Column for April 1, 2010

In every day life, I try to use good manners. I was taught to keep my elbows off the table at dinner, not to chew with my mouth open, say "please" and "thank you", as well as to use respectful terms like sir and ma'am. I try to instill these same values into my seven-year-old son. This is quite an undertaking with a hard headed yung'un, but I keep at it. If you don't believe me, try coming to supper at my house sometime and hear me get on my boy's case.

There is a huge difference between being polite and being politically correct. While I strive to be polite, I certainly do not strive to be politically correct. Political correctness is nothing more than brain washing to indoctrinate people into ideas such as equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity and of being obsequiously compliant.

In December, I wrote that I was dismayed that my first grader came home and informed his mother and me that we could no longer refer to a waitress or waiter at a restaurant as such but rather had to use the gender neutral term "server". Today I heard three more such paradigm shifting, brain washing, gender bending examples of political correctness.

My seven-year-old informed us that he and other classmates were corrected at school today over simple, everyday colloquialisms that are more than proper. My understanding is that the discussion of a career day was at hand. (Career day? In first grade? Why? Since when does a child at that age have any clue about a career path? But I digress from the topic at hand and now return you to my normally scheduled column already in progress.) When asked what career he would like to dress as, my son said "an Army man". A guidance counselor (so I am told. A guidance counselor? Really? In elementary school? You have got to be kidding me. But again I digress and return to my normally scheduled column already in progress) informed my son that she would prefer that he used the term "Army soldier". Thus the primary connotation of someone in the Army being a male has been destroyed and thereby opening the entire world of military life to all women, regardless of the task, merely by the change of a term. To quote our Registrar of Deeds, Craig Olive, "That's hog wash".

I was also told that other children were chastised for using terms such as "mailman" and "fireman". Apparently the terms firefighter and mail carrier are more correct. I will concede that there are many people in the fire service who believe that a fireman is a person who stokes a boiler and the proper term is firefighter. When I joined the fire service many years ago, that point was made many times by the far more experienced pyro-gladiators. However, this was not a matter of gender bending, it was a matter of terminology. As a matter of fact, I recall the chief of that department informing us that the requirement to join that department would be that one would have to stand three or so feet away from the wall and be able to "make water" upon it. For further reference, I can only point you to the Bible in 1 Samuel 25:22 as one of six examples of which I write. The Bible was certainly not politically correct, nor was it gender sensitive when it came to a lot of things. I have read 26 different translations and paraphrases of that particular verse and some modern translations are fairly politically correct, but on that one it is hard to beat Ye Olde King James version.

If the purpose of political correctness is to take away the alleged offensiveness of normal speech, then I guess I can no longer refer to the Mexican ditch digger as such. I guess that I would have to now call him an "undocumented manual turf extraction technician". Sorry, but I am not going to go the distance on that one. In high school we nicknamed a teacher who spent summers digging graves for a cemetery "Digger". As much as he disliked the nickname, I doubt he would have preferred manual turf extraction technician any better.

Don't let the indoctrination whisk away you or your family. At the dinner table this evening while having this discussion, I told my boy that when monkeys flew out of my posterior, then I would give in and exclusively refer to waitresses as servers, Army men as Army soldiers, and my mailman as a mail carrier. I may use those terms from time to time in normal conversation, however I will never give in towards discounting the other terms of use. Yes, I am just that obstinate. I prefer freedom and common sense over politically correct fertilizer.