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January 19, 2011
How the yearning Right presurrenders to the schmucky Left
Perhaps the reason why the left is almost incandescently furious at Sarah Palinis because she refuses to play their little game. Since she doesn't use their dictionary she is pilloried as illiterate. By using Oldspeak words she ipso facto gives offense. It is this stiff-necked refusal to get with the word program that may paradoxically give her the political strength. Those who've accepted the vocabulary of politesse, aka Newspeak, have unwittingly surrendered. Pre-surrendered, in fact, for the dubious honor of acceptance into quality society. -- Belmont Club ｻ Free the Dictionary
Posted by Vanderleun at January 19, 2011 3:53 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.
Your Say
Dennis Prager spoke on a similar topic today. We need to reclaim the English language from progspeak. A good start is resurrecting a few proscribed words: Crusade. Moral. Inferior. Retarded.
Every one of the mincing euphemisms of political correctness need to die a horrible death. And I'd begin with strangling he/she with a piano wire.
JWM
Posted by: jwm at January 19, 2011 4:35 PM
I think we need to coin a few of our own, as well, JWM. A combination of dead on accurate old school epithets combined with some kickass new school invective would go a long way in hacking off the limbs of the many tentacled Thing from Washington Disease, while salving the wounds it inflicts.
Posted by: Jewel at January 19, 2011 7:41 PM
Well in my own inimitable gruff style, I never used the polite PC forms of address. By avoiding the seven serious naughties and generally coarse language, you can really salt their wounds.
Posted by: Peccable at January 20, 2011 6:28 AM
Jerry Pournelle had a brilliant solution to the he/she pronoun problem: He suggested that it become a contraction of she, he, and it, thereby becoming more inclusive than even the PC mongers could want.
Posted by: St. Thor at January 20, 2011 7:51 AM
In re the execrable he/she, my solution while teaching Project Management was simply to alternate randomly between the two when giving illustrations.
Grateful "feminists" regularly thanked me after class, Human Resources was handily disarmed, and nobody else noticed.
Win/Win.
Posted by: Rob De Witt at January 20, 2011 2:42 PM