The Rocky Mountain Collegian

February 27th, 2007

Political Correctness: Expanding wordiness, one word at a time

“That’s offensive,” “that’s discriminatory,” “that’s not polite!” These are some of the common phrases I hear every now and again from my colleagues on campus. What are they talking about, you ask? Is it about pictures of aborted fetuses standing 50 feet high on the plaza? Is it the outrage being shouted at about affirmative action? Or is it about the gangstas, playas, and homies who say hello to each other by grabbing their crotch and/or flipping the bird to one another? Nope, these phrases are the common arguments I hear about why someone should be politically correct.

Let’s go through a quick list of “possibly offensive” words and their politically correct counterparts:

• -Retarded – mentally challenged
• -Black – African American
• -Gay – Homosexual
• -Straight – Heterosexual
• -Boyfriend/Girlfriend – Partner
• -Indian – First Nations (kudos to my mom for bringing that one to my attention)

The list just goes on. From the looks of it, it actually seems pretty simple to make something politically correct: Take a word that couldn’t possibly be offensive, unless you tried really hard to find a way to make it offensive (by looking at it from some perverted angle), and give it a new name, often in the format of 2 words.

Actually, come to think about it, this could be pretty fun. Let’s see if we can make some words PC, shall we?

Rams – Upon first glance, one would think that we’re simply referring to these graceful mammals that happen to be our mascot. But if we take it to an extreme trying to find a way to make the word “Rams” offensive, we can get these reasons:

• Rams are offensive to Buffaloes, especially after a couple drubbings in sports this season
• Rams can have a certain sexual connotation to it
• Rams can be offensive to environmentalists, due to its implication of heavy-duty pickup trucks

See? Too easy. I guess we can’t start calling our mascot the Rams anymore, we should start calling them the “woolly-horned ungulates” or “Buffalo superiors.” Actually, “horned” can be an offensive word too, but I digress…

Let’s try another one!

Vegan – Someone who will ingest nothing that comes from animals, be it eggs, cheese, or rump roast, either by choice or medical reasons (however, animal feces and decaying animal corpses found in the soil that grows these miracle plants are perfectly fine).

• Vegans are offensive to the carnivore in all of us, as we thrash mercilessly into a pound of finely prepared T-bone steak
• Vegans are offensive to the plants themselves, as they eat proportionally more plants than non- vegans do.

So then, how can “vegan” morph into a politically correct counterpart? “Carnivore challenged” seems pretty good.

One more. Let’s do colors!

Purple – The color of royal togas back in the good ol’ days of Vomitoria (not Vomitoriums) and backstabbing (literally) sandal-wearing people called “Brutus.” Purple is also a secondary color (that’s my kindergarten knowledge put to work, finally…)

• Purple is offensive to yellow, the only primary color that had no mention or say in purple’s creation.
• Purple is offensive to people that are colorblind and cannot see red and/or blue.

Purple, my friend, to be politically correct and not spread hate speech to your colored friends, as you’re all equals, I hereby call you “yellow challenged.” If you prefer, there is also “bi colored inclined to the red and blue degree.”

You see, it’s worthless. You take a perfectly fine, short word that can only seem offensive if you try REALLY hard, and make it even longer and incoherent.

Not to mention this problem:

Using political correctness, how would you label this person?

I’m assuming that most of you said this man was African-American. In actuality, this man is actor Rudolph Walker (check him out as Constable Gladstone in The Thin Blue Line, he’s awesome). By saying that he was African American (instead of, say, black) you would be implying that:

1. He’s African – actually, he’s from Trinidad
2. He’s American – actually, he’s British

Oops!

What this all boils down to, is society’s fear of offending a particular person or group.

A few examples of this “don’t offend people” mindset:

-Removing a dancing Illini act, as a white person paying homage to the great Illini tribe is offensive. All the while, Bobby Bowden is coaching the Seminoles of Florida State, whose fans have the Tomahawk chop. And those Super Bowl Colts, they reside in the one and only INDIANapolis, INDIANa.

-Banning negative chants at PSD football games, something CSU students are proud of, even though the faculty isn’t (remember Fum’s Song!). This actually makes me question whether a “suck less” chant is considered negative or not.

-Removing Pepe le Peu and Speedy Gonzalez from the Looney Tunes, as they misrepresent French and Mexican people. But exploding TNT in your hands, as it will simply scorch your face and tear your clothes a bit is totally accurate!

What’s this I hear about Freedom of Speech? It is being censored through political correctness. Using words that aren’t hateful (again, unless you try really hard to make it seem hateful) are now being censored. But dropping the f-bomb is perfectly fine (you shouldn’t say the f-bomb because it isn’t PC, you should say “passionate consummation”). It’s also perfectly fine to call the president a retard, but to call an actual retarded person “retarded,” you’ve unleashed PC Hell (Hell: Christian underworld for souls, to be politically correct; also known as Satan’s domain and H-E-double hockey sticks), not to mention your own hypocrisy in using the term “retarded.”

There is a silver lining to being politically correct, however: You know those three-page papers that you have to write for your Media in Society class? Thanks to political correctness, those scary three or four letter words suddenly become two ten-letter words, and if you’re a fan of word count, those 1,000-word minimum papers are all the more easier! And they say padding a paper isn’t art…

Gag me with a spoon. Grow up and take it like a man (or a woman, hear her roar). There are more important issues that need to be addressed than how to label someone. You can quote me on this when I say that political correctness is mentally challenged.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 27th, 2007 at 9:01 am and is filed under Editable Constitution. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

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