Posted on 12/03/2004 8:12:38 AM PST by lindor
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The computer term "master/slave," which was banned as racially offensive by a Los Angeles County purchasing department, was named the most politically incorrect term of the year on Thursday.
Among other terms on the top 10 list of politically charged words and phrases, issued by the word usage group Global Language Monitor, were "non-same sex marriage" to describe heterosexual unions, "waitron" for waiter or waitress and "higher being" for God, a term some people found too religious.
"We found 'master/slave' to be the most egregious example of political correctness in 2004," said Paul JJ Payack, president of The Global Language Monitor.
"This is but one more example of the insertion of politics into every facet of modern life, down to the level of the control processes of computer technology."
In computer terminology, "master/slave" refers to primary and secondary hard disk drives. But a Los Angeles county purchasing department told vendors in late 2003 that the term was offensive and violated the region's cultural diversity. The county's department of affirmative action undertook a hunt to replace it on packages.
After a public uproar, the county backed down. Payack said that while the incident took place in late 2003, debate about it grew enormously in 2004.
The phrase "non-same sex marriage," was used by a former congressman who did not want to offend gay people by using the term traditional marriage, Payack said.
Also on the list this year were "Red Sox lover," to use in place of "Yankee hater," "progressive" for classical liberal, "incurious" rather than more impolite invectives for President Bush, "insurgents" instead of terrorists in Iraq, "baristas" for waiters, and "first year student" rather than freshman.
We also use the term Master-Slave to refer to a series of amplifiers chained together in a sound system. What do they suggest as an alternative?
"Turd burglar" will also be accepted.
Probably "co-dependents."
Hehe! That episode of South Park is a brilliant take on the plague of political correctness. Mr. Garrison, an openly gay teacher, wants to get fired, so he puts on displays of increasingly overt sexual perversity (culminating in the classic Lemmiwinks saga) - only to find that every time he ups the ante, his superiors preach more and more about how they have to be "tolerant" of his "lifestyle." When the kids find it bizarre that he has a teacher's assistant named "Mr. Slave" they get sentenced to the "Death Camp of Tolerance." Finally, Garrison gets so frustrated that he snaps at all of his superiors, telling them that there's a fine line between tolerating those with differences and treating the insertion of the class hamster into Mr. Slave's ass as acceptable classroom policy. And for all that Garrison himself is sent to the Tolerance Camp for being "intolerant of the gay lifestyle"! LOL!
Quote: Yes...I believe "butt pirate", "rump ranger", "booty bandit" and "disease ridden Sodomite" are the preferred terms.
You missed "pillow biters"
Frankly, all this terminology gets pretty disasianing - I mean disorienting.
well, i am a pale blue scottish person!! thanks billy connelly!!
one of my doctors who is from south africa (white) prides himself as being african american and even has it on our website.
I avoid Controversy over "non- PC " words like master and slave by inserting a swear word right before them.
When you tell your boss "I gotta replace a f*@:ing slave in the email server RAID " the PCness of the word "slave " goes right out the window.
And so, the offended, the morons, win again. All the rest of us can do is comment and curse! Thank you radical egalitarians. What is to be done?
Morford-ite
South Park
HAHAHAHAHHAahahaa.... I just CAN NOT see why! ...
LOL
dom-sub: pimp-ho: white-black
BTTT
In LA County I would think "Master/Slave" would just be part of the alternative sexual lifestyle descriptions and be as welcome a term as hamster and .........
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