2005's Politically Incorrect Words/Phrases

[Laurence Horn]

>Caution: this website has a ton of pop-ups.
>...
>...
>_http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27261748.shtml_
>(http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_27261748.shtml)
>(...)
>
>The Top Politically inCorrect Words and Phrases for  2005:
>1. Misguided Criminals for Terrorist:  The BBC attempts to strip  away all
>emotion by using what it considers 'neutral' descriptions when  describing
>those who carried out the bombings in the London Tubes.  The  rub:
>the professed
>intent of these 'misguided criminals' was to kill,  without warning, as many
>innocents as possible (which is the common definition  for the term,
>terrorist).
>2. Intrinsic Aptitude (or lack thereof) was a suggestion by Lawrence
>Summers, the president of Harvard, on why women might be underrepresented in
>engineering and science.  He was nearly fired for his speculation.
>3. Thought Shower or Word Shower substituting for brainstorm so as not  to
>offend those with brain disorders such as epilepsy.
>4. Scum or "la racaille" for French citizens of Moslem and North African
>descent inhabiting the projects ringing French Cities.  France's Interior
>Minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, used this most politically inCorrect (and
>reprehensible)
>label to describe the young rioters (and by extension all the  inhabitants of
>the 'Cites').
>5. Out of the Mainstream when used to describe the ideology of any  political
>opponent:  At one time slavery was in the mainstream, thinking  the sun
>orbited the earth was in the mainstream, having your blood sucked
>out by  leeches
>was in the mainstream.  What's so great about being in the  mainstream?
>6. Deferred Success as a euphemism for the word 'fail'.  The  Professional
>Association of Teachers in the UK considered a proposal to replace  any notion
>of failure with 'deferred success' in order to bolster students'  '
>self-esteem'.
>7. Womyn for Women to distance the word from 'man'.  This in spite  of the
>fact that the term 'man' in the original Indo-European is gender neutral  (as
>have been its successors for some 5,000 years).
>8. C.E. for A.D.:  Is the current year A.D. 2005 or 2005  C.E.?   There is a
>movement to strip A.D. (Latin for Year of our Lord)  from the year designation
>used in the West since the 5th century and replace it  with the supposedly
>more neutral Common Era  (though the zero reference  year for the beginning of
>the Common Era remains the year of Christ's  birth).
>9. "God Rest Ye Merry Persons" for "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen":   A
>Christmas, eh, Holiday, carol with 500 years of history is not
>enough to sway  the
>Anglican Church at Cardiff Cathedral (Wales) from changing the original
>lyrics.
>10. Banning the word Mate:  the Department of Parliamentary  Services in
>Canberra issued a general warning to its security staff banning the
>use of the
>word 'mate' in any dealings they might have with both members of the
>Parliament
>and the public. What next? banning Down Under so as not to offend  those
>living in the 'Up Over'.
>Holiday Bonus:  Happy Holidays or Season's Greetings for Christmas  (which in
>some UK schools now label Wintervale.  (In the word X-Mas, the  Greek letter '
>Chi" represented by the Roman X actually stands for the first two  letters of
>the name Christ.)
>Last year the Top Politically Incorrect words were:  Los Angeles  County's
>insistence of covering over with labels any computer networking
>protocols that
>mention master/slave jargon.  Following closely were  non-same sex marriage
>for marriage, and waitron for waiter or  waitress.

I've always preferred "mixed-sex marriage" for the retronym here.
And "waitron" has certainly been kicking around for over a
decade--bit of a time lag here.  Note also the interesting (but not
particularly novel) application of the etymological fallacy above in
the exegesis of item #7:  "man" has been gender-neutral for 5000
years [! --I wonder what their evidence is for that], therefore it's
really gender-neutral now.   I'm also not quite clear on the notion
of political incorrectness employed here:  are "waitron", "womyn"
(also not particularly hot off the press), etc. supposed to be
politically *in*correct?  I give up.

larry