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TONGUE TIED ARCHIVE
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October 15, 2005Fatheaded British Police
One of the earliest politically correct commandments was that people are not "short" but rather "vertically challenged". I think that one got laughed to death, however. And its logical corollary for fat people -- "horizontally challenged" -- was never even proposed to my knowledge.
But the British police are something else again. They are no good at dealing with a huge upsurge in gun crime (even though guns are supposedly banned in Britain) but they are super duper at victimizing ordinary people for what they do and say. And they crack down on any mention of "fat". As the following press excerpt shows:
"When Mary Magilton told police a hit-and-run driver was fat, she didn't think she was being rude. To her mind, it was merely an accurate description of the woman who had run into her on the pavement before driving off. But to the police officer interviewing the mother of three about her traumatic experience, "fat" represented inappropriate language. And she astonished Mrs Magilton by giving her a ticking-off for using the word.Staff in the officer's force, Greater Manchester Police, have to abide by a 16-page document listing words and phrases which they should avoid so as not to cause offence, with suggested alternatives. Terms such as policeman and spokesman are described as sexist while phrases such as "accident blackspot" and "a black look" are deemed negative....
It does not, however, cover terminology for referring to those who are overweight. And it tells officers that, even if a witness uses an inappropriate term they should record it, putting it in quotation marks. Yesterday, with the suspect still at large, 54-year-old Mrs Magilton said the nit-picking attitude of the officer - who was of average build - had left her feeling like she was the criminal"
So even 16 pages of rules about speech are not enough. Politically correct attitudes are now so deeply ingrained in the British police that they add extra rules of their own. No surprise that the hit-run driver has not been found. She no doubt has become a "victim" for being described as fat.
"White" Unmentionable Again
I have previously mentioned this story -- where "white flight" was deemed to be a "racist" phrase that cannot be mentioned. Now we have more of the same. There is a city in Texas called "White Settlement" -- and you can guess the rest can't you? Here is a press excerpt:
"White Settlement Mayor James O. Ouzts says the city's name has turned off potential new residents and businesses. Now, with the city falling on hard economic times, voters will decide whether to change White Settlement to West Settlement, a name more inviting to outsiders. "One of the first things they say is 'What's up with the name?' " Mr. Ouzts said. "They have a negative perception, and you have to try to overcome that. You expend a tremendous amount of energy trying to explain the name."Maybe I am missing the point here but perhaps they could rename the place "Non-Black Settlement". "Black" seems to be an OK word these days -- as long as you don't use it too often, of course.
Just a passing thought: I wonder when people who are actually brown will start objecting to being called "black"? When they do, maybe "colored" will come back into vogue and "black" will become incorrect. What a merrygoround it all is!
Zero Tolerance
A high school basketball coach in California who used the dreaded N-word in course of quoting someone else has been removed from his post even though none of the students who heard the word said they were offended, reports the Fresno Bee.
Edison High School coach Ben Gonzalez used the slur at a team BBQ over the summer. He told his players that some folks in the community told him he could better communicate with his players if he joined them in their use of the word "nigger" in casual conversation.
His players said he apologized and that they weren't offended at all, but one parent who got wind of it raised enough hell for Gonzalez to be removed as coach. Parent Micalandis Leslie said any use of the word is innappropriate and offensive.
The players themselves, and their families, voted unanimously to keep Gonzalez as coach, but they were overruled by administrators. The players also have appealed, so far unsuccessfully, to the local school board.
'Non-Student Days?'
Public school officials in Tampa are poised to remove religious holidays from the official school calendar altogether rather than honor a request from local Muslims to add an Eid-themed holiday, reports the St. Pete Times.
In the interest of church-state separation, school board members want to eliminate vacation days coinciding with Yom Kippur, Good Friday and Easter Monday and replace them with time off on Presidents Day and later in the spring.
But board member Jennifer Faliero, who believes the secular calendar "waters down our values" by suppressing religious expression, has offered up an alternative. Hers would give students a day off for the Eid al-Fitr instead of the Monday after Easter. Faliero also wants the holidays called what they are instead of the current term "nonstudent days."
Debate over the holidays started when local Muslims asked for a holiday like everyone else. They said removal of all religious holidays was the last thing they wanted. "This is not what we asked for," said Ahmed Bedier, Florida director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations. "We were simply asking for equal representation."
Prayer Squabbles
A high school football coach in New Jersey who was told he could no longer participate in pre-game prayers with his players resigned his position instead of acceding to the demand, according to the AP.
East Brunswick coach Marcus Borden inherited the tradition, which is common throughout the state. But school district officials said they had received complaints from parents who said the prayers made them uncomfortable.
"I'm very disappointed," he said in an interview with a local TV station. "Do I feel we were violating someone's rights? I don't think so."
The Silence is Deafening
An Oklahoma transplant to New York City said she has had to remove her kids from their public school in Brooklyn after they were repeatedly harassed, beaten and bombarded with racial slurs by others kids at the school, reports the New York Daily News.
Lisa Brown says she moved so her two boys, ages 11 and 13, could experience a little more diversity, but is now regretting it. The abuse got so bad that her sons routinely bolted out of the building after school, dodging racial epithets and physical attacks all the way to the subway.
Brown filed several police reports about the abuse, but said she was ignored. She also tried to alert the school principal about the abuse but was rebuffed.
"Do I have to send the National Guard in to get my children an education?" she asked.
By Any Other Name
African-Canadian leaders in Toronto fed up following a spate of gun murders in that city are calling for separate rules, institutions and policies for blacks, according to the Toronto Star.
A coalition of 22 community groups, the Coalition of African Canadian Organizations, is calling its proposals "separateness." But it's not segregation, they say. Only two types of people would call it that, says banker Hugh Graham: "an individual who doesn't understand the challenges the community faces, which are much more significant than those faced by other communities; and the individual who would not wish to see the community uplifted."
Among the demands are for separate courts to deal with non-violent black offenders, a separate economic development agency, "black-focused schools" and an African-Canadian cultural center.
Can' Win for Trying
An effort to show racial solidarity in Montgomery, Ala. is under fire because the symbol being displayed as a sign of that solidarity is a cross and and that might offend non-Christians, according to WSFA-TV.
Local religious leaders started the One Movement effort to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the bus boycott that kicked off the civil rights movement. They wanted 10,000 black-and-white crosses displayed all over town.
Some in town aren't buying into the program, however.
Rev. Elizabeth O'Neill of Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Montgomery says the cross is the wrong the symbol and worries that people of other faiths are being excluded. "It feels much more to me like an evangelistic crusade than a community celebration," she said.
Every Year ...
The Rocky Mountain Daily Collegian says the annual Columbus Day parade in Denver met with the usual contingent of protestors who called the event a "convoy of conquest" out to celebrate genocide.
The parade, consisting of 17 floats, 18 hot rods, Aztec dancers, two marching bands, 150 motorcycles and 1,500 walkers, met with about 200 protestors along the route (protestors said their numbers amounted to more like 1,500) but there were no arrests as in years past.
Glenn Morris, of Colorado's American Indian Movement, said the celebration wasn't really even a parade, but rather a line-up of "limos, motorcycles and Hell's Angels riding around and celebrating colonialism."
Hitler the Peacenik
One topic in politics that seems to have been almost completely silenced is how Leftist Hitler was. Any suggestion that he was a socialist (which is what he himself said he was) is shrilly denounced. Well, my tongue is untied on the matter so I am putting up below a picture of a Nazi propaganda poster of the 1930s that you won't believe unless you are aware of how readily all Leftists preach one thing and do another. It reads "Mit Hitler gegen den Ruestungswahnsinn der Welt".
And what does that mean? It means "With Hitler against the armaments madness of the world". "Ruestung" could more precisely be translated as "military preparations" but "armaments" is a bit more idiomatic in English.
So even the preaching of "peace" by the bloodthirsty Soviet regime of the cold war period had its parallel among the Nazis of the 1930s. You have now seen it with your own eyes.
Who's Rules?
Danish Muslims are demanding a retraction and an apology from a Copenhagen newspaper that printed 12 drawings of the prophet Mohammed, reports DR News, a practice that is forbidden under Islamic law.
Members of the Islamic community say the newspaper, Jyllands Posten, is abusing freedom of speech "to enable a democratic oppression of all Muslims in Denmark."
The editor of the paper says he printed the pictures because the western world has become too scared to discuss Islam openly. He says he has no intention of apologizing.
LGF tracked down the offensive images.
Another Seal Debate
The 100-year-old state seal of Massachusetts is under fire from a group of activists who believe the image of a arm wielding a sword over an American Indian is demeaning and insensitive for the Indian, according to the Berkshire Eagle.
The state legislators who want to change the seal also complain that it erroneously portrays Native Americans as the aggressor against English settlers and features inaccurate clothing for Indians of that era.
Cautionary Tale
California's Marin Independent Journal says a local U-Haul dealership is catching hell from immigrants' rights activists who say a sign at the business beseeching customers not to hire illegal day laborers from the corners nearby is racist.
Employees at the dealer in San Rafael, Calif. say the sign -- which reads "Please do not hire illegal laborers. We have had numerous reports of injuries, thefts and damages to personal belongings. It is a federal crime to employ or pick up illegal day laborers, punishable by a $5,000 fine." -- is there to protect customers.
Tom Wilson, co-executive director of the Canal Alliance, an agency that provides assistance to local laborers says he has received about a dozen complaints about the U-Haul company's sign.
"The tack they're taking is a particularly troubling one," Wilson said. "They're painting illegal day workers as criminals, making generalizations about a group of people."
VP for Inclusion?
An AP report out of Austin, Texas says the University of Texas, as part of a wide-ranging effort to make Students of Color feel more comfortable, has added a new position to the ranks of its leadership: Vice Provost for Inclusion and Cross-Cultural Understanding.
Spanish Becoming Compulsory?
If your staff speak only English that seems to be no longer good enough in Ohio. At the very least you are not allowed to mention it. Press excerpt:"A tavern's sign, "For Service Speak English," violates Ohio civil rights law, a commission ruled Thursday - as the sign still sat in the window of the Pleasure Inn on U.S. 42. The Ohio Civil Rights Commission says that, because of the sign, the Pleasure Inn "engaged in discriminatory practices." As a result of the finding, the business could be ordered to remove the sign, to pay for advertisements about nondiscrimination, and its staff could be ordered to undergo diversity training or cultural sensitivity training, said Christia Alou White, commission spokeswoman..... Ullum responded that "the sign means exactly what it says. ... None of (the tavern's) employees speak any language other than English and, therefore, would be unable to communicate with any patrons who are not versed in the English language."The bar owner said he does not exclude anyone on the basis of race, color or creed but because he was so bold as to tell the truth about his staff he is in the gun. But truth is always secondary to Leftists.
How Homosexual Correctness Makes Life Insurance Costly for All Single Men
Life insurance is something that you take out to help out those who are in some way dependent on you if you die young. The younger you are when you take it out, the cheaper it is. So it makes sense to sign up before you start a family etc. But if you are young and single you will often be inclined to put it off. Recent insurance rules regardsing AIDS, however, look like making it even more likely that young single men will put it off. It is about to become prohibitively expensive for young men to take out such policies -- because AIDS sufferers are a major category of single men who die prematurely and it is now forbidden to single out the category of young men who account for something like 90% of AIDS sufferers in the Western world -- homosexuals. As the following press excerpt notes:"British life insurance agents cannot ask male applicants questions about their sexual practices in order to determine HIV risk, according to new guidelines from the Association of British Insurers that went into effect on Saturday, the Financial Times reports (Cumbo, Financial Times, 9/30). About 400 companies are members of ABI and, between them, provide 94% of domestic insurance services sold in the United Kingdom"So those who follow the safer lifestyle of heterosexuality cannot be in any way rewarded for that and will face the same high premiums that homosexuals do. The insurance companies will have to assume that any single young man who applies for a policy could be a homosexual who will contract AIDS and die young. They would go broke if they didn't allow for that. So homosexual correctness has become a good way of preventing heterosexual men from thinking ahead and providing wisely for their futures.
So it is foreseeable that, among young single men, it will almost entirely be homosexuals who take out such policies. In which case they will face the high premiums that their risky lifestyles necessitate and which the recent rule change is designed to save them from. So nothing will be gained for homosexuals and much may be lost for heterosexuals.
Miracles Incorrect
As an atheist myself I've really got no dog in this fight but one thing I do know is that the New Testament has many accounts of miracles in it and I also know that belief in the reality of what the New Testament describes is central to the Christian faith. And "Pentecostal" and Catholic churches which believe that miracles can still happen to this day seem to me a reasonable outgrowth of Bible teachings. So denying Christians the right to preach about miracles seems a fundamental attack on religious liberty and on the teachings which helped make the modern world what it is. Obviously, then, we must expect that such attacks will come from the religion-hating Leftists. And this excerpt from Britain is one example:"Complaints about a church poster saying "Miracles Healing Faith" have been dismissed after an investigation. Two people felt the headline was misleading because it could not be scientifically proven and "preyed on the credulity of vulnerable people". The Advertising Standards Authority said it had not breached any rules. The Pentecostal Michael Reid Ministries in Brentwood, Essex, welcomed the findings but said the decision to investigate was "a nonsense".Well, the Pentecostals won that round but no doubt there will be further bouts to come. I think they might have a bit of difficulty in stopping pilgrimages to Lourdes, though. My own view is that such things as pilgrimages to Lourdes seem to help a lot of people so I am perfectly happy with them. Unlike Leftists, I don't need everybody to think as I do. I practice the tolerance that they only preach. And it isn't even an effort.
