Tag Political Correctness

A change in the air

Michael 5 Comments

Once upon a time they lived happily ever after (1)Yesterday was first day of Autumn. Or today. Today is the first full day of Autumn.  The distinction is most likely only important to whichever weather person was on air yesterday versus who is on air today. Either yesterday or today you must have noticed the difference when you woke up? The trees are now covered with bright colorful leaves, pumpkins are lining all the by-ways, there’s a smell of warm apple cider in the air, and that air is decidedly cooler than it was yesterday with decidedly fewer daylight hours. Well, maybe not quite. In truth there isn’t much difference between summer and fall if yesterday and tomorrow are the comparisons. If you’re in the Southern Hemisphere, just read this paragraph backwards. There’s not much change between the last day of Winter and the first of Spring either. Seasons just don’t change that quickly.

In truth, any change seldom happens quickly, but it happens. And it happens inexorably. Things you barely notice from day to day add up so over time the change becomes monumental. Take yourself for example. You likely are not noticeably different than you were yesterday, maybe not from last week, perhaps even barely noticeably different from last year. But compared to five years ago, ten years, twenty years…the change is remarkable.

Something that rarely changes is our desire not to change. Almost everybody prefers the familiarity of now to the point they would choose a future to be no different than the now. Except now. Our “now” is taking a great toll on us. It is a hard now that we’d gladly change for calmer times. Unfortunately, those calmer times may come with their own set of peril. To me, Eden is the fictional town of Mayfield were the Cleavers raised their two sons, a few miles from Bryant Park where Uncle Charlie helped Steve Douglass raise his three sons, which isn’t so far from the Springfield were Jim Anderson knew best how he and Margaret would raise their two daughters bookended around their only son. Springfield barely changed from week to week yet somehow, it’s unrecognizable now when Homer and Marge struggle with their brood. I’d rather live in the Springfield of the fifties, the Mayfield or Bryant Park of the sixties, than the 21st century Springfield or any other model community even if it meant living in a politically incorrect time of two genders, people advancing on merit, family values, and inter-generational respect.

So, now you’re going to ask, what about segregation, marginalization, anti-Semitism, homophobia, the Cold War, and inner-city gangs? So, now I will ask you, why are all those still going on? Last week a young man in a Pittsburgh, PA suburb shot three people at a baby shower, for his expected child by the way, over an argument of who would transport the gifts from the venue to the home. Over 4500 Asian hate crimes were reported in the first seven months of 2021. In one week in May 2021, the Anti-Defamation League found more than 17,000 tweets using variations of the phrase “Hitler was right.” Violent crimes against the marginalized group of hearing, visually, and physically challenged persons are more than double for non-challenged males and over three times as prevalent against women versus their non-challenged counterpart. Just last month, the Associated Price reported that a parent barged into his daughter’s elementary school in Northern California and punched a teacher in the face, sending him to an emergency room, over mask rules. So, I ask those who say my idyll is a paradise for only the privileged white male, how they would like to respond to these.

Ah yes, there is a change in the air. If we could only tell which way the wind will blow next.

Happy Federal Employees Day Off Day!

Michael Leave a comment
Happy Thanksgiving all you Canadians, and happy whatever holiday it is that we Americans (U.S. type) are supposed to be ashamed of but we’re glad to get the day off anyway so let’s just change the name for when we are talking on social media or while standing in line at the coffee shop. Woe to he or she or they or it or whatever is the right way to refer to him or her or them who dare utter the name Columbus. Don’t you know what he did to the true and rightful Americans (native type except not native as in one who was born here)?  From whence did all this vitriol come? Not the faux vitriol or he, she, them, it, and/or who or whatever. The frank vitriol being spewed by me! Well, I’ll tell you. Come sit and listen.
 
It was Sunday afternoon and I was out for a ride with my dear friend who had just travelled 3,000+ miles to visit and be able take such a ride. We were speaking of mountains, anticipating a trip to the nearest mountains, the Alleghenies, an mid-range of the Appalachians, to do some fall leaf watching. “Who named the mountains?” she wonder aloud. Without thinking I said, “I’m not sure. Around here almost everything was named by the original tribes.” Yes, that’s exactly how I said it. Not Native Americans, not Indigenous People, not [shudder] Indians. The original tribes. 
 
See, here there were several nations and tribes around here and many are still recognized as the names of towns or schools or rivers though not necessarily as nationals. Iroquois, Shawnee, Seneca, Chippewa, and others. Their cultures and language, their religions and even their forms of government differed much like France differs from Poland. Yet “we” the “woke privileged white americans” lump them together as Indigenous American or Native American much like we the same do the same with anybody “we” feel are or have been slighted by “us.” Asian Americans, African Americans, Latino Americans (which I suppose is now Latinx) yet never considering if we really wanted to recognize and celebrate their heritage we would take the time to recognize and celebrate their ancestry. Just as their is a huge difference between decedents of French and those of Polish ancestors so there is a difference between Cuban and Columbian, or Namibian and Nigerian, or Thai and Taiwanese, or even Chippewa and Cherokee. 
 
I don’t really care what you think of Columbus. What he did, didn’t do, thought about doing or wish he had done was done, not done, thought about, or wished for long before I was a gleam in my parents’ eyes. What resulted from those deeds and non-deeds can’t be undone. But what you decide to do or not do or think or dream today and tomrrow and the days after that do matter. So if you want it to matter more than just for as long as it takes for somebody to create an even more politically correct term for anybody who “isn’t like us” how about taking the time to talk to and learn about somebody who “isn’t like you.” You might find out their histories and culture are much more interesting than you read about in 40 characters or less on line.
 
Happy Day!
 
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You Gotta Trust Somebody

Michael Leave a comment

This is local news but we’re willing to bet something similar has happened where you live provided you live in the United States of America.  Seems other countries already have this figured out.

Earlier this week the local county council that counsels those who live in the county where we live voted to not include the phrase “In God We Trust” among the other cute sayings along the walls of the room in the county courthouse where the council lives and works on the days they bother to go to work.  It seems they trotted out that old argument, the separation of church and state, once again.  (They realize that the Congress of the United States begins each session with a prayer, don’t they?)  The County Executive made it even worse by trying to explain that even if the council passed that resolution he would have vetoed it since not everyone who lives in the county is a Christian.  Now there’s one soul who needs a lot of remedial Sunday school.

We’ve tried fighting that one with the clear language of those who wrote that Constitution that they meant freedom OF religion, not freedom FROM religion.  Since they never do listen to us we thought we’d at least help them along.  If they aren’t going to trust in God, let’s come up with someone everyone can agree is worthy of our trust.

It seems these guys like other elected officials.  They like to quote predecessors and sometimes even each other during spirited debates.  It sounds too self-serving to put up a banner that says “In County Council We Trust” so we’re going to look at some other elected ones.  School boards are supposed to be above politics and take an oath to be leaders to the children they ultimately serve.  That would be a good choice.  No, wait a minute, it was just a couple of days ago that the president of a local school board was arrested for assault stemming from a  bar fight in which an instructor in her school district was hit over the head with a beer mug by his wife – neither teacher nor board member, whew.  And just a couple days before that another school district’s board member was hauled off to jail on charges of assault and public drunkenness after a fight at a wedding reception.  “In School Boards We Trust” is out.

Judges.  They are fair, honest, impartial.  Yes, we can live with “In Judges We Trust” carved in stone.  Except for the ones who have recently been paroled for everything from taking bribes to using judicial resources to finance re-election campaigns.  Now there is that one judge who gets all the big trials and is pretty fair.  Why it was only two days ago that he wouldn’t allow a deliberating jury from reviewing an exhibit saying they have to rely on their collective memories.  We can change the carving to “In Judges’ Memories We Trust.”  No, that sounds too much like a memorial.

How about we move up the ladder.  If County Council wants to be somebody when they grow up it would be state representatives.  “In the State House We Trust” is a little wordy but it gives people enough time to not worry about the eight of them that are due to be released from prison before the end of this year.  Most of them already have their paperwork in to become registered lobbyists.  We’re certain we can get them to agree to be trustworthy if we can get their names inscribed along with the major catch phrase.  Or not.

Looks like we’re down to our last two suggestions.  There is a local bathroom remodeler whose motto is “A Company You Can Trust.”  We’ll just take a still from one of his television ads, blow it up, and post it behind the county council dais.

Our last suggestion is just to make certain the county council doesn’t ever have to deal with the phrase again and purge it from all of their records.  Once they can figure out how they’d like to get paid, since it is on all of our money, they should be happy as clams.  Or just as steamed.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.

You thought that was politically incorrect?

Michael 1 Comment

Over the years we’ve rarely made specific observations of those people that we might feature in our posts.  There have been many of them but we’ve always spoken to what they’ve done, not who they are.

Our first mention of a real other person came in November of 2011.  We detailed the exploits of a shopper who startled She of We by screaming across a rather large store to a companion shopper.  We mentioned the shopper was screaming in a foreign tongue but we didn’t identify it and didn’t have to.  That wasn’t the story as much as the volume and not knowing the language therefore not knowing whether the scream was because Shopper #1 found a real bargain or a raging inferno.  (See “Clean Up on Aisle Ten,” November 10, 2011)

Throughout the next three years we visited waiters and waitresses that made our day (our favorite can be found at “How would you like your toast?” August 2, 2012), engaged couples becoming married couples in various culture settings (“Weddings Gone Wild…well, sort of,” July 1, 2013), and plane-mates with oversized (!) carry-ons (“We’re On Vacation, Part 1,” September 3, 2012).

In none of these stories did we consider the featured guest’s ethnic or racial background.  It didn’t seem to matter to the story. And if you speak to most people in the world, it doesn’t matter to them either.  Oh but when it comes time to complete a survey or an application for something, those authors delve into backgrounds that would be challenged as politically incorrect if they were to speak thusly in a lunch room of a company doing business with the government.

And there seems to be no consistency to their descriptions.  They may ask the survey taker if he or she is African American, Hispanic, or White.  That gives us one in an uncertain familial background, one as cultural descriptor, and one that’s a race identifier.  What does the white South African who grew up in Chile answer?  Is someone from the Black Sea village of Poti in Georgia just as Asian American as someone who grew up in Da Nang overlooking the South China Sea?  There is no good way to answer.

Is the term White used for those one cannot readily discern an ethnic background?  European American brings us back to a non-descript description but how much difference is there between an Italian American, a French American, and a German American other than what side of the Alps are the coffee shops?  And do any of these people get to use the description if they themselves actually spent no time in the called upon country or is that only available for continents?

We think we have the best idea.  If one is living in America one gets to be an American.  If you’re living somewhere else please check with your country’s version of the ACLU for guidance, then ignore them and do what we say instead.   When you read one of our posts you can’t tell if of whom we are speaking has a particular color skin, speaks with a certain accent, or is good at making ravioli at home.   You can tell if of whom we are speaking makes us smile doing the things that race, color, or national origin can’t control.  Like asking, “How would you like your toast?”

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.