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nal. If you’re a reptilian lowlife on your way up, stop getting fucked and start doing the fucking. Read the Wall Street Journal.
CRIPPLED, UGLY AND STUPID
In an earlier book. Brain Droppings, I wrote some things about politically correct language, but left out a few areas. I neglected three important groups of people who have had this awkward, dishonest language inflicted on them by liberals: I omitted those who are crippled, ugly or stupid. And so, to address these earlier omissions, I’d like to make a brief return visit to that playground of guilty white liberals: political correctness.
Political correctness is America’s newest form of intolerance, and it is especially pernicious because it comes disguised as tolerance. It presents itself as fairness, yet attempts to restrict and control people’s language with strict codes and rigid rules. I’m not sure that’s the way to fight discrimination. I’m not sure silencing people or forcing them to alter their speech is the best method for solving problems that go much deeper than speech.
Therefore, those among you who are more politically sensitive than the rest of us may wish to take a moment here to tighten up those sphincter muscles, because I’m going to inject a little realism into the dream world of politically correct speech. Especially the words we use to describe one another.
CRIPPLED LIBERALS
Perhaps you’ve noticed that when the politically correct, liberal rule-makers decide to rename a group of humans they view as victims, they begin by imparting a sense of shame to the group’s existing name. And so, somewhere over the years, the word cripple has been discarded. No one mentions cripples anymore. ?That’s because, in yet another stu
The same is true of the ungainly phrase differently abled. I believe that if a person is going to insist on using tortured language such as differently abled, then he should be forced to use it to describe everyone. We’re all differently abled. You can do things I can’t do, I can do things you can’t do. Barry Bonds can’t play the cello, Yo-Yo Ma can’t hit the curveball. They’re differently abled.
It should be explained to liberalspatientlythat crippled people don’t require some heroic designation: it’s a perfectly honorable condition. It appears in the Bible: “Jesus healed the cripples.” He didn’t engage in rehabilitative strategies to improve the conditions of the physically disadvantaged. Can’t these liberals hear how unattractive this language is? How poorly it sits on the ear? Personally, I prefer plain, descriptive language.
For instanceand this is a suggestion that will bother some, but I’m serious about itwhy don’t we just call handicapped people defective? We don t mind talking about birth defects; we don’t flinch from that. We say, “Gunther has a birth defect.” Isn’t that a concession to the fact that people can be defective? Then what would be wrong with calling those people the physically defective? At what point in life does a person with a birth defect become a person who is differently abled? And why does it happen? I’m confused.
UGLY LANGUAGE
Then there are those who don’t quite measure up to society’s accepted standards of physical attractiveness. The worst of that group are called ugly. Or at
least they used to be. The P.C. lingo cops have been working on this, too.
And to demonstrate how far all this politically correct, evasive language has gone, some psychologists are actually now referring to ugly people as “those with severe appearance deficits.” Okay? Severe appearance deficits. So tell me, psychologist, how well does that sort of language qualify for “being in denial”? These allegedly well-intentioned people have strayed so far from reality that it will not be a surprise for me to someday hear a rape victim referred to as an unwilling sperm recipient.
Back to ugly. Regarding people’s appearance, the political-language police already have in place one comically distorted term: lookism. They say that when you judge a person, or rather, size them up (wouldn’t want to judge someone; that would be judgmental) if you take their looks into account, you’re guilty of lookism. You’re a lookist.
And those valiant people who fight lookism (many of them unattractive themselves) tell us that one problem is that in our society, those who get to be called beautiful and those who are called ugly are determined by standards arbitrarily set by us. Somehow, there is some fault attached to the idea that we, the people, are the ones who set the standards of beauty. Well, we’re the ones who have to look at one another, so why shouldn’t we be the ones who set the standards? I’m confused. I would say the whole thing was stupid, but that’s my next topic, and it would sound like a cheap transition.
STUPID PEOPLE
So, stupid. It’s important to face one thing about stupidity: We can’t get away from it. It’s all around us. It doesn’t take a team of professional investigators to discover that there are stupid people in the world. Their presence (and its effects) speaks for itself.
But where do these stupid people come from? Well, they come from
American schools. But while they’re attending these schools, they’re never identified as stupid. That comes later, when they grow up. When they’re kids, you can’t call them stupid. Which may be contributing to the problem. Unfortunately, kids, stupid or otherwise, come under a sort of protective umbrella we’ve established that prevents them from being exposed to the real world until, at eighteen, their parents spring them on the rest of us, full grown.
There are stupid kids. And I do wish to be careful here how I negotiate the minefield of the learning disabled and the developmentally disadvantagedin other words, “those with special needs” (All of these being more examples of this tiresome and ridiculous language.) I just want to talk about kids who are stupid; not the ones with dings.
One of the terms now used to describe these stupid kids is minimally exceptional. Can you handle that? Minimally exceptional? Whatever happened to the old, reliable explanation, uThe boy is slow”? Was that so bad? Really? “The boy is slow. Some of the other children are quick; they think quickly. Not this boy. He’s slow.’ It seems humane enough to me. But no. He his minimally exceptional.
How would you like to be told that about your child? “He’s minimally exceptional.” “Oh, thank God for that! We thought he was just kind of, I don’t know, slow. But minimally exceptional! Wow! Wait’ll I tell our friends.”
Political correctness cripples discourse, creates ugly language and is generally stupid.
I haven’t quite finished this section. (I’m sure I needn t remind you P.C. people that “The opera isn’t concluded until the full-figured woman offers her vocal rendering.”) I know. I really had to strain to get that in. I’m thoroughly ashamed.
But before I leave this section, I wanted to make the point that, on a prac-
tical level, this language renders completely useless at least one perfectly good expression: “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” becomes uIn the kingdom of the visually impaired, the partially-sighted person is fully empowered.” Sad, isn’t it?
LOCATION LOCATION LOCATION
I’ve noticed that when people speak these days, location seems important to them; and one location in particular: there. They say such things as don’t go there; been there, done that; and you were never therefor me.
They don’t say much about here. If they do mention here, they usually say, “I’m outta here. “Which is really an indirect way of mentioning there, because, if they’re outta here, then they must be going there, even though they were specifically warned not to. It seems to me that here and there present an important problem because, when you get right down to it, those are the only two places we have. Which, of course, is really neither here nor there.