frustrate the "PC" police

Knowing the convention on most college campuses is to informally call everyone who teaches “professor.” I always liked to frustrate the more uppity ones by addressing them by their actual formal title. At many universities, there are few full “professors” and a number of adjunct, assistant, associate, and other sorts of professors. Also, instructors and lecturers. If a lecturer is acting particularly boastful, I love to shoot the hand into the air and say, “Lecturer Thomas, could you please explain….....”

They’ll never correct you back. I guess that happened to me once with a particularly egomaniacal brand new associate. Big mistake for him.

Better to be pissed off than pissed on. That’s what they always say. Well, I pissed on a coworker today who was so proud he was taking a Native American Awarness Class. Told him it was a huge waste of time.

He did not like my comment.

But it’s true.

Oh, how you are right! I just read your entry…. Though provoking to me and will be writing something on it in the very near future!

Many of these are words I don’t have much problem remembering and using. Even though the changes were motivated by the PC Police, I somehow managed to overcome my normal resistance to such attempts at thought control and adopt the newer terms into my language, more or less.

A big difference is that I don’t get upset when others still use the “older” term.

I generally say fire fighter instead of fireman. I typically will say police officer or police or officer (sometimes, trooper or deputy, depending on the department).

I still often refer to the Letter Carrier as the postman . Sometimes, if I know it is a gal, I will refer to her as the mail lady .

I refer to calling the repairman . My kids like watching the garbage men (which I understand, the PC Police want me to call them sanitation engineers or refuse removal technicians).

I talk of various delivery men, and speak freely of the workers we call out to as handy man.

Our folks who sell us fish are called fishermen. And still, there is no getting past this one. People in the Air Force are airmen.

I am sure there are more.

We’re not suppossed to call them “bums” anymore. There are people who get red-faced when I use that word. They jump up and down screaming that I am suppossed to call them “homeless” people. I said, how do you know the guy I am talking about is homeless? Why can’t he just be a worthless bum?

Another one that gets me is “disadvantaged.” I have no earthly idea what that means.

It’s not a crime to call them “Indians” if they don’t mind.

It was an English word they adopted for themselves and incorporated into their cultures. The word Indian is not horrible.

We should continue to use these phrases, even though the PC Police have asked us not to:

Indian
Sitting Indian Style
Indian wrestling
Indian burn
Indian giver *
Squaw
Brave
Chief

(c’mon, I am sure you have more to add)

• I can actually kinda see the harm in that one, so I try to avoid it.

Like many ideas, the roots of Political Correctness seemed harmless. Just as judges have ruled that certain limitations on “free speech” are acceptable for reasons of peace and safety, college administrators sought to put a lid on provacative speech that served little purpose except to spread hatred or disharmony. It became “illegal” to distribute leaflets on campus that said, simply, “Nigger!”

But, like so many ideas that start out based on good intentions, it got out of hand. Once it became okay to censor certain types of expression, people lined up to add to the growing catalog of thoughts, phrases, and even ideas that should be “banned.”

Today, the “PC” movement invades virtually all parts of contemporary society. Instead of simply attempting to curtail the utterance of useless words designed principly to offend, an entire subculture has evolved to the point where they now advocate the policing of thought.

The movement to sanitize everything and make it politically correct has run amok! A friend of mine with a parlyzed daughter in a wheelchair who devotes a chunk of his life to aiding and assisting the cause of disabled people is routinely chastised by others (who do far less) for using phrases like “handicapped” or “disabled” to describe his OWN daughter and others like her. Some people write him hate mail instructing him that he should refer to his daughter as “differently abled.”

Managers in the US Postal Service have been punished for referring to “postal carriers” as “mail men.” Fire Chiefs have been reprimanded for saying “firemen.” Some city fire departments have even discontinued calling the head of the Fire Department “chief.”

It is out of control, and our team aims to slow it down.

We shall do what we can to thwart the efforts by the PC police to make all of us adhere to their Nazi-esque demands covering which words we use in writing and speaking. We will post rants and tidbits here, seeking to expose the folly of the PC Police, and ridicule their efforts.

And we shall resist. The PC train must be slowed down! And we aim to do it!