No offense intended! The nation is drowning in PC

Union Leader ^ | June 9 2002

[2Trievers]

THIS COUNTRY IS running the danger of capitulating to a mind-numbing political correctness. It is a danger with real and serious consequences, and it can only be stopped if individual citizens step up and demand that it stop.

A Brooklyn mother has discovered that the New York State high school graduation test has, for at least three years, been "sanitized of virtually any reference to race, religion, ethnicity, sex, nudity, alcohol, even the mildest profanity and just about anything that might offend someone for some reason."

So reported The New York Times one week ago.

For example, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel's essay "What Really Makes Us Free" includes this passage: "Man, who was created in God's image, wants to be free as God is free: free to choose between good and evil, love and vengeance, life and death."

But lest any student be offended, the phrases referring to God were eliminated in the test version!

A speech by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan referred to polls showing strong American support for an organization at the grass-roots level, but the phrase "regardless of what is said and done on Capitol Hill" was removed.

In another example, a book's reference to a "gringo lady" is changed to "American lady." A "skinny" boy becomes "thin." A "fat" boy becomes "heavy."

"When I saw that," said the woman who discovered the changes, "I really thought they had lost their minds."

We think they probably have. But such harsh words might offend someone, somewhere, somehow.

In some cases, the meaning of the writer's words is completely lost by this kind of revisionism. Yet the student is supposed to expound on what the writer meant!

To be sure, there are books and passages that are too intense — and offensive — for use in high schools. But their use may be no more repulsive or damaging to education and the body politic than are these kinds of Orwellian maneuvers.

And don't think it isn't happening here in New Hampshire. The racial, ethnic and, we are now hearing, sexual quotas in place at the University of New Hampshire in the name of "diversity" are just as damaging as any sanitized test.

[Revolting cat!]

Me thinks many would find this very thread in its entirety offensive and interfering with their constitutional right to pursue happiness. So stop it already, or it's re-education camp for you all!