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Monday, July 09, 2001
John Leo :: Townhall.com Columnist
P.C. Lexicon Should Come In Handy
by John Leo
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Will the Dems' health care Christmas Present to America be an improvement or detriment to our health care system?


English is a living language, always changing under the pressure of euphemism and verbal politics. Here are some translations for the modern reader:

  • activity intolerance: lower back pain

  • transitional assistance: welfare

  • after-sales services: kickbacks

  • involuntary administrative segregation: solitary confinement

  • three-day wait for a gun: regulation

  • one-day wait for an abortion: restriction

  • communications strategist: public relations person

  • creative response conceptions: PR

  • tug of peace: tug of war conducted by sensitive people

  • content providers: writers

  • compound: the home and property of someone reporters consider an extremist. (Thanks to Michelle Malkin.)

  • wedgislation: proposed law not intended to be passed or even seriously debated, but introduced solely to embarass the opposition. (William Saletan of Slate.)

  • not multicultural enough: white (For instance: "Many classes are no longer reading 'Catcher in the Rye' because the central character, Holden Caufield, isn't multicultural enough.")

  • sporadic protests and vandalism: a race riot, as reported by The New York Times

  • disturbances: race riots, second-day reference in the Times

  • special interests: your opponent's supporters

  • public-spirited citizens: your supporters

  • concerned Americans from around this great country: your non-local supporters

  • outside agitators: your opponent's non-local supporters

  • non-traditional sex: perversion

  • sex worker: prostitute, stripper, porn actor

  • false consciousness: she still loves her husband

  • leather community: sadomasochists

  • solo sexual activity, sex for one: masturbation

  • narratized sexual harassment: off-color joke

  • uncoerced sex: rare or obsolescent form of campus sexuality. "Many women like uncoerced sex," said Kathryn Abrams, Boston University law professor.

  • gender illusionist: cross-dresser, person in drag

  • intergenerational intimacy: pedophilia, statutory rape

  • homophobia: disagreement with the demands, tactics or manners of any gay activist

  • activist volunteering: new radical feminist term for a mother's kidnapping of her child after the courts have given custody to the father (thanks to Cathy Young)

  • paleoliberals: people of the left who have the exact same opinions they had in 1952. (Thanks to Mickey Kaus.)

  • grandparent clock: grandfather clock

  • foreparents: forefathers

  • underrepresented: we need quotas

  • should look like America: we need quotas

  • numerical goals and timetables: quotas

  • race-sensitive programs: quotas

  • fair group representation: quotas

  • employment equity: quotas

  • equitable distribution of available resources: quotas

  • should receive euthanasia: should be killed

  • advocacy scholarship: politicized teaching, classroom propaganda

  • sensitivity training: indoctrination

  • freshman orientation: indoctrination

  • multicultural issues editor (of a college paper): censor

  • post-colonial people: non-whites

  • people who never suffered colonialism: whites

  • undocumented workers: illegal aliens

  • beings: replaces "human beings." Removal of the word "human," with its warm and positive overtone, verbally sets the stage for the killing of infants and incapacitated oldsters, while at the same time making animals the equals of humans. (Thanks to Wesley Smith.)

  • monocultural: white Continued...

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    About The Author

    John Leo is editor of MindingTheCampus.com and a former contributing editor at U.S. News and World Report.

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