Hey, You Can't Say That!

Spin doctors go through life trying to make you believe a cesspool is really a Jacuzzi. The misguided legions of the politically correct are on guard 24/7 for any word or phrase that could possibly offend anyone. The sad result has been to dilute and diminish the great English language to the point where nothing means anything any more. Some of it is just silliness, but clearly some of it is motivated by super-sensitive liberals not wanting to give offense. At last year's Golden Globe awards, host Ricky Gervais let the air out of a few over-inflated celebrity egos. When critics suggested his remarks were offensive, Ricky replied: "offense is not given, it is taken."

Here's an example of silly spin-doctoring. We all know what a prune is. For centuries, prune was a perfectly good word. Now, some 14-year old marketing whiz decided "prune" had a negative connotation in that it was associated with old (over 30) people and their inability to, well, you know. To clean up prune's image, they are now referred to as dried plums. In French, prune means plum, but since when did the French ever get anything right. To me, dried plum sounds worse than prune, and the name change doesn't really change the reason we might eat prunes...wink, wink. Dumb idea.

One of my favorite PC words that was introduced by that paragon of integrity, the used automobile industry, is "pre-owned." We all knew what a used car was, but noooo, that sounded too tacky. A used car suggests upholstery that smells of old farts, and has shriveled french fries under the seats. "Pre-Owned" on the other hand means your BMW was lovingly cared for by an older gentleman who looked like John Forsythe and hand-waxed the car while wearing silk ascots and Bass loafers. He only put the car up for sale when his portfolio dipped and he had to sell the house in Aspen. And it gets better when they say: Certified Pre-Owned...are they guaranteeing it was used?  Swing and a miss...used is used.

When corporations cut jobs to save their drowning asses, they were said to be "downsizing." For years this term described exactly what they were doing and everyone understood it. Then, the same 14-year old who came up with dried plum got to thinking that the word had become too scary and gave us the PC term: "rightsizing." The implication here is that the firm had been oversized, and that by giving all those loyal employees the boot, they were now exactly the right size. A rose by any other name...I'm sure the poor bastards who got those pink slips took great comfort in the fact that they were out of work because of rightsizing, and not, God forbid, downsizing.

This last term is far from funny, it is more like scary. The country is no longer being overrun by illegal aliens, but undocumented immigrants you silly goose. America is in a serious economic crisis and one of the reasons is the government's generosity in redistributing (originally called stealing) money from people who work to give to people who don't work. It's bad enough that we do this for our own lazy citizens, but when we do it for people who illegally enter the country, that is sheer madness. To make this insane practice sound less looney, the PC Left came up with "undocumented immigrants." They meant to register with the government when they came through that border fence ten years ago, but darn it, they plum forgot.

On a lighter note, in a Santa Claus training class in Australia, participants were told that Santa can no longer say: Ho, ho, ho because "Ho" is too close to the American slang for prostitute and therefore offensive to women. Instead they must say Ha, ha, ha. Not kidding folks, look it up. When will the madness end?

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