Holiday Cheer

[Cold Fusion]

For Christmas, I want to lose something

I wounder if I took that the right way...

To clarify, LindaH and I have a lot in common

[Major Maxillary]

I want This.

failing that, an MP3 player.

[Cold Fusion]

you want a guy with a funny hat?

[Major Maxillary]

I want the vest the guy is wearing.

I'm enlisting, it's body armor, put it together.

[Cold Fusion]

[Major Maxillary]

what.

[HentaiCat]

To clarify, LindaH and I have a lot in common

In that case... I was way off

[Awkwardschoolgirl]

For Christmas I want... to be happy again.

Failing that, I'd like a gift certificate to Indigo so I can blow it on manga.

Everyone have a merry Christmas, Happy Hanukah, Kwazy Kwanza, Super Saturnalia, Mad Midwinter-solstice, and just a fantastic anything and everything you celebrate. Even if you don't celebrate, have a nice relaxing break, well that is if you get one... If you don't then uhh... have a nice...every day?

Being politically correct is hard work.

[MaryxTyphus]

But what if they don't have Happy Days Period?

It's hard being Politically correct

[Wilmo]

for christmas, I want to finish applying to gradschool.

[Indigo Violent]

Failing that, I'd like a gift certificate to Indigo so I can blow it on manga.

For a moment I was thinking, "Wait, what? What exactly is she planning to do with this gift certificate to me?"
Then common sense disappointingly reasserted itself.

[Honor]

Hey... I thought the same exact thing.

[Major Maxillary]

Being politically correct is hard work.

then don't be.

Merry Christmas.

[Swordsman3003]

Political correctness is over rated. Are we going to call (a la George Carlin) rape victims 'unwilling sperm recipients'? Or women 'penis challenged individuals'?

[Major Maxillary]

Political correctness is a cancer on our society, sapping the very humanity from our language and society.

seriousley, though. it's rediculous to get offended at being called what you are.


for example, "handicaped" is a dirty word, when the meaning of handicap is far better than "Disabled." and how the fuck can someone, anyone, be "differently abled?"


really, I've had that common lable of "Learning disability" since fifth grade, and you know what? i'm one of the smartest people to come out of the Florida public educational system.


Disabled implies someone is unable to do something. Handicapped means that somethings slightly more difficult for you, so you have to work around it.

a quadropaligic is disabled, a parapalygic is handicapped.

[Honor]

and all three of those words came from political correctness.

Unless you'd prefer to be a "moron" or an "Idiot" talking about "gimps" and "cripples*", then it's a bit too strident to say all political correctness, or sensitivity driven language is a "cancer".

But you sure don't have to argue too hard to get me to agree that it usually goes way too far.

*actually... I know several cripples who like the word "cripple" just fine. But I know a lot of others who'll run over your toes with a wheel chair.

Or women 'penis challenged individuals'?

Puh-leeeze. I have a cock. It's y'all who are "vaginally deficient".

[ManaUser]

Hear Hear. I get sick of all the ranting against "political correctness", probably because I was familier wtih the phrase back term when it was still a positive term. It wasn't limited to word choice either. But that's sepeate issue. The main thing is "political correctness" (as used today) comes from what is basically a good impulse, trying to be respectful of other people. Sure some people forget the point and come up with silly things like "thought shower" but that doesn't make the whole concept bad.

[Happypeepeehead]

I think the original idea of the Frankfurt school has been so horrendously misinterpretted that people assume anything that is polite is politically correct. This was a system designed by people who escaped the Holocaust and were trying to eliminate ways for us to use language to divide humans in negative fashions. I'm not saying that if you're against political correctness that you're one with the Nazis but I think the term itself has taken far too much of an undeserved beating.

[Major Maxillary]

You should really stop taking every little thing people say so damn seriousley and literally.



i just can't stand people who are so uptight about somethingt that they can't even bring themslves to call a spade a spade. it seems every other year the PC newspeakers roll out a new and even less sensible word for every damn person, place, or thing.


let's not forget the little things they throw into conversations. Political Correctness can trun a single word into a sentence and a sentence into a paragraph.


it's all a bunch of bullshit, really. people are just too damn sensitive. and the ones who take offense at the smallest damn things are the worst.

"Hey, Rob. you gonna be here for the big game?"

"What? so you think i like sports just because i'm black!?"

"No, don't be silly."

"What? you sayin' i'm silly 'cause i'm black!?"

"You being black has nothing to do with this."

"WHAT DID YOU CALL ME!?"


the whole world just needs to pull their collective head out of their ass.



while i'm on the subject, another thing i hate is when someone say's "i'm sorry, but-" when they contradict or correct you. it's basically the most condesending way of saying anything, and is flat out annoying. you don't apologise for things you aren't sorry for, otherwise the apology means nothing.


There is such a thing as being polite to the point of rudeness.



anyway, Political correctness is bullshit, anyway. it just isn't practical to accomodate everyone's special needs. and you shouldn't be requied to. but my biggest beef isn't the labels or etiqette, but one simple fact; Political correctness is based entirely on deviding people up into all kinds of categories. it basically says that all these different groups need special treatment, and in some cases should be held to different standards. it runs counter to equality.

nowhere is this more true than with race.

i particularly agree with Mike Wong on the subject.

What is racism? If we simply examine the structure of the word, it would appear obvious that the word "racism" should be interpreted just like all of the other "isms". Just as humanism upholds the importance of human rights, nationalism upholds the importance of national differences, and theism upholds the importance of divine beings, racism upholds the importance of race.

Does race matter? In an ideal world, it wouldn't. The fact that I am of Asian descent shouldn't mean anything to anyone, on any grounds, except as a point of purely academic trivia. But that's an ideal world. In the real world, have we been moving toward this ideal, or away from it? Does the "political correctness" movement help, or hurt?

I feel that modern political correctness, far from reducing racism, is actually increasing it. One example is the politically correct terminology for visible minorities. In America, people of African descent are referred to as "African-Americans". People of Asian descent are referred to as "Asian-Americans". People of Indian descent are referred to as "Indian-Americans". Some of these terms are championed by members of those races, but I strongly object to them. If a young black man traces his American lineage back for ten generations, grows up in Detroit and never sees Africa, why should he be referred to as an "African-American"? Doesn't that imply that he's half-African, and half-American? Why isn't he all American? Why aren't the descendants of European settlers referred to as "Anglo-Americans", or "Aryan-Americans"? When I hear one of these hyphenated race names, it implies to me that the person has recently immigrated from Africa, or India, or Asia. Therefore, I see no justification whatsoever to apply such terms to people whose grandparents were born here. It accentuates the differences, and implies that they are "imports", rather than a natural part of the local culture.

The politically correct media is constantly reminding us of the distinction between the alien cultures of non-whites and the presumably domestic culture of whites. The television is awash in documentaries and soundbites about "black culture" or "asian culture" or "latino culture", and people proudly demonstrate their "racial sensitivity" by "respecting" these various "cultures." What a crock ... this show of "respect" is completely racist, no matter what the politically correct brigade may say. To even describe something called "asian culture" is to subtly make two claims:

1. All people descended from Asian immigrants act the same.
2. People of Asian descent have different cultural values than "we" do.

The same is true whenever someone talks about "black culture" or "latino culture". The none-too-subtle implication is that members of visible minorities have conflicted cultural and national loyalties, torn between here and their "homelands". To put it another way, why don't we ever hear about "white culture"? No one talks about "white culture", because everyone knows two things:

1. There are many different types of "white" culture. British, French, Irish, Italians, Germans, Russians, etc. are much different from one another.
2. Once people have been here for more than a generation or two, we should assume that they've adjusted to local cultural values.

Why don't we make those same assumptions about people who aren't white? Are we supposed to perpetuate the notion that all asians act the same, or all blacks act the same? Are we supposed to promote the notion that members of visible minorities are incapable of accepting local cultural values, or that they have some unbreakable spiritual connection to the birthplace of their ancestors which will forever separate them from white people?

Oh, I know, the politically correct brigade might point out that white people aren't the only ones who talk about "black culture", or "asian culture". Well, that doesn't prove anything. No one ever said that white people are the only racists in the world, so you can't prove that an act isn't racist by showing that a non-white person does it. I've seen black people accuse other black people of "not acting black enough", and I've seen asians accuse other asians of "being yellow on the outside, and white on the inside." It's truly disgusting to me that a member of a visible minority can actually be criticized for not conforming to racial stereotypes.

So if you want to be racially sensitive, don't bullshit me about your great respect and admiration for "asian culture". Asian culture does not exist. I don't know of any such thing. People from Japan, Korea, Indonesia, and China have markedly different cultural values, and people from different regions or different social groups within those countries also have markedly different cultural values. As for me, I don't belong to any of those groups. I love burgers and pizza. I watch NFL football on TV. I only speak English. I drive a Mercury. My dog is a family pet, not a snack. I laugh at water, er .. American beer. And when someone asks whether I'm Chinese or Japanese, I tell him I'm neither. I'm a Canadian. End of story.

that's the thing. political correctness does everything to emphasise how we're all different, and does little to illustrate how we're all the same.


so if you're worried about hurting someon's fellings, just remember; if their feelings are so delicate that they get hurt by simple small talk, then they deserve to be offended.


"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning." -Sir Winston Churchill

[Honor]

Ok, Max... Let's do it your way. Let's try one without the kd gloves, calling a spade a spade as it were.

You should really stop taking every little thing people say so damn seriousley and literally.

Jesus, I thought I was essentially agreeing with you, you ignorant, empty headed, self important, addle-brained prick. Now I have to answer some shit like this? Ok, umm.. Let's see. How about "Fuck no."?

Or, better yet, how about a counter-proposal? How about "You should really take up the hobby of actually thinking for a bare minimum of fifteen or twenty seconds before you open your mouth and let let noise fall out, or perform the keyboard-driven equivalent of that action."?

Tell me... What possible sense does it make for me to alter my interaction with the world to assume that nothing anybody says actually means what it says?

I'm not condemning sarcasm, allegory, allusion, metaphore, or even practical exaggeration here... I use those tools as much as the next person, and still manage to be understood. The problem is, you're not using those linguistic tools, are you? You're just railing at things you don't understand in inappropriate terms, with a language you aren't fluent in.

In other words, shit just seems to fall out of your mouth, with little to nothing in the way of forethought or predication. It's not exaggerated, it's not sarcastic, it's not illustrative, it's just wrong. Not even wrong in the sense of "witty, clever, avant-garde, and edgy in the context of currently accepted norms", but just plain old completely incorrect, tragically under-educated, and criminally under-thought.

And when you get called on it, your best answer is usually a defensive version of "Well, of course what I said isn't what I meant. And you're an uptight bitch for thinking it was..."

How fucking far afield can I possibly go by expecting people, once in a while, to actually fucking mean what they say, or at least something remotely close to it?!?


And, on that subject, here's a little suggestion. Maybe you could take up the habit of understanding perhaps just a tiny bit about whatever it is you've decided to spew the pus of your ignorance about at any given moment? Don't look now, but you're Ned on the Fed-Ex commercial, dude...!

Ned... You are always wrong. Lets re-cap. James Dean was an actor, Jimmy Dean makes sausage. Steely Dan is not one person. We get "fringe benefits", not "french benefits", and you now what Ned? It's not the leaning tower of... Pizza.

• The clever little racial exchange you put forth has nothing to do with "political correctness" and everything to do with the person in it being a combative, over sensitive prick. Political correctness just asks that you say "black" instead of "Nigger."
• "I'm sorry but...", used correctly, is not condescending... It's just a preface for relaying a fact that you feel is unfortunate... For us humans, it is possible to feel bad about something you, none the less, have to tell someone. I'm sorry, but that's not the way it works. I'm sorry, but this is all I can afford to give. I'm sorry, but you are an idiot.
• Political correctness has absolutely nothing to do with dividing people into special groups or insisting (or even recognizing) that those groups need special treatment.

The mere fact that neither you nor Mike Wong know or understand what the fuck "Political Correctness" is or isn't, or what it is or isn't designed to do, doesn't make your little diatribe any more correct or entertaining.

Political Correctness is 100% entirely about showing how people are the same, and minimizing how people are different. Idiots like yourself misusing the term in common parlance doesn't alter it's meaning.

As an example:

...One example is the politically correct terminology for visible minorities... "African-Americans"... "Asian-Americans"... "Indian-Americans"

Wrong, nimrod. The "politically correct terminology" for those people is "human being". When given group of people themselves insist on differentiation, then it becomes polite to use the terminology they are most comfortable with. But that doesn't alter the fact that the aim of "politically correct" language is the avoidance of forms of expression or action that are perceived to exclude, marginalize, or insult groups of people.

And if you like Mike Wong, whoever the fuck he is, buy him a dictinary for xmas. He clearly doesn't have a firm enough grasp of the English language to be holding forth on matters of linguistic convention.

• Humanism has nothing to do with human rights. It's a philosophy that attaches importance to human beings rather than divine or supernatural beings.
• Nationalism has nothing to do with national differences. It's patriotism or an advocacy of political independance for a given country.
• Theism isn't about the importance of divine beings, but rather the state of beliving in them in the first place, and
• Racism is not about the differences between races, but rather the belief that one race is superior to another by virtue of those differences.

Whoever he is, given how galactically wrong he is in this... tantrum, it's unsurprising that you would so vehemently agree with him.

There. You like me better without the political correctness and polite discourse? Bozo.