Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Saturday, March 29, 2008

The Lessons of Political Correctness

Back during all that Political Correctness phase of the nineties, did anyone publish a book on what the outcome was? As in, which words really were or weren't OK? Did there ever get to be any agreement on that, any final tally? I feel like by the time everybody started making fun of it, it all became kind of a big joke. Yet...people still seem to feel like some of it still goes, right? Well, which part goes and which part is a joke?

Take the world "oriental." Is that still cool to use? Are we cool with it? Are they cool with it? Who exactly is uncool with it? I went to a Thai place, brought home the leftovers in a red and white tub with Far Eastern design motifs on it. Only as I was putting it in the fridge did I notice it said: "Delicious ORIENTAL food"! And the "ORIENTAL" was in one of those fake-y Asian script fonts with all the stereotypical flourishes! Well, needless to say, I had a good laugh on that. Because it seemed somehow wrong!

But is it or isn't it? What did we decide, back when people were all het up and pretending to give a crap about this sort of thing?

And don't give me any of that "it's okay to use it as an adjective, but not as a noun" crap. That's a load of ninny-minded bullshit. A word means what it means - for good or bad. It means what it means. It can't be an insult unless the meaning of the word is INTRINSICALLY NEGATIVE. If it's fine as an adjective, then it's not somehow a horrible insult as a noun! Take any strong, meaningful adjective. Take "strong." I may say, "you people are strong." Or I may say "I wish to run with the strong!" Either way, the people being referred to are not being insulted.

Either the word applies or it doesn't. Either a word is insulting or it isn't.

Um. Anyway. It's a great restaurant. Not only the best Thai food in town, but quite possibly the best oriental food in town as well.

And that's saying a lot!

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