Picnic

[Mark A Mandel]

Larry's quotation from the Snopes cite was truncated, at least as I
received it. Not really important, as I'm sure I can find the whole
thing by searching Snopes for "picnic".

-- Mark A. Mandel

On Sun, 21 Jul 2002, Laurence Horn wrote:

        [...]

#Barbara Mickelson's response at snopes.com (Nov. 15, 2000):

        [...]
#on the Internet. Of course, the fact that it's spurious hasn't
#deterred those who are determined to find something to be offended
#by, as noted in this excerpt from a recent National Post article:
#
#                 Meanwhile, things are not peachy on the campus of
#SUNY/Albany. The university wanted to honour baseball legend Jackie
#Robinson by having a picnic.  But the university's equity office said
#this must not occur because the word "picnic" referred originally to
#gatherings held to lynch Blacks. In fact, as one of their own English
#professors (rather less committed to historical revisionism
#than RMC's Dr. Robinson) pointed out, the word "picnic" actually
#comes from a 17th-century French word that denotes a party at which
#everyone brings food.  But Zaheer Mustafa, the equity officer,
#nevertheless decreed that "picnic" not be used because "the point is
#-- the word offends." So the university decided to call it an
#"outing." Then, homosexual students took objection to that, and SUNY
#decided to publicize the

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