It's Just My Take...

This is my first of what hopes to be many "editorials" that I want to share with the rest of humanity.  As stated in my disclaimer, many of those who read this will be offended and thus, I think shall be my first topic: Political Correctness.  Now, it seems to me that our country is absorbed with labeling everyone with terms that are sensitive and non-offensive to others.  We go to great lengths to try and appease everyone's character, heritage, ethnicity, and life-style.  Can we really accomplish such a feat when we know you can't please everyone all the time?  I find it highly unlikely, so why even bother to do so?  We have taken it too far such that many of the politically correct terms are just simply outrageous and down right stupid.

Take me for instance.  I am a stutterer.  That's right, I stutter, therefore I am a stutterer, not a 'person of disfluency', or as the National Stuttering Association refers, a 'PWS', person who stutters.  Come on, really?  A chicken is a chicken.  A dog is a dog.  A stutterer is a stutterer.  The politically correct term is just stupid and really offends me more because it tries too hard to distinguish me from others and personally, I feel, it has a negative connotation as to who or what I am.  The P.C. term seems to suggest that people need to take pity on me as if I am not 100% human.

"Oh, look at Jeff, he's a person of disfluency. Poor guy.  Should we bring him dinners?  Is Jeff able to make it on his own?"  This is quite demeaning rather than just saying, "Hey, you know Jeff?  He's a stutterer.  You know?  Oh, O.K."  Of course people who really know me may use the term stutterer as a synonym for son of a bitch. There's no demeaning connotation with stutterer.  It is presented as a fact and it is what I do when I talk.

I see the same thing when dealing with terms like 'African-American' or 'Asian-American'.  Jesus Christ, does that mean I have to be called French-Canadian-Irish-Scottish-American?  I hope not, because that seems more insulting to me.  (No offense to those French-Canadians, Irish, and Scots out there reading this.)  Dammit, I am American. Period!  O.K. I know you all are thinking.  Yes, I am a white guy.  Yes, I know I am not really white, more like apricot with pink hues.  But I will absolutely draw the line at being referred to as a Apricot-Pink-Hued-American.  The point is I know I am not really white so it doesn't offend me to be called a white guy.  And I know that my fellow black citizens aren't really black.  Guess what.  They know they're not really black too, but it's a way of describing another person or group of people.  These terms do not mean that I find myself or others like me better than another group.  If you read derogatory inference into those terms then that is your problem.  We use the same terms to describe other animal life (another topic).  Hell, take the Labrador Retriever as example.  We have yellow, black, chocolate, flat-haired, etc.  Should we describe my dog as being a Curl-challanged-all-color-combined Labrador Retriever? No, he's a frickin' flat-haired-black lab!  Again, how are we supposed to describe people without using non-descriptive terms?  If I had to give witness testimony to the police, I would sound like Ms. Swan, "He looka like a man."  We'd be up Shit's Creek trying to catch anyone.

I find it amusing how we're supposed to be this powerful bad-ass nation who can deploy our troops anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes and kick ass a take names, but internally we're just a big bunch of pussies whose feelings are so fragile because "someone called me a gay, black man" instead of a Same-Sex-Preference-African-American Male.  It's no wonder why the rest of the world laughs at us.

I'm just saying that we have to stop being so sensitive as a nation.  We have more problems in this country than trying to find an acceptable labeling system that really just makes us sound and look like morons (no offense to you morons out there).  We need to buck up and focus on real issues like hunger, disease, the economy, and cleaning up these political offices with all those numb-nuts looking out only for the interest of big business (again, another topic).   Where will we ever draw the line? One day, we're all going to have to use forty-five words just to remove any hint of political incorrectness to describe ourselves. Remember, I'm a stutterer, I'll end up self-imploding.  Look, let's keep things short and simple and stop thinking that you're so different than anyone else.  You're not.   Of course, it's just my take.