# PC Moronity



## Sam (Apr 11, 2013)

It never ceases to amaze me the depths of stupidity that exist in this world. I recently read an article in which parents from a small town in England petitioned to have the word 'cockpit' bowdlerised from the dictionary because of its first four letters. They argued that it should be called 'flight deck' instead. And the really messed-up thing is that a number of people actually _agreed _with them. 

What is the world coming to? Certain people have become a bunch of politically correct idiots who rant and rave about the most innocuous things. There are people starving in the world and these morons are wasting time and money attempting to petition for the removal _of a word__!_ I wouldn't mind if it was even mildly offensive. If that's the kind of thing we've been reduced to worrying about, why not bowdlerise 'cockroach' and 'cocktail' and dozens of other words which begin with those four letters? It's patently ridiculous.


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## Travers (Apr 11, 2013)

Sam, I think you need to put a strong language warning in the title of this post...

Sorry. In all seriousness, that is unbelievably stupid. But some people just love to try and make themselves important by creating these idiotic crusades. What can you do?


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## Sam (Apr 11, 2013)

Travers said:


> Sam, I think you need to put a strong language warning in the title of this post...



I can't tell if you're serious or being facetious.


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## Morkonan (Apr 11, 2013)

Some people are stupid. I don't mean just "ignorant", but outright stupid. I think that stupidity is an evolutionarily reinforced trait that regularly occurs within members of a species, but is not universal. Stupid members of a species are more likely to act outside of the set of normal behaviors and may also engage in risk-taking behavior that could result in the exploitation of new resources. Then, there are the individuals that try to go yodeling at the bottom of the ocean or who make it a practice to count railroad ties at night. Evolution is a powerful system, but it does have its embarrassments...

We must suffer stupidity, if for no other reason than we would have much less to read about in the daily news.


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## PiP (Apr 11, 2013)

It does make you wonder how we as a nation allowed the lunatics to take over the assylum. Were we asleep or was it apathy? 

What about *Cockerill *_and __*Cocker Spaniels*_
and of course _*Joe Cocker*_

Whatever next!!


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## Travers (Apr 11, 2013)

Sam said:


> I can't tell if you're serious or being facetious.



Facetious. I thought I'd made it obvious enough. Oh well.


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## PiP (Apr 11, 2013)

Morkonan said:


> We must suffer stupidity, if for no other reason than we would have much less to read about in the daily news.



Trouble is, no one bothers to challenge these morons and stupidity becomes the acceptable norm.


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## Sam (Apr 11, 2013)

Travers said:


> Facetious. I thought I'd made it obvious enough. Oh well.



No worries. That's the problem with the Internet: you can only see words.


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## shadowwalker (Apr 11, 2013)

Sam said:


> No worries. That's the problem with the Internet: you can only see words.



As long as you can't see certain words... :cower:


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## Travers (Apr 11, 2013)

shadowwalker said:


> As long as you can't see certain words... :cower:




Oh no, you beat me to it!


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## NathanBrazil (Apr 11, 2013)

Agreed Sam, a ridiculous waste of time.

And why stop there?  Even if the sound of the word is contained in another word.  I just listened to the pronunciation of cacophany at dictionary.com and I could distinctly hear that word.  Heck, using that same logic we could ban the word 'dictionary'.  Maybe it should be called a word grabber instead.


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## Kevin (Apr 11, 2013)

Morkonan said:


> Some people are stupid. I don't mean just "ignorant", but outright stupid. I think that stupidity is an evolutionarily reinforced trait that regularly occurs within members of a species, but is not universal. Stupid members of a species are more likely to act outside of the set of normal behaviors and may also engage in risk-taking behavior that could result in the exploitation of new resources. Then, there are the individuals that try to go yodeling at the bottom of the ocean or who make it a practice to count railroad ties at night. Evolution is a powerful system, but it does have its embarrassments...
> 
> We must suffer stupidity, if for no other reason than we would have much less to read about in the daily news.


 Hmmm.  These are members. They go along with things. They're part of the group. They tell the rest of the group how all of us should act. An ocean yodeler is only a danger to himself.


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## ppsage (Apr 11, 2013)

I can't find the article?


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## Sam (Apr 11, 2013)

I read it a couple of days ago, so I can't remember the site. I'll see if I can find it.


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## PiP (Apr 11, 2013)

ppsage said:


> I can't find the article?



Looking for the article I came across this
Scunthorpe Problem - Television Tropes & Idioms

At least it had me laughing out loud!

Even if Sam's post was posted on April 1st, I'd still believe it!

and this

http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2012/03...bidden-words-removed-from-standardized-tests/

Seems USA is just as crazy and PC


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## NathanBrazil (Apr 11, 2013)

Wow, just wow.  How bout 'Computers on my lap' or 'Computers in my fish bowl'.   I don't think 'ballet' is going to make it past the profanity filters.


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## Lewdog (Apr 11, 2013)

Balloon!  Harass!  Carcass!


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## Rustgold (Apr 11, 2013)

pigletinportugal said:


> Whatever next!!



Well we had the hatetrips 20 years ago to words like mankind, postman, spokesman etc (funny they never objected to mangle, manslaughter or malevolent).


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 11, 2013)

My mother had a friend who wrote an advice column, she said every so often one would come across something enraging; and then get a vision of a croup of national sevice men sitting round in a nissen hut in the middle of nowhere with nothing to do, except compose a letter. In 'The Honorary Consul' Graham Green has the ambassador advise someone that if he and his mate as the only two Englishmen in town form an English club they can write a letter from the club, I can well imagine a reporter without a story asking "Do you think cockpit should be changed to flight deck? I will put your name in the paper if you do." Some people are easily led and unlikely to have an effect.

The one I find annoying, and slightly worrying, is the habit the media is establishing of demanding justice *for* someone. Justice to me is a fairly abstract concept, I think it was Lord Birkett defined it as 'The best possible outcome for all involved, the victim, the society, and the offender.' What they seem to be talking about as 'justice for ...' strikes me as little but vengeance. That is not pretty and the point of a judiciary to me is to keep judgement impartial.

On the other hand I agree PC is kind of stupid very often, there is a row of council houses in Brixton called 'Desmond Tutu way', my response, take the Mickey, (Sorry if that is not quite PC Sam, the other word would require a language warning) I have called the old people's home in my novel the 'Nelson Garvey home for the elderly'. Get a South African _and_ a Jamaican in there.


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## Kevin (Apr 11, 2013)

Rustgold said:


> Well we had the hatetrips 20 years ago to words like mankind, postman, spokesman etc (funny they never objected to mangle, manslaughter or malevolent).


 _Mad Magazine _had a whole issue on that. _Mail-man_ became _Person-person._


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 11, 2013)

My favourite of those was 'An ethnic person's pinch'.

Another of the things I object to is that I must 'respect people's beliefs'. Why? Some of the things people believe are farcical to say the least. They can believe what they want, that is their right, but don't expect me to respect the belief, or them for holding it, without some grounds.


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 11, 2013)

I saw a little while ago that 'Negro' was being replaced by 'American of African origin' as it is deemed to have offensive connotations. The strange thing is that 'Negro' was introduced in the 1930's to replace the word 'Nigger' which was deemed to have offensive connotations, how long before 'African American' becomes offensive? Not long I feel, because surely the offence is not in the word but in the racist attitudes that need to differentiate between people on that sort of basis.


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## moderan (Apr 11, 2013)

In my ear, I have a cochlea.
At the end of my spine is a coccyx.
Sometimes my cock crows in the morning.
In the evenings, I've been know to savor coq au vin.
Welcome to the wonderful world of the chicken-hearted, aka the Moron Majority.


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## shadowwalker (Apr 11, 2013)

Olly Buckle said:


> I saw a little while ago that 'Negro' was being replaced by 'American of African origin' as it is deemed to have offensive connotations.



What's ridiculous about this is the fact that not all blacks' ancestors came from Africa. This was pointed out by a fellow - I believe on another forum, I sometimes forget who was where :-k - who is black and not of African ancestry. He was quite put out by the phrase 'African American'.


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## Kevin (Apr 11, 2013)

moderan said:


> In my ear, I have a cochlea.
> At the end of my spine is a coccyx.
> Sometimes my cock crows in the morning.
> In the evenings, I've been know to savor coq au vin.
> Welcome to the wonderful world of the chicken-hearted, aka the Moron Majority.


 Dick Cheney


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## Olly Buckle (Apr 12, 2013)

shadowwalker said:


> What's ridiculous about this is the fact that not all blacks' ancestors came from Africa. This was pointed out by a fellow - I believe on another forum, I sometimes forget who was where :-k - who is black and not of African ancestry. He was quite put out by the phrase 'African American'.


 This is probably even truer in Britain than America, when slavery was abolished the labour force was supplemented by indentured labour from India and China (mainly). I have a friend whose ancestry is Jamaican, she is Caucasian in appearance but in her family there are Negro and Chinese looking members. About time we thought of ourselves as one family, close, but with diverse and individual members.


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## J Anfinson (Apr 12, 2013)

pigletinportugal said:


> Seems USA is just as crazy and PC



Oh yeah - The nightly news is full of junk like this.



Olly Buckle said:


> This is probably even truer in Britain than America,



Maybe, I don't know. I see blacks getting offended by this all the time. Some even demand to be called "Black" and not "African American".


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## JosephB (Apr 12, 2013)

J Anfinson said:


> Some even demand to be called "Black" and not "African American".



I don't know about the demand part -- but a lot of black people think "African American" is contrived and inaccurate. I've actually been ribbed by a black friend of mine for saying it -- like, listen to the white boy trying to be P.C. He just says, "black folks" most of the time.


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## Kevin (Apr 12, 2013)

"black folks"? Hmm. Sounds like he's a generalist, which in this town would label him as a racist, except that he's not white, which means that's impossible, unless he's a conservative, which means he hates his own, in which case he should be shunned and ridiculed as a pawn of the overlords...


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## JosephB (Apr 12, 2013)

Heh -- well, I suspect it is somewhat regional -- a lot of black people say "black folks" and "white folks" for that matter. Then again, more people tend to say "folks" in this neck of the woods anyway. I was up in Detroit making a presentation and I said "folks" -- and "y'all" too. They're still talking about it.


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## Ariel (Apr 12, 2013)

My neighbor, an old black southern woman, scolded me once for saying "African American."  She says she's black.  She also says she's my grandma.  She always treated me better than my real grandma did.
***
Kansas City and our neighboring city, Independence, have a bad racial history together.  President Truman was from Missouri and when he returned after his time in office he settled in the city his wife was from, Independence.  To commemorate his return the city council of Independence pulled a very interesting stunt.

They built the nation's first presidential library.  Today it sits on a beautiful rolling green lawn with a very large park around it.  But at the time of its construction there was a very poor black neighborhood in the area.  It was called "The Neck."

The city council bought up "new" homes in a Kansas City neighborhood and offered them to the blacks that lived in the neck.  Often these offers included a threat.  The city of Independence bulldozed down the neck and built the library.

The "new" homes the blacks had been relocated to?  They were already 20 years old and many were already in poor condition.

I grew up in the neighborhood that the blacks were relocated into (I'm fourth generation of my family to live in the neighborhood).  To this day Independence has a lower density black population while Kansas City's is higher.

Pretty horrible, isn't it?


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## Kevin (Apr 12, 2013)

There are subtle (and not so) things going on here. I'm still trying to fully 'get' it: 
My wife started at a new job. The business had recently been bought by a new owner, a black woman. Some of the main producers left. Why? Because she is black. Okay, but why does that matter, the fact that she's black? Because they felt the she would take the business in a different direction than one conducive to their clientele. Is that racism? It's sounds prejudicial. The new owner was not from that part of town. They felt she would not know the local culture. The place _has _to in order to survive.  As I said, I'm still trying to 'get' it.


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## JosephB (Apr 12, 2013)

Unless she laid out her plans, if they didn't actually wait to see what direction she was going to take, then that sounds prejudiced and kind of stupid. Although it's kind of hard to say without knowing the nature of the business or any of the particulars.


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## Kevin (Apr 12, 2013)

'Prejudiced'? Yes. Stupid? Well it would take some time to know. It's a hair salon which is _all_ about appearances. A hair cut is $65. Rent is 10k a mo. (and rising)


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## Ariel (Apr 12, 2013)

If the owner is smart then she'll trust her stylists who, in turn, should trust their clients to know what is needed/wanted for the area and "local culture."


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## JosephB (Apr 12, 2013)

Well, that's a business that's pretty black or white so to speak -- at least it is around here. The lady who owns the place where I get my hair cut was lamenting that the condos and aprotments around her place had largely transitioned to black and Latino residents over the past decade or so, and she's lost a lot of business. That's just not where they want to go to get their hair done -- I suppose for practical reasons more than anything else, the hair and styles are just different. It seems to be one way or the other -- so I imagine if you were going shift your business in that direction, you'd likely need new stylists. Also, from what I've seen, stylists are a pretty transient bunch anyway -- not such a big deal to go where the grass is greener.


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## Kevin (Apr 12, 2013)

This is sort of 'high end'. Any client, regardless of origins is going to have to have money. 'Blight' (low end rent)is not moving in any time soon. The neighborhood only gets more expensive. If anything, the business will move out.

But getting back to it...my wife asked if the 'producers' would have left if she'd bought it?  The answer was probably not; she has the right 'look'. Does that mean skin color? Maybe, they said, but it's more than that. It's the cloths, the hair, the make-up.


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## JosephB (Apr 12, 2013)

Sure, whatever -- even the high-end salons cater to a specific ethnic clientele around here. That really wasn't my point, rather that it's generally one way or the other. BTW, the condos and apts. I was referring to aren't exactly low-end -- just more affordable than the surrounding neighborhoods. The per-capita income in my area is one the highest in the nation.


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## Kevin (Apr 12, 2013)

I got ya. Yah, we have a resurgence of barber shops, too. Mostly Mexican, a lot of 'black'. If you're getting your hair cut short what's the dufference? There's a lot of crossover.


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## J Anfinson (Apr 12, 2013)

This may be slightly off topic, but I just had a thought. I wonder if someone with multiple personalities has ever taken offense to something they said to themself and sued themself.


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## JosephB (Apr 12, 2013)

On behalf of everyone who has multiple personalities, I am deeply offended by that and so am I.


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## philistine (Apr 12, 2013)

I can understand the irritation. 

Nothing aggravates me more than people who insist on tailoring their views, on every possible topic imaginable, to whatever the politically correct stance happens to be at that time. It's as if such people don't have any opinions- only the opinions of others which have been deemed 'right'. 

I need a drink.

EDIT: I just remembered that cock, as in cock_pit, _does not, and has not ever been associated with the slang term everybody is thinking of. It's one of many terms spawned from the old cock fighting games people would arrange. Pitting one against another, etc. 

Now, for that drink.


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## DPVP (Apr 14, 2013)

or even more nutty hear, we have a Senator sending a letter to Fox asking them not to show a NASCAR race. the problem seems to not be the individuals but that it is systemic.


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