But this time it is by stealth and guilt-tripping. The first step is to eviscerate the festival of any meaning by taking the Christ out of Christmas. Even as a lifelong atheist who finds all God stuff embarrassing, I appreciate Christmas’s religious message. But you are as likely to find a reference to Christ in civic Christmas decorations as you are to find a sixpence in a Christmas pudding. Almost no companies and few individuals send cards with any religious message. For the third consecutive year Christmas postage stamps will be Christless. A quarter of schools will not have Nativity plays, and almost as many have banned carols.

Once Christmas has been supplanted by a spiritually vacuous post-Christian orgy of consumption, the next phase of the war is to ban it altogether. Simply turn it, as Birmingham famously did, into a generic “Winterval” to make it equally meaningless to everyone. Tony Blair’s Christmas cards have no reference to, well, Christmas. The Eden Centre in Cornwall has banned Christmas, replacing it with “a time of gifts”.

The war on Christmas is being waged across Christendom. In Italy, a school replaced the Nativity play with Little Red Riding Hood, while another replaced the word “Jesus” in carols with “virtue”. The Mayor of Sydney caused outrage by reducing the city’s Christmas decorations to a single secular illuminated tree with the sign “Season’s greetings”. The US now has a national “holiday tree” and schools take “ winter holidays”. Christianity has gone back to its origins, and become the world’s most widely persecuted religion, finally prompting the Vatican to hit back with a campaign against “Christianophobia”.

So who are the modern-day Scrooges, Grinches, Cromwells and Castros, and what motivates them? In most cases, the Chistophobes use the excuse of multiculturalism, insisting that celebrating Christmas is offensive to non-Christian minorities, often citing Muslims. But the truth is that it is done in the name of Muslims, rather than at the request of Muslims, who accept the existence of Christ. Muslims, Jews, Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists don’t mind Christmas celebrations any more than Christians object to Diwali, Eid or Chanukkah. As Trevor Phillips, the Chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, said: “It’s not offensive to minority communities to celebrate the festival of Christmas.”

No, the real Christophobes are the self-loathing, guilt-ridden politically-correct liberal elite, driven by anti-Christian bigotry and a ruthless determination to destroy their own heritage and replace it with “the other”. It is the American Civil Liberties Union that is threatening lawsuits against any schools that allow the singing of carols and the BBC’s editorial policy bans criticism of the Koran, but not the Bible.

In reality, the Christophobes are acting against the interests of ethnic minorities. By stripping Britain of its culture and traditions, they are causing a dangerous rising tide of anger. It prevents social cohesion and integration — who could want to integrate into a culture that is committing suicide?

So do your bit for community relations. Don’t let Scrooge and the Grinch win. Like the English under Cromwell, protest if you spot any Christophobes waging war on Christmas, sing a Christmas carol, and wish your neighbours “Merry Christmas!”

END

I particularly found this a resonant PC comment. The only problem is, of course, it is lobbed from the wrong side, as it were !

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

So, these two Jersey Girls were talking and one said, my boyfriend the doctor bought me a Porsche for Christmas, to which the other replied, my boyfriend the lawyer is sueing your boyfriend, don't you dare put a scratch on my car.

http://www.hardcoretruth.com/Hypocrisy/

I hope you seriously take to heart and learn something from the website.

[Elfhelm]

Personal comments should be kept to private messages. Thanks.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Elfhelm

Personal comments should be kept to private messages. Thanks.

ah - is that how it is. Don't you actually mean - that when I am making the personal comments - it's to be restricted to PM - but you are free to make them openly on the board like you have the in past?

BTW - I will state things where I wish to.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

Again - hahahahahaha. I find your thinking so hilarious. Names can only take your power away if you let them. I'm sorry - california is freakish.

As for Rian - there are always exceptions. But I knwo many on the liberal side have thought of her as such because of her strong religious beliefs. I find it funny how you guys bitch about me calling californias freakish - when you have said similar things about religious people, the religious right and republicans. I guess you have no trouble with hypocracy.

Why do you find us freakish, may I ask? I'm very curious now .

[Last Child of Ungoliant]

Originally Posted by inked

...Buddhists don’t mind Christmas celebrations...

i can assure you that this is completely true.

[BeardofPants]

Originally Posted by inked

But BoP, do you feel that no comedian should make fun of the deaf or the hard of hearing or the in any way afflicted?

Of course not. And like you implied, yes I joke about lending out my hearing aids to people who didn't hear something I said, and I routinely call my BF a "deafie". But there's a difference between a comedian (since nothing's sacred for a comedian, I don't feel singled out) or a friend making jokes, and some stranger making jokes at my expense.

[inked]

BoP, See, I knew you had a sense of humour. By the way, had you seen the flick?
You may be interested to know that my Aunt translated for deaf folks in American Sign language and she taught me several items, yea, those many years ago. So, I have known deaf folks all my life and never considered them objects to be scorned or treated differently. But, all those folks I knew, and know, have been quite good at dealing with their dis- and have been promoters of their ability!

I think PC persons tend to think and act and treat folks who are differently abled as though they were invalids rather than as persons. My views are coloured by the fact that in undergraduate school I was a reader for a blind man who did his Master's thesis on "Blindness in Shakespeare". The literature and poetry I had to read for him was an education in itself naturally, but the most important lesson was Jerry's determination that nothing, not even his loss of sight, was going to stop his progress in the direction he chose to go.
We used to have major conversations on the appropriate modes of dealing with blindness and the major schools of thought on the subject (this was 30+ years ago remember). I learned from a Master, if you'll pardon the pun!

But you know, the amazing thing was the attitude Jerry exhibited. He was avid for blind jokes and knew more than anyone I have ever met. He delighted in telling them to new acquaintances when we were out strolling from point a to b; sometimes on my arm as a guide and sometimes side-by-side with his cane. We got quite a few stares and occasionally would break into a sort of shuffle just to amuse ourselves at reactions, which gave me a great deal of practice in observation and description sotto voce to Jerry. But the moments I prize above all others are the ones when I would take him to the UNI library, turn him loose with his cane, watch reactions as he selected books, navigated the library by cane books in hand, and then try to stifle the laughter as went to the checkout, handed over the books, took out his wallet, selected the ID card, checked out the books and left the library. We always had coffee and a cigarette after these escapades to regale each other with the reactions he had verbally and I had seen.

Last I heard from Jerry, about 8 years ago, he was headmaster at a live-in school for the blind teaching children and adults the skills to get on in life and an attitude of ability conquers disability.

But Jerry would not tolerate PCness. I can still hear him ventilating about "assholes who can see and nothing else". LOL!

So when my next door neighbors in residency had a premature baby who suffered retinal detachment and consequent blindness despite 3 laser surgeries, I was able to help them cope with a differently abled child and challenge them to let him be. Kid's smart as a whip and navigates like a bat!
Straight A student, whiz at Braille, and virtually fearless!

But, my point is, I have had the good providence to know exceptional folks who refused to be treated differently other than as absolutely necessary. They would not let PCness become a straight-jacket to limit them by making life too easy. They taught mne that PCness is often a cover for the worst kind of pity, that which refuses to see the person for the disability or difference, and they smashed that idol to atoms!

I am quite confident that you are of the same cloth!

[Blackheart]

Originally Posted by jerseydevil

But I won't go up to them and say "Oh - how's it going - good to see you. I'm glad you were able to come" - when I can't stand the person. You can think whatever you like - but I'm not going to pretend to like someone when I don't.

I think that's where the disconnect is. Just because I'm being polite to someone, doesn't mean I like them. In practice, the people I don't like are the people I strive the most to be polite to... I don't suppose I actually can explain it so that someone from somewhere else would understand... I can only say that it's more important to be polite to the people that you don't like, than to the people that you do like. I wonder if perhaps it's because there's a different concept of what Polite is...

You explain to me what's rude about wishing someone a Merry Christmas? Or ignoring our own history because it has god in it? Or what about the forcing LA to take off the cross out of it's slogan - even though the city name is "The Angels"? What does this have to do with being polite? How is midget a ethnic slur - you now have to say "little people". I'm sure with the PC movement - someday that will be unPC too. This is all a result of ridiculous PCness.

What you are referring to as PC, isn't within the scope of political correctness. Wishing someone Merry Christmas is no different than someone else wishing you a Happy Hanukkah. What you are identifying as Political Correctness is in fact someone with a different agenda. By labeling it as PC, you are doing a disservice to the idea that all people deserve to be treated as individuals worthy in their own right without being prejudged on the basis of their ethnic background...

As for removing the cross from the LA sign, one can only assume that it was a christian cross. Is it a secular symbol, no... So why would you want a secular entity, a city, to co-opt a religious symbol? I don't see it as any different if they were using a star of david or a crescent moon. The idea of seperation of church and state is something different than Political Correctness. It's also something that has little to do with politness and rudeness. It's a constitutional issue. Why would you think that it has anything to do with being politically correct? Constitutionally correct maybe...

Midget is not a politically incorrect term. Someone is pulling your leg. Or you have run across some left wing extremists... You shouldn't pay anymore attention to left wing extremists than you should right wing extremists. They're all nutty.

As for history, it's perfectly OK to teach the story of Plymouth rock. There is a historical basis for the idea that many people came to this country to escape religious persecution. But you can't to pick and choose history. We should also teach children about Jameston, a commercial venture that was just as important, if not more so than than the pilgrims. As well as all the other dirty secrets of our history, the good and the bad.

Like the fact that as soon as colonists felt comfortable in their new homes they began to persecute other religions- engaging in witch trials. And the fun fact that Baptists and Atheists were once politically aligned in insisting on seperation of church and state, because Baptists were subject to persecution...

And the genocidal elimination of thousands of tribes... I'd really love it if history teachers taught from the standpoint of history as a roadmap, full of examples of succesful ideas, and failed ideas...

Instead far to many people use it as a platform to promote an agenda.

It's the same thing with political correctness. (or religion for that matter) As an idea, there's nothing wrong with it at all . But in practice, it's like anything else, people can use it to promote thier own agenda. But you shouldn't confuse the agenda with the idea.

[Blackheart]

Originally Posted by inked

OOHHH, NOOOOOOOO! Lizra is not PC because I am from South Carolina and talk r-eye-uut 'n a'l'n y'allllllll, doan !!!

The dulcet and mellifluous tones and intonations of my birthplace should not be sullied with rank amateurs attempting to talk CORE- RECT- LY. They put Paris Island in SC for a reason or two. Proper drill Sargeants wuz onliest once uv 'em. 'Gators 'twas d' uther!!!!!

I doubt anyone else understood you...

But it does put me in mind of Joel Chandler. Which is a perfect example of the PC debate. Some people want to say that because he used dialectict spelling for his black characters, the book is not PC. In fact, try to find a copy of Disney's "Song of the South". Just try.

However, is it in fact a marginalist and derogatory view of blacks in the south during that period, or is it an accurate portrayal of a young white child's impression of the black culture he was exposed to?

I would argue for the latter. You have to remember, Political Correctness is only an Ideal, and there are other ideals just as important. Such as freedom of speech, and avoidance of censorship.

[Blackheart]

Originally Posted by BeardofPants

But there's a difference between a comedian (since nothing's sacred for a comedian, I don't feel singled out) or a friend making jokes, and some stranger making jokes at my expense.

Actually... I'd say the real difference is between talk, and action. It's one thing for a comedian or even a stranger to crack jokes. It may not be socially acceptable, or PC, or even polite. But it happens, and our society has enough stretch to absorb such things. Otherwise free speech would be impossible.

But it's an entirely different thing if such attitudes are legislated into law, and enshrined in civil and coorporate practice. Those are the types of things that Political Correctness was originally intended to correct.

However, like anything else, anyone can use something for their own personal agenda. I wonder if common sense has fled the arena. It usually does when issues become polarized...

[Blackheart]

Here's a nice article in response to the other article...

The True Spirit of Xmas How 4/5 of the country became an oppressed minority

Julian Sanchez

It's a Christmas tradition as venerable as mistletoe and caroling: As the days grow shorter, conservative activists claiming to speak for American Christendom raise their voices, not for a rousing round of "Good King Wenceslaus," but to complain that the roughly 75 to 80 percent of Americans who profess allegiance to some denomination or another of Christianity constitute a cruelly oppressed minority.

The kvetching is especially loud this year, with a spate of stories chronicling the outrage over a particularly insidious form of anti-Christian bigotry: the Satanic phrase "happy holidays."

National Review's John Derbyshire reports bristling at these two seemingly innocuous words with the sort of fascinated intensity he normally reserves for buggery. There's even a Committee to Save Merry Christmas, urging a boycott of stores that spit on Christians by deploying such bigoted phrases as "happy holidays" or "season's greetings." And in case you thought those phrases were, in our increasingly pluralistic society, just nice ways of creating a festive atmosphere without seeming to exclude the folks celebrating, you know, those other holidays happening around this time, CNN's Lou Dobbs shakes his jowls to remind you that those phrases have "excluded everyone who is celebrating Christmas" (which is apparently neither happy nor a holiday). The Christian Law Association has released a vague list of horror stories under the rhetorical headline: "Has Christmas Become Illegal in America?"

But "Happy Holidays" is just a skirmish in the Axis of Atheism's total war to annihilate Christmas. When the Target chain opted not to make a special exemption for the Salvation Army from its general ban on solicitation, it was tarred as not merely Scrooge-like, but anti-Christian, and deserving of a boycott. Newsweek is ineptly slagged for running an extremely mild piece to the effect that some scholars doubt whether various aspects of the biblical Christmas story could be historically accurate. Even the neutral-sounding phrase "winter break" for the vacation weeks students of various religions are given evokes the specter of the lion pits. If your media diet is largely constrained to Fox News and The Washington Times, it may seem that Bill O'Reilly stands all but alone in having a good word for the holiday amid an "anti-Christmas jihad."

While unusually visible this year, the panic over a War on Christmas is part of a more general persecution complex shared by some conservative Christians, which seems at least as strange as the minority-party style rage evidenced at this summer's Republican National Convention by people who now control every branch of government. While Catholic League honcho William Donohue targeted an old favorite when he complained on MSNBC that "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular," the favored villain these days appears to be secularism itself—particularly odd in the context of the Christmas issue, since most of those other "happy holidays" are also religious.

Doubtless the faithful face many burdens, but it's probably worth recalling, for perspective's sake, the (almost certainly accurately) conventional wisdom that an open atheist could not be elected to national political office. George Bush the First may not have been quite as voluble about his faith as his prodigal son, but nevertheless he was dissuaded by neither realpolitik nor etiquette from telling one reporter: "I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots."

In order to pull off the sort of grab at victim status conservatives used to deride as a tactic of the left, self-appointed defenders of the faith draw from a cornucopia of bogus anecdotes about oppression. A conservative cause celebre was born when Reuters ran a story under the headline "Declaration of Independence Banned at Calif School" about a teacher forbidden to use that document in classes on the grounds that it mentioned God. It sounds outrageous...and would be, if it were remotely true. It is, of course, not true: The Declaration appears in the school's standard textbooks and hangs on classroom walls. The school's principal, rather, insisted on pre-approving the handouts of a single teacher who had long generated complaints from parents because he was using his American History lessons as a pretext from indoctrination—a teacher who, as one student put it, "talks about Jesus 100 times a day." Judging by this Easter assignment and various other handouts, including fabricated quotations from Founding Fathers on the topic of religion, the concern was well motivated.

Of course, with activists constantly carping that wicked secular humanists have managed to outlaw all religious speech in public schools, it's not terribly surprising that in some instances school administrators who lack a particularly subtle grasp of Supreme Court jurisprudence begin to believe just that and overreach. Seldom mentioned when these cases are cited is the speed with which they tend to be resolved when parents—again, still overwhelmingly Christian in most of the country—get wind of them. Sean Hannity continued to harp on a story about a school removing Christmas music from a student concert well after the rapid reversal of that decision.

Even when genuine cases of religious speech's being squelched lead to a more prolonged battle, the narrative favored by the martyrs manqué doesn't always quite fit. When a Massachusetts high school attempted to punish Bible club members for distributing candy canes with religious messages affixed, Rev. Jerry Falwell justly fumed, but unjustly added: "And yes, students have just as much right to speak on religious topics as they do on secular topics— no matter what the ACLU might propagate." The hitch is that the ACLU successfully defended those very students. One wonders what Falwell makes of the fact that early puritans, regarding Christmas as too pagan and too papist (it's Christ's mass after all), banned its celebration, and that a few contemporary Christians remain sympathetic to that view.

Sometimes, of course, there's a straightforward and cynical explanation of persecution mania. During initial coverage of the murder of Matthew Shepard, widely regarded as an anti-gay hate crime, Today anchor Katie Couric asked a guest to comment on the hypothesis, advanced by some gay activists, that the anti-gay rhetoric of groups like Focus on the Family and the Christian Coalition may have helped to create an atmosphere in which such attacks were more likely. In the wake of recent reporting questioning whether homophobia was the real motive for the murder, Focus on the Family president Don Hodel demanded an apology, seeing Couric's question as evidence of her "anti-Christian agenda." The point of this rhetorical sleight-of-hand is transparent enough: Complaining that your group and your actions have been attacked wins less sympathy and fewer allies than declaring that our shared identity is under assault.

cont.

[Blackheart]

To some extent, the feeling of marginalization may be the result of the very real process of cultural fragmentation. There is probably now as rich and varied a marketplace of Christian media—from Veggie Tales cartoons to the apocalyptic fantasy of the Left Behind series and its spinoffs—as there's ever been. But it's perceived as niche culture, in large part because cultural products are increasingly tailored to niches. As a recent New York Times op-ed notes: "Plain-vanilla Top 40, once the chief vehicle for hit songs, is now the format for only 5 percent of the nation's 10,000-plus stations." A few crossover hits notwithstanding, a young singer who wants to incorporate her faith into her music is now likely to narrowcast to a Christian rock audience because, well, she can. (One apparent exception is hip hop, where alongside lyrical fare that famously drives conservatives to apoplexy, one also finds the likes of the acronymic "Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth" by Wu-Tang Clan's GZA.)

What remains of the mainstream, meanwhile, steers clear of potentially divisive religious themes, not just because American society is gradually becoming more pluralistic in terms of the proportion of Christians to devotees of other faiths, or of none, but because the idea of a monolithic Christian audience is a lot of nonsense, however useful it is to demagogues. Many believers, after all, don't much care for the Left Behind books. Critics of the "Anti Christian Lawyers Union," for that matter, tend to forget that the lead plaintiffs in Abington School District v. Schempp, which barred schools from conducting morning Bible readings, were Unitarians who resented the school's usurpation of their prerogative to teach their children about the Bible in their own way.

So are we really seeing an unprecedented wave of hostility toward either Christmas or Christianity? Or is it, rather, that the waning of the cultural hegemony to which some Christians have come to feel entitled is perceived as an attack? Many of the most loudly trumpeted complaints in this vein are, after all, complaints about the absence of special treatment: no special spot for the Ten Commandments in the courthouse rotunda; no pride of place for Christmas among those happy winter holidays; no exceptions for the Christian charity.

Since "special rights" has been a term of aspersion among conservatives for decades, would-be theocrats have at least the decency to be too ashamed to demand them explicitly. Instead, they've learned the power of the victim narrative, of framing the debate to cast themselves as underdogs. Rather than attempting to entrench their values, demagogues purport to be playing defense against a plot to "purge religion from the public square," trading on the same ambiguity in the word "public" that has eased the acceptance of ever more regulation of privately owned establishments that are open to the public, and allowed for the metastasis of the term "public health," which now apparently covers not just infectious disease control or mosquito abatement, but smoking and obesity. Since the battle is a reactive one against the undifferentiated forces of anti-Christian bigotry, such nice distinctions as that between a business that fails to cater to its customers and an arm of the state adhering to strict neutrality can be dispensed with. More importantly, moderate Christians with no desire to impose their faith on others might be convinced to support a re-Christianization of public life on the premise that they'd only be defending themselves against marauding secularists.

The stratagem is so perverse as to be almost admirable: Take a holiday associated with sentiments like peace and goodwill, mix in some well-intentioned attempts to acknowledge it in an inclusive way suited to a pluralistic society, and then use the combination to generate fear, divisiveness, and high ratings. But whether we're impressed or appalled by that cynical ploy, whether we're gearing up for Christmas dinner or just a post-Ramadan pig-out, we can all breathe a little easier knowing that the anti-Christmas "jihad" is no more real (sorry kids) than Santa Claus. Happy holidays.

[inked]

Thanks for that post! I just love it when liberals fume about the use of "their" tactics by others! I hope Sun-star reads this one so she can see the rotundity of the struggle here!

[Elfhelm]

He didn't say you conservatives are using our tactics. He said you are using the tactics that you accuse us of using. It's not that subtle a difference.

[inked]

I believe that is known as a "distinction without a difference" in the lexicon of liberal subtlety, a very short tome consisting of that phrase and "my way or the highway, you (insert epitaph of moment).

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Blackheart

As for removing the cross from the LA sign, one can only assume that it was a christian cross. Is it a secular symbol, no... So why would you want a secular entity, a city, to co-opt a religious symbol? I don't see it as any different if they were using a star of david or a crescent moon. The idea of seperation of church and state is something different than Political Correctness. It's also something that has little to do with politness and rudeness. It's a constitutional issue. Why would you think that it has anything to do with being politically correct? Constitutionally correct maybe...

Yet - NJ and NY using a goddess is perfectly okay - right? It's a symbol that represents the HISTORY of their city. Do think LA should change the name of it's city? It MIGHT be offensive to some people since it's currently the City of ANGELS.

[jerseydevil]

Originally Posted by Blackheart

Midget is not a politically incorrect term. Someone is pulling your leg. Or you have run across some left wing extremists... You shouldn't pay anymore attention to left wing extremists than you should right wing extremists. They're all nutty.

Actually - midget is one of the unacceptable terms. There is a list that newspapers that lists unPC words and midget is one of them. I suppose you don't know that - sicne you think that it's a perfectly okay term.

[jerseydevil]

Let's see here - I remember this when all of a sudden there was the uproar over the us of "Master/Slave" to describe the linkages between hard drives.

'Master/slave' Most Politically Incorrect Phrase

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The computer term "master/slave," which was banned as racially offensive by a Los Angeles County purchasing department, was named the most politically incorrect term of the year on Thursday.

Among other terms on the top 10 list of politically charged words and phrases, issued by the word usage group Global Language Monitor, were "non-same sex marriage" to describe heterosexual unions, "waitron" for waiter or waitress and "higher being" for God, a term some people found too religious.

"We found 'master/slave' to be the most egregious example of political correctness in 2004," said Paul JJ Payack, president of The Global Language Monitor.

"This is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life, down to the level of the control processes of computer technology."

In computer terminology, "master/slave" refers to primary and secondary hard disk drives. But a Los Angeles county purchasing department told vendors in late 2003 that the term was offensive and violated the region's cultural diversity. The county's department of affirmative action undertook a hunt to replace it on packages.

After a public uproar, the county backed down. Payack said that while the incident took place in late 2003, debate about it grew enormously in 2004.

The phrase "non-same sex marriage," was used by a former congressman who did not want to offend gay people by using the term traditional marriage, Payack said.

Also on the list this year were "Red Sox lover," to use in place of "Yankee hater," "progressive" for classical liberal, "incurious" rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush, "insurgents" instead of terrorists in Iraq, "baristas" for waiters, and "first year student" rather than freshman.

You can say what you want - but PCness has gotten out of control and is ridiculous. Do you think that Walt Disney should hve really have changed the Pirates of the Carribean ride because they were chasing women around? Maybe we shouldn't say pirates were "scoundrels" either. Maybe we shouldn't call them pirates at all - mayeb we should rename the ride as "The Free-Spirits of the Carribean" that has a much nicer ring to it than "Pirates of the Carribean" and that way no pirates might be offended by the connotation that they raped, pillaged and plundered.